mobilephotography

iPhoneography Insights: Spacewalk

Before
Before
After
After

The leading lines are what caught my eye at first.  Although I didn’t like the busyness of the bottom half, I still took the photo. I opened the photo in VSCO Cam as soon as I got back to my seat and applied the black and white B5 preset, since I find that to have the deepest blacks.

After lowering the exposure a few notches, I almost eliminated everything besides the light. I flipped the photo over and that’s when the title, Spacewalk, came to mind. Finally, I brought it over to Photogene and used the heal feature to remove the remaining white spots.

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A Few Panning Shots from the iPhone 5S

Panning is a photography technique that’s typically associated with “real” cameras, at least the ones that let you control the shutter speed. Smartphones traditionally didn’t allow users to fiddle with that setting.

But, thanks to apps like Slow Shutter Cam, the panning technique can be achieved.

 

After using it during my recent trip to DC, it seems as if the longer shutter speed is being simulated since you can also control how much blur you want. I found the best results came from using shutter speeds at the faster end of the spectrum (i.e. 1/4 or 1/2 second) while varying the blur strength based on your goal.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Extra, Extra

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted, so here I am to end the drought. If you don’t already know, I enjoy taking photos of cars and pretty much all kinds of transportation. I immediately thought of this photo when I saw the cat in the post about this week’s challenge.

Photo Tip: Use Square Mode for Instagram

For those of you unfamiliar with Instagram, it’s the photography platform where the 1:1 aspect ratio is encouraged. This tip is kind of a no-brainer for those of you who use the platform; but it’s something you may forget to do sometimes. I know I do. Even though you can crop your photos in the app, using the square mode on your smartphone’s camera has its advantages and they all have to do with getting the composition right — aligning verticals/horizons and composing with the rule of thirds are just a couple.

Not in square mode
In square mode

The iPhone’s default camera app has square mode. I’m sure many of the recent Android phones have it as well.

A Few HDR Shots from the iPhone 5s

The weather could not be any better yesterday; I had to go for a walk. The sun was out with temperatures in the 50s and, as you can see, there were plenty of clouds to add texture to the sky. Unlike software effects that can simulate the look, the HDR mode on the iPhone 5s actually takes multiple images and blends them together to achieve the proper exposure in both the light and dark areas.

Sample RAW Files from a Lumia 1020

It’s been a while since Nokia’s release of sample RAW files from a Lumia 1020, the smartphone with a whopping 41-megapixel camera. The files were released in late October 2013 so they’re pretty much old news now. But, with Adobe’s recent leak of Lightroom for iPad, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to finally publish this post that’s been sitting in my list of drafts. The capability of shooting in RAW has been restricted to most DSLRs and some point-and-shoots for the most part. This year, I’m sure we’ll see more smartphones with this capability.

For those of you unfamiliar with RAW files, they are to digital photography what undeveloped film is to traditional/analog photography — a digital negative. Unlike a JPEG, which is essentially the camera doing the post-processing for you, RAW files allow you to process photos your way. Feel free to comment if you have any experience developing film and any techniques you may have used, I’d like to know.

Below, I’ve taken one of the samples, reduced the highlights, brought back some detail in the shadows, added some saturation, increased the sharpness, and reduced the noise.

Unedited

Unedited

Edited with Lightroom 4

Edited with Lightroom 4

If you’d like to experiment with the files,  grab them here. You can edit RAW files with free software like Picasa.