Blogs, media and news

Glyn Evans’ iPhoneography covers iPhone photography and videography.

Photographers and Galleries

Need a quick fix? Here’s a good breathless rundown of great shots!

iPhone Photography is a reader-submitted gallery of great iPhone pix.

Yes. there’s a Flickr group.

Greg Schmigel is a street photographer who uses an iPhone and puts it all on the webs at Just What I See. [twitter]

Chase Jarvis’s “iPhone as Art”

Taken With an iPhone is another gallery site.

Since 2008, there’s even been an Annual iPhone Photo Award

Tools, apps and add-ons

Phil Coffman is a great iPhone photographer and he shares information on app combos and techniques in this blog entry.

Hipstamatic is a clever app that makes your iPhone camera work like the best (and cheapest) of the cheap plastic medium-format film cameras of the past. It’s clever because it doesn’t stop at the $1.99 app, but you can buy add-on lenses and film packs for more variations and effects. The makers of the app regularly run a reader-submitted contest, with a gallery for the winners, but I’ll tell ya: best Hipstamatic pics I’ve seen are right on Jon Konrath’s Flickr photostream. Awesome!

You can even do HDR with an iPhone! [video howto]

Need more? Friedbeef’s Tech has a great rundown: “12 Awesome iPhone Photography Resources”

 1921-2009

King of the DIY HOW-TO writers — Gladstone was a prolific writer, photographer and ideaman for Popular Science and later was the home-workshop columnist for The New York Times for over 30 years. [more]

Was also a boater and a WWII veteran who had enlisted in the Army in 1942, finally discharged after sustaining injuries in the war.

Retired to Bradenton Florida. Died Jan 29, 2009 in University Park Florida. At the time of his death, he was survived by daughter Robin, his second wife Sandra Zalbowitz, four stepchildren. He was also a grandfather.A funeral service was held on Monday Feb 2 2009 at 11 a.m. at Toale Brothers Funeral Home. [NYTimes obit] [Paid notice from Ruth] [Guestbook (behind paywall)]

Career

Wrote for Popular Science as a teen and soon worked up to editor — commuted to Manhattan from his Long Island home — lived there in late 40s with his wife and children and had one of the first bamboo-laden postwar basement tiki bars, with Kentile flooring (including shuffleboard court) plus other side for laundry, clothing storage closet (painted with cedar paint to deter moths and with an indicator light on outside to show if light was left on), and a photographic darkroom.

Also wrote for Mechanix Illustrated.

Later went on to be a popular and syndicated columnist for The New York Times and retired in 1991, but continued to work freelance from home and file stories for several years until retiring to Florida.

Gladstone was the author (or editor) of many DIY books such as The Complete Home Guide to Furniture Finishing and Refinishing and The New Boatkeeper: Motorboating & Sailing’s Authoritative Guide to Maintenance, Repair and Improvement.

Articles etc

Wrote hundreds and hundreds of short articles on home handyman projects as well as collections of hints and tips. Many of his Popular Science articles were collected and repackaged into paperback books for the handyman and do-it-yourselfer.

• How to Install a Live Well
• The Right Way To Choose And Use Solvents
• Plaster ‘bridge’ repairs wall cracks
• Insulate attic door to prevent cool drafts
• Smoke and Fire Alarms (scroll down midway)
• Pros and Cons on Reel and Rotary Lawn Mowers

For further reference

First seen in 2005/2006

Clouds look like the agitated surface of the ocean — called undulus asperatus, Latin for “rough” [wiki]

Discovered by Jane Wiggins of Des Moines, Iowa, who snapped a digital photo from a downtown office building in June 2006. [pic]

Photos

Google search

Flickr search

UK Guardian’s gallery

Large photos in gallery at io9

In the media

AP article

USA Today

National Geographic, June 2009 (illustrated)

CBS news story includes criticism of new cloud category

Tips and techniques for indoor photography and photographing night scenes

Quick tips for shooting in low light

These are the basics.

• Use the fastest lens you can — that is, a lens with the widest aperture — and one with the widest focal length you can. A wide, fast lens is always preferable in low-light situations: a 28mm f/1.8 lens, for instance, would be ideal for indoor low-light shots
• Use the slowest shutter speed you can. You’ll have to be rigid with holding the camera — use a monopod or tripod if you can, or hold the camera hard and level against your body. A rule of thumb for hand-holding a camera without blur is given on a thread linked below: for image clarity, the minimum shutter speed is 1/[focal length] used. So if you have a 50mm lens, you can successfully shoot at 1/50 a second in the hand, but with a 250mm lens you couldn’t shoot any slower than 1/250 a second.
• Higher ISO settings will let you get pictures in lower light, but they increase grain. Try setting a lower ISO and a slower shutter speed, allowing for crisper and less grainy photos — provided the camera’s held still; the basic rule here is to use the lowest ISO you can
• If it’s too dark to use autofocus, try setting the focus manually
• If you’re going for candid people shots, turn off the autofocus beam
• Always remember to play with the white balance: in low light your camera’s sensor isn’t going to be the best with picking up color; the auto, manual, and preset settings will give you a range of different effects
• Keep the camera steady, which means using a tripod or monopod all of the time; in low light, the difference between even a very steady hand and a tripod will be great
• If you’re using a flash, play with the settings; try using a diffuser or an off-camera flash if you can
• Shoot in RAW mode when you can; you’ll be able to grab more out of the uncompressed RAW-format files than a typical JPEG
• If you’re shooting out-of-doors, try shooting at dusk or dawn if you can, instead of at night: you won’t have to follow so many of the above rules, so it’ll be easier to take better pictures

Digital “pushing”

If you don’t have a fast enough lens, so when you’ve set the aperture to the widest possible setting you’re still shooting at too slow of a shutter speed for holding your camera in the hand, what you can do is try to “push” the digital image: set the exposure compensation down one to two stops so that you can shoot at a slightly faster speed. Shoot a RAW image instead of a lossy JPEG, and then use your RAW conversion software to “push” the image.

If you have the time, you can always try bracketing: taking a series of shots with the exposure compensation adjusted + a bit, at 0, and - a bit.

Fill flash tricks

You can try a very slow shutter speed with flash; HP’s guide (linked below) suggests 3 seconds with flash for a night portrait shot. Also see if your camera has a Night Snapshot or Night Shot mode; this mode can adjust the shutter speed and gives a fast flash at the end of the exposure for interesting effect. (Be sure to try this with a tripod.)

MacTalk user gallet explains his fill-flash trick for getting good, colorful and atmospheric shots under tungsten lighting. Basically:

• Set flash to TTL
• Underexpose by about 1.5 or 2 steps
• Use a “daylight” color balance / white balance setting
• Set the ISO to 800 and don’t go higher than that
• Use a shutter speed of 1/30 a second — shooting at Shutter Speed Priority mode if your camera has it — and hold the camera steady

The slower shutter speed allows for some blurriness in the photo, which gives interest to candid people shots. But these settings will also ensure that you’ve got a colorful image with no overwhelming dark areas.

Some photographers recommend setting an even lower ISO setting, such as 400, and upping the shutter speed to 1/60. There will be less blur, but if full clarity across the frame is what you’re going for, that would be better.

Another photographer on the same board, Sitthixay, recommends experimenting off these basic guidelines and not be afriad to try setting the camera on Aperture Priority and Manual modes. An example of a nighttime Aperture Priority shot at f/4.0 with ETTL flash and taken at 1/20 a second is his people shot of New Year’s Eve in Kuala Lumpur. He notes that rear curtain sync was set on the flash in order to emphasize movement; notice how the entire image is colorful but the two foreground figures are in sharper focus than the rest and seem to jump out of the frame. Other photographers have used this technique with 1/20 a second, a set aperture of f/5.6 and flash compensation set -1/2 or -1. With a smaller aperture and increased exposure time, some areas of the image will be all blur and light.

Color tricks

For indoor club or candid people shots, try turning the color temp up if your digital camera has that setting. For example if the normal setting is around 5200, crank it to the 7500-9000 range. Everyone will have a tan, but the overall effects on the color will be interesting.

Study the output of others

Read the EXIF data on the digital camera shots of other good photographers. Some good examples of indoor photography and club photo galleries are at Cooljunkie and Ryan Pfieffer, and the very bright and colorful night photos of Forrest Stewart.

For further reference

You need light to make a photograph. In low light scenarios you’re trying to squeeze out the most from your camera and the scene to make a great shot; here are more links with information on how to do so.

The Nocturnes is a site dedicated to night photography and has workshops and plenty of examples.

Ken Rockwell has a very good article with tips and advice on this subject: Night Photography.

“Get Great Photos in Low Light” by Derrick Story is a good article that covers the basics for shooting in low light with a digital camera.

Low light photography: a long series of short ideas and suggestions.

Hewlett-Packard’s online photo tip guide has a section called “Night and low-light photography” with various good tips.

Steve Mirarchi’s online tutorial, “Concert, Stage, and Low-Light Photography”

M. Kirschbaum’s long and informative 2005 article, Tips for Night and Low Light Photography

“The New Low-Light Photography” is a 2008 article on the new digital SLRs and the possibilities for low-light shots that their image sensors now give (“ISO 1600 is the new 200”).

More…

Illustrated article: “Calculating DPI”

PPI vs DPI and a discussion on photo scanning and image scans

Techniques, issues and instructions

“Photojournalism Assignments and Techniques”

Lens stabilization is key to making good SP images.

An illustrated essay on legal issues with photojournalism

Getting sued for taking street portraits

Still alive, a photoblog with technique and how-to articles of interest to street photographers, all part of Nitsa’s “no rules” site of nonphotography (freeform street photos). (Example: Holga of Randy’s Donuts)

Good discussion: “Gettting those great candid shots. I am too shy or scared. What do you do? got any horror stories?”

Nick Turpin was featured on Strobist in 2009 for an interesting Men’s Health photo shoot he did: in taking street photos of various well-dressed people, he underexposed the ambient light and then used a few strobes to “carve in some highlights”; and since he didn’t need tripods or stands for such shots he was fine even in a photo-unfriendly city like London (In-Public is Turpin’s street photography site.)

Examples and tips of getting architecture on the streets.

Good examples of street photography

Todd Gross, NYC: Quarlo.com

Philip-Lorca Dicorcia, NYC: Times Square shots, a series called street portraits

Joe’s NYC

photoethnography

the transfer station: transferring old film (8mm, super 8 ) to digital

Digitize VHS tapes wtih eyetv

Need medium format processing for your Holga or lomo cameras? Try Swan photo labs.