Back in the 1980s, and probably continuing into the 1990s, every neat gadget was shoehorned into a credit-card-shaped form factor. Magnifying glass? Credit-card-sized. Vinyl record de-duster? Credit-card-sized. And so on.

The Jumper Card continues this excellent heritage by putting a Lightning charger, a 30-pin dock connector and a microUSB charger into the same credit-card-sized package, ready to be slipped into your pocket. But not your wallet, because, like all “credit-card-sized” gadgets, this one is way too thick.

This very clever trick from Poor Signal lets you add anything you like to your Mac’s Day One journal app using IFTTT (It This Then That), Hazel and – of course – Day one. And becasue Day One syncs with your iPad, it’s available there, too.

What can you do with this? You could automatically add all your Instagram photos to your journal, pipe in a weather forecast (although Day One does that by itself these days), items from an RSS feed, your heart rate (via Withings’s IFTTT channel), or anything else.

What? Yes. AnyFont is a proper, available-in-the-App-Store iOS app that lets you install fonts system-wide, for use by any app that allows access to the full list of iOS system fonts. How does it manage this sandbox-skipping magic? Installation profiles.

Last week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, a curious, unexpected thing happened: I used an Eye-Fi Mobi card to shoot and share photos from my camera to my iPhone and it worked – almost flawlessly.

As regular readers will know, I have tried Eye-Fi’s cards over and over, both here and when I wrote for Wired’s Gadget Lab, and I could never get on with them. The problems ran from annoyances to plain bad design and broken functionality.

This time, though, the card came through. In fact, I couldn’t have covered the show so well without it. Read on to see how we covered the show.

Castello Davarg’s latest hot leather case is the Heming for iPad, an upgraded, redesigned version of its excellent iPhone case. It comes in iPad mini and iPad Air flavors, and is surprisingly full-featured for what looks at fist glance like a plain folio sleeve.

If you have a nerd in your life, and you need to get him/her a gift anytime soon, then your search is over. Go buy them the new Lomo Konstruktor Super Kit, the “directors cut” of the original build-it-yourself plastic film camera kit that now contains not one, not two but three lenses, plus a proper viewfinder.

Did you ever try to write a blog post on your iPad? It’s easy, right? But did you ever try to add an image to that post? It’s a major pain in the ass. Plink is here to fix that. It’s an iOS app that will upload a photo to its own storage cloud, and generate a URL that is automatically copied to your clipboard. All you need to do is switch back to your writing app and paste it in.

And of course this isn’t just for bloggers. Anywhere you need to link an image – forum posts for example – you can use Plink.

I saw the Oaxis InkCase at the Mobile World Congress last week, and it looks pretty neat. The v2 “case” is actually an e-ink panel that connects to the iPhone (or other device) via Bluetooth and can show anything on its e-ink screen. The new version is modular, so you can slip in into any case for any device, and even mount it, say, on the handlebars of a bike for a sunlight-friendly readout.

At this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the themes were – as we expected – waterproof phones, smart-watches and NFC (again). Samsung’s new Galaxy S5 was a high-profile example of the waterproof trend, and the company also showed its new Galaxy Gear watch, which looks pretty neat for a giant wrist-screen. And NFC is in every Android handset these days.

But how do these themes relate to the iPhone and iPad? Let’s think about that.

You can now double the storage space of your MacBook Air by jamming Sandisk’s new 128GB microSD card into an adapter in the SD card slot. Or you can slide it into any number of devices that use the pink-nail-sized storage standard. And if you are using it in a phone or a camera, it’s fast enough to capture HD video recorded straight to the card.

Fujifilm has announced the Instax SP–1 mobile printer at Mobile World Congress 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. It’s a wireless, battery powered number that spits out 3×2 prints, and is controlled by an app on your iPhone (or Android device).

And while it looks pretty neat, if you can do without the battery power then I have a much better recommendation.

One of several themes at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona has been cellphone cameras (the others were waterproof phones, crappy smartwatches, and NFC). Samsung’s new flagship Galaxy S5 ups the pixel count from 13MP 16MP, and adds 4K video capture. Nokia’s handsets can now shoot RAW pictures (or rather, record RAW pictures, as all photos are RAW to begin with) and Sony was showing off new camera modules (the iPhone uses a Sony camera).

As I was walking around the show and shooting everything with my iPhone 5, I started to wonder: who cares?

This year we’re covering the Barcelona Mobile World Congress a little differently. Each day there will be one liveblog post here on Cult of Mac and one on Cult of Android.

Instead of gathering up press releases and writing them up in the press office at the show, and then hitting the parties, we’ll be posting quick photos and snippets of info from the show floor itself.

Think of it as a kind of Instagram/Twitter hybrid, only right here on the site. Currently the newest posts are at the top, reverse-chronological style. Killian has given up and gone home already, so maybe I’ll get a chance to actually check out some gadgets today (Killian is a terrible influence).

If you want me to check something out, Tweet me @mistercharlie.

Now, let’s get on with Day three, the final proper day (Thursday is for the suits and the cleaners).

This year we’re covering the Barcelona Mobile World Congress a little differently. Each day there will be one liveblog post here on Cult of Mac and one on Cult of Android.

Instead of gathering up press releases and writing them up in the press office at the show, and then hitting the parties, we’ll be posting quick photos and snippets of info from the show floor itself.

Think of it as a kind of Instagram/Twitter hybrid, only right here on the site. Currently the newest posts are at the top, reverse-chronological style. And if you want us to check something out, Tweet us @mistercharlie or @killianbell.

Now, let’s get on with Day Two.

This year we’re covering the Barcelona Mobile World Congress a little differently. Each day there will be one liveblog post here on Cult of Mac and one on Cult of Android.

Instead of gathering up press releases and writing them up in the press office at the show, and then hitting the parties, we’ll be posting quick photos and snippets of info from the show floor itself (and from the parties, if we don’t lose our phones).

Think of it as a kind of Instagram/Twitter hybrid, only right here on the site. Currently the newest posts are at the top, reverse-chronological style. And if you want us to check something out, Tweet us @mistercharlie or @killianbell.

Check it out:

Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress has always been about mobile – of course – but this year it finally seems like the world has caught up, and mobile is more important than desktop. To mangle the words of Steve Jobs, these days the truck companies are desperate to be let into the car show.

Welcome to Barcelona. The official Mobile World Congress starts tomorrow, but today the press shows begin. Follow along for our live blog of ShowStoppers and later Mobile Focus.

Here’s a slightly obscure tip that’s worth sharing becasue it could literally save you from a lost photo library. If you use Lightroom, Adobe has a “secret” script you can download that extracts the JPG images from your previews. Why would you want to do this? Say you lose the hard drive with all your original RAW photos on it, or you just get drunk one night and wake up in the morning to find you deleted your Lightroom folder.

This script will rescue you.

The TopoCharger is an odd little device, but it could be useful for some. It’s an iPhone GPS case. What? Yes. A GPS-less GPS that comes with on-board storage for maps, and a big fat battery pack so you can use your iPhone in GPS mode without killing its own battery dead. If you’re wondering why you’d bother with this instead of just using a regular battery case, then keep wondering, because I have no idea. Yet. Let’s check it out.

Mural.ly is a mood-board app, or white-board app, or cork-board app, or whatever you want to call it, and it works in the browser and as an iOS app. I’ve been testing it out (briefly) and so far it’s pretty great. It even lets you access your Evernote notes and drop them into a “mural.”

Flickr’s 1TB storage “limit” is great and all, but getting even 1/100th of that up to Flickr in the form of photos is still tricky. The iOS Flickr app takes care of new pictures on your iPhone, and now a new app called Uppr, from friend of Cult of Mac Robert Miles (not, not that Robert Miles). And boy is it slick.

Text selection on iOS is still a pain in the ass. Some apps fix it up with extra buttons above the virtual keyboard, but Thoughts 2, an iPhone notes app, adds extra buttons to the text selection itself. This makes it easy to expand and contract the selection one character at a time which – given the fickle nature of text fields in iOS – should help a lot.

Satechi’s new F1 Smart Monitor Stand really is smart, apart from the name which almost had me tossing it into the email trash because I thought it was a car-themed novelty accessory.

In reality, it’s a little stand for your iMac or your Cinema Display, only it comes with a built-in USB hub with headphone and microphone ports. WHY HAS NOBODY THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE?

You know those amazing photos you see taken by the pros using only an iPhone? The stories pop up from time to time, and they all have two things in common: the iPhone, and the incredible shots. Why don’t your iPhone photos look so good?

Part of it it is the knack: These pros have an eye that knows what looks good, and the practice to know what looks bad. But the other part of it is that they know how to use their gear. This article will take us through all the facts about iPhoneography: from how the camera actually works, to extra gear you might like to try, to apps that let you shoot and share. It’s not a top-ten list, but more of a tips-n-tricks article to get you going.

Camera Theory

Don’t worry, I’ll make this interesting. Camera theory is important, because it lets you know what your camera is doing and why. And if you know that, then you can push the boundaries or fix problems. It’s universal, too, whether you’re using an iPhone, a DSLR or a pinhole film camera.

Aperture/Shutter/ISO

This is the triumvirate of camera control. Aperture and shutter speed control the amount of light that gets into the camera and hits the sensor or the film, and ISO is a measure of the sensitivity of the sensor or the film. The trick is, they are all interchangeable, and they are all the same whatever camera you use. ƒ2.8 is ƒ2.8 on your iPhone lens or your giant sports telephoto lens. They literally let in the same amount of light at that setting. And 1/500 sec is one five hundredth of a second wherever you are (relativity notwithstanding).

Exposure is measured in “stops,” thanks to the click stops on lenses and shutter-speed dials. One click will add one stop more or one stop less of light. Here’re the terms:

• Aperture is the hole in the lens. Opening it up lets in more light. Closing it cuts light out. Each hole lets in double the light of the hole before (or half, depending on which direction you’re going in). That last part is important.
• Shutter speed is a measure of the time the shutter stays open. A shutter can be a metal curtain or an electronic screen that flicks from black to clear and back, but the time it is open for is the “shutter speed.” Each stop lets in double (or half) the light of the previous one on the dial. 1/2 sec is open for double the time of 1/4 sec, for instance, and lets in double the light.
• ISO Also known as “film speed,” ISO is a measure of the sensitivity of film. The numbers run thusly – 100, 200, 400, 800 and so on, doubling each time. And guess what? Yes, the amount of light needed to get the same image on the film/sensor halves with each step. That is, sensitivity doubles with each stop.

And here’s the trick: You can click the shutter speed up one stop and the aperture down (more open) one stop, and the exact same amount of light will hit the sensor. This used to be easier with manual film cameras fro two reasons. One is that the ISO was effectively fixed once you loaded a film into the camera – to change it you had to change the film for a more sensitive one. And second is that the cameras only changed their settings in full-stop clicks, so you could literally dial a stop on the shutter speed dial and the aperture ring (usually around the lens).

Special Effects

To recap, we now know that setting, say, an aperture of ƒ8 and a shutter speed of 1/500 sec gives the exact same exposure as ƒ11 at 1/250 sec. One click up and one click down. The numbers – especially the ƒ-numbers used for aperture – are confusing but worth taking a short while to study.

This knowledge lets us use the secondary effects of aperture and shutter speed to change the look of our photos, all without affecting the amount of light that hits the sensor. Aperture also affects the “depth-of-field”, or the slice of a picture that’s in focus in your frame. You know those portraits with pin-sharp faces but distraction-free blurred backgrounds? These have a shallow depth-of-field (DOF), achieved by setting the aperture wide open to a low number like ƒ1.8 or ƒ2.

And those neat pictures with the light trails caused by car taillights moving across the frame at night? Long exposure, caused by slow shutter speed. Open up the shutter for a half or a whole second and anything that moves during that second will register as a blur.

Conversely, a fast shutter speed (e.g. 1/2000 sec) freezes action, letting you see individual water droplets in the spray from a canoeist’s paddle or oar or whatever it’s called, and a small aperture (e.g. ƒ16) will give you a photo that’s in focus from front to back, handy for landscapes.

And you can make this choice independent of exposure, thanks to the fact that you can twist both controls in the opposite directions. And with digital you can add ISO into the mix, letting you up the sensitivity in low light to let you keep a fast shutter speed to avoid blur.

Camera Shake Vs Out Of Focus

Speaking of blur, there are two kinds. One is caused by the lens not being in focus, and can be used for good or evil. Evil is when your subjects are are not sharp. Good is when you focus perfectly on those eyes, and leave the background out of focus (see depth-of-field above).

The second kind is when the camera or the subject moves during exposure, and it’s made worse the longer the shutter is open (slower shutter speeds). If the camera is rock steady (on a tripod, say) then only the things that actually move will be blurred, even if you leave the shutter open for many seconds. This knowledge can be used to get those photos where a rushing river turns to ethereal mist around sharp, rain-slicked rocks.

If the camera moves, you get “camera-shake,” where the entire picture is blurred. This is almost always a disaster, and is the reason cameras have flashes on them – to add in enough light that the shutter speed can be kept short enough to avoid blur.

However, even this can be used to your advantage. If you move the camera so the subject stays at the same spot in the frame, swinging your body around to follow a passing cyclist, say, and set a shutter speed of around a half or quarter second, then the subject will stay sharp and the background will blur. This technique is called “panning” and, if you’ll forgive the pun, the results can be gold.

Focal Length

Focal length is – for practical purposes – the measure of how wideangle or telephoto your lens is. Higher numbers mean more magnification (200mm is a telephotos lens) and lower numbers mean less magnification and a wider field-of-view (anything below 35mm is considered wideangle). And for every camera format (aka film size or sensor size) there is also a “normal” focal length, which is neither telephoto or wide, and gives a perspective similar to that of the naked eye (only chopped off at the edges becasue it’s a camera).

For 35mm photography (known as full-frame in digital), the normal length is 50mm. The iPhone 5’s focal length is 4.1mm. Which in terms of 35mm cameras (sorry for all the millimeters here) is the equivalent to 31mm, or a mild wideangle (the 5S is slightly wider at equivalent 29.7mm).

Gear

Lenses Or Lens Case

Lenses will do two things. They’ll let you get closer to or further from your subject, and they’ll change your point of view. A telephoto means you won’t have to walk over to that spectacular monument to fill the frame with it, but it also squashes the perspective in your picture, making it seem flatter, and making objects look closer together than they really are (in the z-axis anyway).

A wideangle will let you fit more into your picture without stepping back, and it also lends an immediacy, giving the viewer the feel of being in the middle of the action. Perspective is dramatized and exaggerated, and people’s noses look huge if you get in close.

The extreme version of a wide angle lens is the fisheye, which distorts the picture so much that the circle of the lens’s view is actually smaller than the frame of your photo, and any straight line that’s not dead-center is bent. One neat trick is to use the fisheye to reverse the crop the iPhone makes when shooting video. Because the iPhone’s video mode crops a section out of the center of the 8MP frame (presumably to let it perform image stabilization), things can get a little cramped when shooting indoors. A fisheye will still add a little distortion, but as the camera is zooming into the center of the frame, it’s less noticeable, and you get back a nice wideangle shot.

There are a few ways to add lenses to your iPhone. You can stick a lens directly over the existing camera lens, for one. I favor the Olloclip for this as it puts several lenses into one clip-on mount that is self-centering over the lens, and the optics are of good quality.

The other way is to use a special case which actually puts a ground-glass screen in front of the iPhone’s lens, and then uses a lens from, say, a 35mm camera to project an image onto that screen. If you ever used an SLR, you’ve seen this in action: the viewfinder is actually showing you the image from the lens projected onto a matte ground-glass screen.

The advantage of this method is that the “sensor size” of your photo can be a lot bigger (as big as the ground-glass screen), which gives you the sweet shallow depth-of-field of a big full-frame camera. Thus you can throw the background way out of focus in your portraits.

The disadvantage is that these kits are big and expensive, so why not just use a bigger camera?

Tripod/Stand

A stand isn’t just for holding the camera while you shoot selfies, and a stand doesn’t have to be a tripod, although a tripod has the advantage of being steady on any surface, and it also allows almost infinite adjustment of the camera’s angle.

The main reason for using a tripod is to avoid camera-shake, letting you take either long-exposure shots, or to stop things from getting blurred when things get darker, and the iPhone camera starts to choose slow shutter speeds to gather enough light.

There are lots of stands out there, though I really never use one for my iPhone unless I’m taking selfies. But I steady my camera in other ways.

If you’re Instagramming your lunch, say, then you can get steady by holding the iPhone in both hands, and resting your elbows on the table. Breathe out (this helps to steady your body) and gently squeeze the shutter button. Don’t stab it, and don’t use the on-screen button either.

In fact, consider shooting all photos with the built-in camera app, especially in low-light. Not all third-party apps use the iPhone 5/S’s high-ISO mode, which boosts the ISO and tries to iron out the extra image noise this causes. A higher ISO means that you can up the shutter speed, too (a stop for a stop, remember?), making the difference between a blurred photo and a sharp but slightly noisier photo. Also, the built-in app lets you use the volume switch as a shutter release, letting you keep both hands firmly on the iPhone for steadier shooting.

If you’re not sitting at a table, look around for something else to steady the camera. Push it up against a lamppost, or prop it on a wall. Failing that, you should gently grip the iPhone in both hands (not too tight or you’ll start shaking), pull your elbows into your body, stand with your feet slightly apart and relax. Breathe out, squeeze. You just became a human tripod (or bipod, I guess).

Lighting

The other thing that’ll make a huge difference to your photos is lighting. Step one, never ever use the built-in flash. Well, maybe in sunlight. What? Yes, sunlight. If your subject’s face is in shadow, and you’re fairly close to them (because the iPhone flash is pretty weak, especially in noonday sun), then you can use the flash to fill-in the shadows, getting a nice even balance of exposure between the bright background and their face.

Once the sun goes down, though, that flash should be switched off. It’ll cause redeye and – worse – white face. If you want your subject to look like a junkie then go ahead. Otherwise ask them not to move too much, and follow the camera-steadying tips above.

Off-camera lighting is tricky with the iPhone as it won’t trigger a flash. But you can artfully arrange table lamps, or drape sheets over windows to make huge soft-boxes that wrap beautiful light around your subject, or even buy LED video lamps and use those. You’ll need to put in some practice to get good results (start with the Strobist’s excellent Lighting 101 series), but you’ll be rewarded with some spectacular shots.

The key is to remember that photography is about light, and the quality is as important as the quantity. I take all the product shots for my reviews using my iPhone, and I manage it not with post-processing, but with careful composition and attention to lighting. North-facing windows are your friend, as even on a sunny day the sky becomes one giant (albeit blue-tinted) softbox. Muslin drapes are amazing light modifiers, and white walls can reflect back enough light to fill shadows and make it look like you added a second light source.

Conclusion

You may have noticed that only a few of these tips were iPhone-specific. That’s because the iPhone camera is just another camera. And it’s easily as good as the best cameras of a few years ago.

The one trick you need to remember is that the camera doesn’t matter. The pro photographer can take a good picture with any gear, because s/he pays attention to things like exposure, and framing, and lighting. Without those things, even a Leica or a Nikon D4 will turn out crappy pictures. But with them, the results from your iPhone can embarrass those from the expensive DSLR from the gear dork standing next to you, with the added bonus that you don’t have to carry a ten kilo bag of crap around to get the job done.

Olloclip’s 3-In–1 Macro lens is extremely limited, but that’s by design: It’s a set of close-up lenses for the iPhone 5/S and fifth-gen iPod Touch (using the included adapter) which let you magnify the tiny world around us and put these wonders where God intended: on Instagram.