photography - page 19

When Apple first unveiled the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro back in July of this year, they used two images to specifically highlight the incredible resolution of the new display. The first was a shot of a herd of zebras running through the grass captured by photographer Steve Bloom. And the second? A photograph of an eye in full Ziggy Stardust make-up, taken by Swiss photographe Sabine Liewald.

The only problem with that latter photograph? According to the photographer, Apple never properly licensed it to be used in Retina MacBook Pro marketing materials. And she’s now suing over it.

There are a few problems with sharing a batch of photos on the internet. You could make a Facebook album and toss around a link, but Facebook is messy, and ugly, and no one likes it. Or you can upload 12 different photos to Instagram in one hour and piss off all your friends. Or you can make a photoset of great pictures, but most people don’t know how to do that.

Tumblr is ready to change all those problems by introducing their new app called Photoset. It let’s you take a group of pictures, organize them, add captions and dates, and then upload them to the internet as a photoset so you can share them all together with just one link.

MonoPhix is a two-dollar black-and-white photography app for iPhone, with a separate companion MonoPhix HD version for iPad. Although it produces good results, MonoPhix suffers from some odd design choices that make it a disappointing and frustrating experience.

The DNG spec has been updated to v1.4 by the folks at Adobe, and it brings support for cropping, HDR, panoramas and lossy file compression. With these changes, maybe it's ready to replace JPEG in iDevices?

How do you get a printed, paper photograph from your iPhone? The easiest way is probably to use an app which lets you pick a pic, and then get a print delivered to your door a few days later.

But the funnest way is probably the one used by Adam Rhoades: he prints them in a traditional darkroom, using the iPhone’s screen as both negative and enlarger bulb.

There’s not a lot I need say about today’s Best Thing Ever, so I’ll keep it brief.

Manga Camera does exactly what its name suggests, and it’s no surprise that it’s a sudden huge hit on the iOS App Store.

The Hipstamatic folks sent us word that their new 260 update is here, with some rad new features, like Multiple Exposures, Rock the Vote free films, a new switch for the flash, and fully iOS 6 and iPhone 5 capabilities – no more letterboxing.

You can now create double exposure (or triple or quadruple) to spice up your photographic styles. It’s available as a $0.99 in-app purchase, and should let you play around with lens, film, and flash combinations to your heart’s content.

It’s pretty much an open secret that I can’t stand Twitter, and about the only thing I really like about Facebook is photo sharing, so I really love Instagram. In many ways, it’s against my better instincts, since I’ve always hated the romanticizing of Polaroid and other low-grade cameras of the 1970s by millennial hipsters… a romanticizing Instagram is pretty much built around.

But Instagram’s a lot more than that, and I think this video by Casey Neistat nicely illustrates why: regardless of what filters you use, Instagram is about sharing your life openly, honestly and without being disingenuous. While Twitter is all bluster and sanctimony, and Facebook is all mindless affirmation, Instagram at its best is about sharing the essence of your life.

There are also some great tips in Casey’s video on how to not be an annoying jackass on Instagram, so that helps too. If you love Instagram, check it out.

Via: Laughing Squid

Lex from Modahaus got in touch to let us know about this post on their blog, comparing the macro photography capabilities of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5.

Last week a number of people noticed that the lens flare on their iPhone 5 is really purple. When you have an off-screen light source the iPhone 5’s lens turns the light into a purplish hue, rather than the bright white color the light would be when it’s on-screen. All lenses have lens flare, and sometimes it’s purple, but the iPhone 5’s seemed to be more pronounced that others.

Apple support has officially responded to the purple lens flare issue and said that it’s totally normal, you’re just holding your iPhone wrong.

If you’re going to add retro-style filter effects to your photos, then you might as well use Instant, a new app for the iPad (and Mac) which goes the whole way: not only does it Instagrammatificate your images, but it forces you to watch the results pop out of a Polaroid camera, and then you have to wait for the pictures to “develop.”

Which is not to say that I don’t like the app. In fact, it turns out to be rather excellent.

For the past two years, Camera+ has been one of the most popular photography apps in the App Store, and now it’s finally coming to the iPad. The developers at Tap Tap Tap have also added support for the iPhone 5’s larger display and iCloud sync between the two apps. 

Since it’s release, Camera+ has been downloaded 9 million times. The app has remained popular for its Instagram-like filters, sharing features, and in-depth editing options. To celebrate the new release, Tap Tap Tap has put both the iPhone and iPad versions of Camera+ on sale for only $1!

Nokia might have fudged some of their demos of the Lumia 920’s camera, but there’s no denying that the PureView technology that camera is based is incredibly impressive, especially in low-light. The iPhone 5, though, is no slouch when it comes to low-light either. How do they stack up?

Engadget recently went to Nokia’s Tepere, Finland R&D complex and were given access to a testing suite, where they were able to do low-light comparisons between the Lumia 920, the iPhone 5, the HTC One X and the Galaxy S III. Using each camera, they took photographs of a static scene at around 5 lux, which is about the same lighting level you’d see on a dimly lit city street in the middle of the night.

While the Lumia 920 was the clear winner, the iPhone 5 wasn’t too far behind, especially when compared to the absolutely terrible efforts of the HTC One X and Galaxy S III.

Source: Engadget

In a single magnified image, photographer and Retinal neuroscience Bryan Jones perfectly captures the incredible increase in display quality from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 5.

Jones put the iPhone 5 display under a stereomicroscope and photographed the pixels of the display with a Canon 1D MKIII, then compared the photo one made under the same conditions of the iPhone 4’s display.

The difference is incredibly obvious even to an untrained eye. Yeah, sure, they’re both Retina displays… but the pixels of one of them look murky and blurred, while the pixels on the other look like bright, colorful Christmas lights photographed in a vacuum. Incredible.

Source: Jonesblog
Via: iSmashphone

The iPhone 5’s new camera is supposed to be incredibly amazing with improved low-light performance and a fancy crystal sapphire lens that is less prone to scratching, but for many users though, the new camera is having a weird issue where a purple halo or flare splashes across a photo when a bright light source is just outside the frame, and there’s no way to get rid of it.

Lens flair is a common occurrence with all camera lenses, but it’s generally not purple and this issue never happened with the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4s which is why many iPhone 5 users have been upset by the purple halo discovery.

Apple didn’t make huge improvements to the camera of the iPhone 5, but they did add a sapphire crystal lens, and a few tweaks to make it shoot better in low-light conditions. Now that early reviews have been released we have a better idea of how much better the new camera is over its predecessor.

Rather than build their own photo editing and sharing app from the ground up, Google has decided to play catch-up with Facebook and Instagram by acquiring Nik Software, the developer behind the popular iOS photography app Snapseed.

Apple didn’t release any side-by-side comparisons of the iPhone 5’s image quality next to the iPhone 4S, and we won’t see direct comparisons until reviews hit the web closer to the iPhone 5 launch date. However, Scott Everett noticed that Apple used a picture of Big Sur in their iPhone 5 photos gallery that was nearly identical to one he took recently with his iPhone 4S, giving us our first direct comparison of image quality.

At one time, deep back in the swirling mists of time, Polaroid was like the Apple of photography, not only making the best stuff but also inventing new ways to do things. Now, the brand is nothing but a label slapped onto a bunch of crap by the current owner.

But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing amazing going on in the analog instant film world. Take a look at the Impossible Project’s FPU (Film Processing Unit), an amazing gadget that marries your iPhone to real, instant analog photos.

The chunky K-30 is the latest DSLR from Pentax. Don’t be deceived (or put off) by its unusual looks – in use, it’s a fantastic general-purpose camera that produces high quality, color-accurate pictures. Cult of Mac took it for a spin.

IStabilizer’s Monopod is just that – a monopod. Only instead of being optimized to work as a disabled tripod, a camera stand with one leg instead of three, it is made to be used with lightweight cameras like the iPhone to snap pictures from more than arms’ length.

As if a bunch of nerds running around shooting video and taking photos on their big iPads at shows wasn’t bad enough, now some goobers are using the FaceTime camera on their MacBook Air to take video at concerts.

Going through an entire concert without taking any pictures or videos is a better option than this. Put down the MacBook bro and just enjoy the rhythmic cascade of lyrics smashing against your eardrums.

Source: Reddit

You’ve most likely seen the image of Steve Jobs sitting in the lotus position with his Mac in his lap. It was in Rolling Stone back in 1984 and has become one of the most iconic images of Jobs.

Norman Seeff was the photographer behind that picture, and he just released a couple of unseen photos of Steve Jobs that he took for Jobs’ Rolling Stone feature. The images feature a more candid and subdued version of Jobs in his office and back at home. Take a look:

Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is a new music app called MUSaIC, that promises to help you rediscover your all those albums you forgot you had. We’ve also got a great new photography app called Etchings, which turns your photos into etched illustrations; a big update to Dolphin, one of my favorite third-party browsers on iOS; and more.

Etchings is an iPhone photography app which takes your pictures and turns them into very realistic etchings. Or fake etchings, I guess. Whatever you call them, if you pick the right source pic then you’ll end up with something that looks as if you lacquered your own metal plate, etched it, dropped it into an acid bath, washed and dried it, inked it up and ran it through a printing press.

Only instead of taking a whole morning, it takes just seconds.