In July there was a long weekend, and hubby and I got to go away with his friends from work and their partners. We rented a catamaran on which we ate, drank, slept, played games and sailed a bit too. While we were out there was quite a bit of rain, so the charter company gave us a couple of free days on the boat, so we’re going out again this weekend!

Here’s some photos from last time…

I haven’t been a fan of the idea of camera applications on the iPhone: the ones that take over, or replace, the regular camera. They just seemed unnecessary to me. Then there was Hipstamatic, which you know I love. Now, Lisa Bettany and Tap Tap Tap have come out with Camera+. Lisa is pretty au fait with all things photography and iPhone, and she said how much she has enjoyed testing and using the new app: that it’s helped her step back from her perfectionism and just enjoy photography again. So I figured, what the heck? And I bought it.

I used it a bit this weekend and while I was surprised that you can’t “stack” colour effects like you can with The Best Camera (not necessarily a bad thing, I don’t know if I’d really want to stack them, I was just surprised), I found it very intuitive and fun to use.

In some ways using this app is almost like seeing things as they aren’t: it’s like feeling the scene, rather than trying to capture exactly what your eyes can see. David duChemin was interviewed on This Week in Photography recently and I think he made a ripping point.

“People are always saying, ‘Did it really look like that?’ and it drives me insane, because I think, well, what does that mean? Do you say that to someone who shot with a wide-angle lens? Do you say it to someone who shot with a telephoto? Are polariser filters out? I mean, yeah, I was wearing my Serengeti sunglasses when I shot that, so yes, it looked warm and they happen to be prescription sunglasses, so it was sharp. What if I’d taken my glasses off? I don’t see quite as clearly as I’d like to; do I have to defocus everything so that it’s an accurate representation of what I saw?

“Photography: we’ve bought for so long this notion that the camera doesn’t lie, so as a result we’re chained to this really manufactured ethic. I’m not a photojournalist, so really this has nothing to do with photojournalism… I think really at the end of the day, the onus is on the story-teller to be a story-teller with integrity, and I’m not trying in my photographs to make something that really looked like that, I’m trying to make something that really felt like that.”

So, here’s some of my Camera+ shots (or edits) from the weekend.

When I first saw the Hipstamatic app in the top downloads in the iTunes App Store I thought, “Great… another photography app.” Then a friend showed it to me and I was a little more convinced, then I bought it and I love it!

I love being able to catch moments without worrying if the shot is just right or if there’s distractions in the scene because so often Hipstamatic shots come out looking interesting where a regular photograph may be a bit boring. Or you can catch little details here and there and change the way you look at the world. It’s like stopping to smell look at the roses.

Photovisi is a new and free photo collage service. All you need to do is choose a template, upload your photos and download the end result.

Photovisi collage of recent sailing camp photos

The idea

My first thought was that I would usually just do this sort of thing myself, in whatever software was available. In fact, last Christmas I did make a large photo collage for my Dad; I made it in Pages using the page layout feature and it was very easy. However, this service would be very useful for people not as eager to do the layout themselves, who don’t have suitable software already installed, or who are after more complicated layouts. Some of the plainer templates (without borders or background) may not save you much time over creating a collage manually, but some of the other templates that do have borders/frames and shadows would save a lot of fiddling time.

The interface

It took a little time to load the interface after I clicked “start collage” and I was a bit confused: the top of the page had a “Do you like Photovisi? Subscribe to our newsletter!” subscribe box, then an advert, then nothing… not even a loading symbol. I thought for a moment they were going to make me give my email address without even having tried the service yet. I thought, how would I know if I like Photovisi yet?! Then the interface loaded and I was relieved! Room for improvement in loading the application.

Uploading photos

Uploading photos was very quick and simple, you just click the big “add photos” button and your usual finder window comes up to select the files.

Arranging photos

The photos were automatically laid out in the template that I had chosen and they were easy to arrange across the canvas. The interface was quite intuitive: to move an image you click and drag, to bring an image to the front you just need to click on it, to change the crop of an image you click on it and press the big “crop” button.

I couldn’t see if it was possible to change the placement of images into small or large frames. I’m sure in my test there were pictures I’d rather have large than my big face!

Saving your collage

When you’re ready (or at any time because it opens a new tab/window) you can press save to download your collage at 1024x768px, and you can also order it as a magnet, postcard, poster, mug or mousepad from Zazzle.

It’s a shame you can’t download a larger image than 1024x768px (if you wanted to use it as a desktop image or print it large), especially considering fewer and fewer monitors are that resolution. It’d be good if you knew the available download sizes before you start using the program; it would be a shame to spend a lot of time arranging your photos to find that it’s far too small for your purposes.

Overall impressions

Overall I thought Photovisi is an easy-to-use and well executed service. There’s room for improvement and new ideas, but it’s a great start.

I don’t know of an easier service to quickly arrange photos with frames and shadows. Do you?

Megapixels don’t mean much

Leo Laporte and folks were talking about the Droid on This Week in Google and This Week in Tech over the last few days and someone mentioned they weren’t especially impressed with the camera. Despite the 5 megapixels it’s not much (or any) better than the iPhone camera.

It just goes to show that there’s only so much quality you can get out of those tiny little (plastic?) lenses and small sensors, and the megapixel battle is mostly a load of crap. If you want to make good images, worry less about megapixels and more about using your brain: grapple composition, making the most of the equipment you have and seeing interesting things where others see the mundane. Of course, you might be concerned about megapixels if you’re printing enormous photos, but most people don’t.

iPhone photos are mad fun

I think much of the iPhone photo fun is the apps you can edit them with. Sure, you can just bring them into your regular photo editing application and edit them there (and I have cropped some in Aperture), but I the apps with all kinds of tap-of-the-screen filters and effects are half (or more!) of the fun.

Some of my favourites are

• Paid apps
  • QuadCamera
  • Photogene
  • Best Camera
• Free apps (first ones are by GhostBirdSoftware)
  • PhotoCurvesFree
  • PhotoCleaner
  • PhotoSharpFree
  • Photo Lab Daily

I much prefer looking at my iPhone photos at small sizes (due to the quality/megapixel issue — especially low light photos) and even though they’re sometimes intriguing and make me want to view them larger, it’s usually just better if they stay small. Maybe that means I have a lot to learn in iPhone photography, but that’s okay; learning is fun too.

If you’ve got your phone (doesn’t have to be iPhone) photos on the interwebs and think they’re interesting, point me at ‘em!

You might remember that I bought a Kodak Retinette 1a last year. I posted my first successful roll of film at the time, but haven’t done a lot with it since.

The other day I checked to see if it had film in it, which it did, so I finished it off. Most of the photos I took the other day were poor, but there were a few still on there from last year that I quite like (given that working the camera involves a significant amount of guestimation).

I love using this camera! It’s a great exercise in understanding exposure. Although, I found these photos had a significant amount of graininess; I’m not sure if it’s due to using ISO 400 film or whether it was something to do with the lab scanning the negatives.

Merry Christmas everyone!

There’s a house across the street from us that always has a Christmas lights display. I took a photo 2 years ago and I took another one this year. See if you can spot all the differences! There may or may not be a prize for the person who gets the most. ;)

Click on the images to open larger versions.

rocco topaz, originally uploaded by kristar3lla.

I’m testing the Flickr ‘Blog This’ feature. I think it might be a useful way to integrate Flickr and my blog, bypassing the whole photoblog idea. I’d love to be more involved with a photograhic community and photo projects, but I just can’t maintain a photoblog and Flickr account.

If I can get Flickr to post to a certain category, then this might be the answer.