Taken pre-iPhone on February 2, 2003 with my old 2MP Panasonic Lumix digital camera
The Active Pool
I hate to use the term “oasis” when describing the Fort Worth Water Gardens — that just seems too ironic to me. An oasis implies something more passive — a place in a wasteland where you stop and refresh. I wouldn’t exactly call downtown Fort Worth a wasteland, especially in the area near the Water Gardens which is experiencing a sort of renaissance, although the stop and refresh is applicable, if not entirely accurate.
One of the things that I love about the Water Gardens is your ability to experience water on many levels. You can relax near it. There are areas where it’s absolutely still. There are areas where the water is noisy and full of motion. There are areas where you walk into the center of the water and it’s almost as if you are the exhibit.
My favorite times of the year to visit are when the shadows are long. There is great interplay between light and shadow, stone and water.
Auto Adjust by Joe Macirowski is free for a limited time! This is not a feature-crippled “lite” version, but the full version.
We reviewed Auto Adjust recently. Unlike many of the “flash fixer apps” available, it’s more than just a flash enhancer which simply brightens your images and can wash them out and cause them to look flat. This app uses “contrast stretching” or normalization to help correct exposure. Its adjustable enhancement produces excellent results on many images that would otherwise be lost due to underexposure as well as automatically correcting the contrast of more properly exposed images. Auto Adjust is one of my go-to apps.
A new update has been submitted. This is a great opportunity to get in the upgrade path.
This is one of the best exposure enhancement apps available in the App Store. It’s highly recommended at its regular price of $0.99 USD. It’s an essential app while it’s free. Grab it now!
Long before the App Store, Snapture by SnaptureLabs was the premier camera app for jailbroken iPhones. Even back then, Snapture had features that camera apps in The Store are only now catching up to. Of course, being free at the time of the constraints of Apple’s approved APIs probably helped. My friends were jealous of the true digital zoom and the level guide that I was able to use in my camera.
ProCamera by Daemgen.net got a really nice update to version 2.5 today. The update features several significant improvements and adds several new features.
For the first time, ProCamera now has full-res 5X digital zoom, not just in-app cropping! This can be toggled from the app’s settings — I believe this is the only app that gives you the choice. Very nice! Image save speed seems faster than previous versions.
I’ll post my full review of the new version soon. They did a great job on this update! If you’re looking for a camera replacement app and like the features ProCamera lists, the app is rock-solid, well-implemented and worth $2.99 USD. Definitely recommended!
November 14, 2009
The Stockyards
Fort Worth, Texas
The Hotel Texas
Toolbox: CameraGenius, Photogene
I love neon and I love The Stockyards in Fort Worth. It’s what you think of Texas if you’re not from Texas, except the livestock here is mostly for show now. Main and Exchange is pretty much tourist central or bachelorette party-ville. The further you get away from Main Street, the bars get better, I think. One of the best bars I’ve ever been to was across the street from Hotel Texas. For a northside bar, it was pricey to get in to. The bar itself was in an old, old building, even by Fort Worth standards. It was a smoky little place about the size of two boxcars and was the only place in the Stockyards where you’d hear the band play old Bob Wills and Hank Senior songs.
It’s a huge old building in the middle of one of North Side’s old neighborhoods. It’s a block south of a main road. It sits across from a school and a church, a block away from Riscky’s Bar-B-Q (I suspect store #001). It shares a small parking lot with a sacred objects store — rosarios, hierbas.
Its clean art deco lines have been stripped of just about anything resembling a movie palace. Long closed, it’s still maintained. I hear they use it for private events. It’s painted a shade of gray now — real gray, not white that has gotten dingy. It looked much nice nicer when it was painted white.
The Azle
The Plaza sits by itself in Carrollton’s old downtown, surrounded by new old-looking buildings and restored genuine old buildings. A mural celebrating the theater and the town is painted on the west side facing the highway. The marquee displays “HAVE YOUR NEXT EVENT HERE” in old style slotted letters while photocopies of upcoming shows line the glass foyer doors. The box office is closed today, but a friendly scarecrow on the sidewalk out front beckons you to the gift shop.
My updated, original Camera Bag article — preserved here with its original post date, 11.21.2009.
The best camera is the one that’s with you and the one that’s with me nearly all the time is my first generation 8 GB iPhone 2G.
I don’t use one app exclusively to shoot with. I have several and try to match up the image with the app. Here are some of my faves from my toolbox.
1. Camera Genius
Probably the best camera replacement app in the App Store. I now use this as my default camera app. What I like best about the app are the grid lines which help to compose better images and the anti-shake feature. When you drink as much coffee as I do, the anti-shake really helps….
2. Apple’s Camera App
I still use this app often. There is no wait time between images as the app saves your shots. Thanks to the new APIs, other apps are catching up, but for rapid fire photography, this is still my go-to app.
3. Zoom Lens
Digital zoom with a bit of built-in post-processing. This is a real digital zoom that saves at full resolution. The bit of behind the scenes processing that this app does really improves your images. I’ve found no other zoom app that produces zoom results this good, including Snapture (both jailbroken and non). This is the best digital zoom app I’ve found for iPhone.
4. Camera HD
All this app does is allow you to shoot in-camera with different aspect ratios. Yes, you could achieve the same results by cropping in post-processing. What I like is the ability to compose my shot to the frame in-camera. I use this app a lot.
5. Camera XL
Resamples images as you shoot. This app has its limitations (read my review here), but sometimes you just need more than 2 megapixels. Camera XL produces good results in doubling the size of your images, without the need to carry around a laptop and Photoshop.
6. Snapture
This used to be the mack-daddy of camera apps for me back in its jailbreak days. Still a good app, although Snapture’s digital zoom quality isn’t up to snuff with the previously mentioned Zoom Lens app. I use Snapture mainly for its multi-shot feature.
As of November 21, 2009, these are the apps on my iPhone that I use to post-process images:
7. Photogene
Sure, PhotoForge is more powerful and has more features, but I use Photogene for about 75% of my image processing because it does what I need it to most of the time and it does it quickly and easily. When I need more, there’s…
8. PhotoForge
Big and powerful. In addition to all the filters and effects it has, PhotoForge also give me greater control of my image settings. The downside is that it’s slower than Photogene. The upside, it can do a lot more. I have both on my iPhone and use them. If I had to choose only one, I’d get PhotoForge to do some serious work.
9. CameraBag
A nice set of filters that add mood and texture quickly and easily. My faves are the Helga and Magazine filters. Helga is their implementation of the classic Holga lo-fi camera. Magazine adds some great film grain to a vintage effect. Both filters are classic lo-fi.
10. AutoAdjust
Exposure enhancement for dark or underexposed apps — definitely a problem on the iPhone camera. This is more than just a brightness cranking “flash” app. AutoAdjust performs histogram normalization. I could get similar results after a lot of jacking with the Exposure and Contrast settings in Photogene, but this app often gives me good results faster and easier. I’ll also use iFlashReady and PerfectlyClear. All three apps produce different results with the same image.
Your camera bag will probably look a lot different than mine and there’s new apps being released all the time that push the envelope of what you can do creatively on the iPhone. Find what works best for you and have fun!
Unless indicated, nearly every image you see on this site has been shot with my iPhone and processed on my iPhone with one or more of the above apps.
It’s been a while since I reviewed Camera Genius by CodeGoo. Since then, it is on its third big revision and I thought this would be a good opportunity to revisit my review.
Camera Genius 1.7 is the best camera replacement app available in the App Store. It adds great functionality and features to the iPhone’s camera, especially if you have an older 3G or 2G iPhone. It’s powerful yet easy to use. It works on all iPhone models and supports auto-focus on the 3GS. Importantly, all the features in Camera Genius work as advertised.
ColorSplash by PocketPixels is on sale for the very first time for one week, through November 27, 2009. Normally going for $1.99 USD, right now you can grab this app for half off, $0.99.
From the app description:
ColorSplash lets you quickly and easily give photos a dramatic look by converting them to black and white, while keeping your chosen details in color. This effect — known as a “cutout” or “selective color” — draws the viewers’ attention to the colored areas.
ColorSplash screenshot
Since its release, ColorSplash has spent a lot of time at or near the very top of the paid apps of the Photography section of the App Store — quite an impressive feat. It’s received great reviews from many app and iPhoneography websites. If you don’t already have ColorSplash and have been on the fence about it, this is a great opportunity to snag this great app.
Today was my every-five-week hair day. When you have a hairline like mine (or lack of), it’s really more difficult to keep it looking good, in spite of the reduced amount of source material to maintain.
Sonia, another stylist, wasn’t in today, but the door to her room was ajar and the lights were off. From inside, this new machine sat silently blinking and lights were spinning. It was very Star Trek in its appearance (the J.J. Abrams movie, not the 60′s TV show). Some sort of Electro-something-something device. All I knew was that the lights were blinking and pretty. I snuck in, got my photo, and just as quickly snuck back out of Room Zero.
