The Hipstamatic iPhone app is creating quite a buzz in the world of iPhoneography. Do you have a hot Hipstamatic shot? Submit your Hipstamatic images for a chance to be one of three featured iPhoneographers on iPhoneography.org.
A call for entries has gone out for a new photo contest from Colin Vincent’s iPhoneography.org blog. Submit your best photos shot with Hipstamatic for iPhone for a chance to be one of three featured photographers. You can submit an unlimited number of HipstaPics. Entries will be accepted through March 2, 2010.
Here’s the contest link for submissions, contest rules, image requirements and more information.
One of the issues that occasionally pops up for me is that sometimes pictures taken on my iPhone don’t display with their proper rotation in some, non-Apple instances. I encounter this more often with third-party apps, but it still can be an issue. A new post by TJ Luoma over at TUAW — The Unofficial Apple Weblog gives a very interesting, very technical, very geeky way to fix this issue using a utility called jhead. Personally, I prefer to run my images through Photogene on my iPhone, fix any rotation issues and everything is then fine.
This link isn’t presented here so much as a “how-to” but as another peek behind the curtain as to how the iPhone camera works. Note: I’ve found easier and less intrusive ways to fix this issue (see Photogene mention above). If you’re feeling brave, remember that you’re peeking and poking around data. Be sure you know what you’re doing. Always work on a copy of your image. Any time you’re working with the raw code of a file, there’s a chance that you may hose your image.
Apple uses an EXIF tag to rotate images. This can be a problem when you share images with others. Safari will rotate the image correctly, but no other browser will.
Adding to the trouble is that Mail.app and the Finder will also “auto-correct” the rotation, so it can be hard to tell which images need to be “fixed” and which don’t.
Pixels at an Exhibition at Giorgi Gallery in Berkeley was recently covered by two Bay Area newspapers — The Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times. Here’s a link to The Oakland Tribune article, “iPhone enthusiasts mount Berkeley photography exhibit”. The same story was run in both papers. I’m not sure how long this link will stay active.
“While hundreds of the cell phone camera’s fans are passionate about their medium and flock to Web sites such as flickr or use blogs to share their photos, iPhone photography is still very much on the fringes of the mainstream art world. So using a selection of grainy, artful images from his Web site, Bronson and Oakland resident Rae Douglass have mounted “Pixels at an Exhibition” at Berkeley’s Giorgi Gallery, which they believe is the world’s first gallery display devoted exclusively to iPhone photography.”
No one really likes to sit in the back of the plane, even when the engines are wing mounted. It’s much worse on one of the old MD-80s or DC-9s, where the last two rows of seats are blocked by the nacelles of the engines. Sleep is impossible and the sound of the crying baby in seat 22E — the middle seat — is far preferable.
They don’t build these aircraft any more. When you’re close to the front of the plane, their ride is fairly quiet. Today, the flight wasn’t completely full and the original seatholders of row 33 wisely vacated and moved to a more quiet row — probably one with a guy snoring (and they were grateful).
I love to fly on the window seat. I’ll look out for hours if I can. I try to guess which cities or landmarks we’re flying over. I look for the contrails of other aircraft. I watch the clouds and the sun.
In seat 33A, instead all I see is the steel staring back at me as I try to peek around the intake. I am first in the plane to hear the engines power up for take off. I’m nervous flying inches away from that many sharp spinning things. I almost expect to look out the window and see the scary guy in the bad ape suit from that episode of The Twilight Zone.
I have flown in row 33 once. Seat 34T we joke. We were offered a seat on the exit row, but I declined. I wanted to experience the back of an MD-80 at least once. It’s something I never have to do again.
Reflections. Light. Lines. More reflections. And a FSOL song stuck in my head on a chilly evening near Cal. She doesn’t have a name. Maybe that forms in Summertime as well.
We recently reviewed the free app Camera Plus by Global Delight and named it as one of the best free iPhone camera replacement apps. Hopefully, you like the free app so much, you buy Camera Plus Pro with several additional features. If you’ve been on the fence about buying the app, consider that one very cool new feature in the next major upgrade is video for all iPhones, including older ones. And from a sample clip released this week, it looks like the quality of that video is pretty decent for a phone cam.
As the clip shows, the video is smooth and the frame rate seems better than most of the 3rd-party video recording apps currently available. It appears to offer those with older iPhones a superior alternative if they want to record video on those devices. Glyn Evans on iPhoneography.com recently wrote an excellent article, “Shooting Video on the iPhone 2G/3G.” In it, he notes that nearly all of the currently available video recorders for older, non-3GS iPhones record at 15 frames-per-second or lower, which means that the picture will look choppy when played back. It looks to me like Camera Plus Pro 2.0 will have video of at least that, possibly higher. To my eye, the playback of the beta clip was smoother than any of the other alternatives currently available.
Recently, a ClassicPan update was released adding new features and fixing a couple of old ones. You can read our updated review here. ClassicPan is now a one-of-a-kind app that produces some unique photos.
Life In LoFi has some promo codes to give away. I’ll send one promo code to each of the first 15 readers who request one. Hit me up on Twitter/@MartyNearDFW, send me an email, or simply ask for one in the comments below. One code per reader, please. Codes work in the U.S. App Store only. Be sure to include an email address somewhere in your post for me to send the code to.
Be sure to leave feedback in the App Store. If you didn’t get one of the free codes, ClassicPan is only $0.99 USD . (App Store link)
Big thanks to misskiwi for providing Life In LoFi with these free promo codes!
Update 3:07 PM CST: Wow! Those went fast! We have given away all of the promo codes we have for this update of ClassicPan, but check back often or keep tabs on us on Twitter (@MartyNearDFW) for future promo code giveaways. Thanks!
