Life in LoFi: iPhoneography | iPhone Photo News, Showcases, App Reviews

There are a few of places on the web where resourceful users have created Hipstamatic Photoshop actions which simulate the look of the app’s films and lenses, allowing you to create the look of Hipstamatic on images that weren’t shot with the app. We don’t post those links on the blog, but recently, Daniel Box created some Photoshop actions which let you recreate the look of some of Instagram’s filters, letting you add the look of Instagram’s filter set and save the processed image in full resolution.

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Fireworks shot with my old iPhone 2G

This weekend, there are a lot of fireworks celebrations here in the US. Many of us will be capturing photos with our iPhones as our main camera. A couple of years ago, I was able to capture okay fireworks images with the inferior camera of my iPhone 2G (see above). This year, I’m looking to capture much better ones with the far superior camera of my iPhone 4.

TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog recently posted a great blog post on how to get better fireworks photos with your iPhone. If you’re out shooting the holiday with your phone, it’s an essential read.

Click here to read “Capturing the “rocket’s red glare” of fireworks with your iPhone camera this 4th of July” by Mel Martin.

UPDATE 07.03.11 @ 13:45: Yahoo Tech just posted a great overall post on getting better photos of fireworks. Although it’s written with all cameras in mind, many of the tips are applicable for mobile phone cameras as well.

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The iPhone camera does not have a true zoom lens. It has a digital zoom, which means that the camera lacks the optical lenses to “zoom” you in closer to your subject. Instead, Apple’s Camera app digitally recreates a zoom effect by cropping and “rezzing up” on the fly. As you zoom in closer — asking the iPhone do more with essentially fewer pixels — your images become noisier and less sharp.

Since iOS 4, a true digital zoom has been a part of Apple’s Camera app. It’s also been available in camera replacement apps since before there were camera replacement apps (anyone remember Snapture 1.0 in the early Jailbreak days?). At some point in your iPhoneography, you’ll probably need to be closer to your subject than you are. Before you crank it up to 5X, read on for our tips on getting the best shots on an iPhone, Droid, or any camera phone with a digital zoom.

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The HipstaCase 100 is shipping now from HipstaMart and Agent18. It gives your iPhone 4 the look and texture of what a mythical Hipstamatic 100, and adds some unexpected protection and function to your device. It’s a pretty solid and sexy little case. I really like mine and it’s replaced my Griffin Reveal as my default iPhone 4 case.

Where’s the Big Yellow Dot?

In addition to the word “Hipstamatic” on the face, the case also has several surprising features. But it’s missing one critical, iconic feature that the mythical Hisptamatic 100 would have had… the Big Yellow Dot.

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My iPhone 4's memory usage before and after a quit-all and reboot.

I’m not sure why this happens. I just know that I’ve been seeing more of it recently. I’ll download the new update of an app that worked great before. And then when I try to open it… CRASH!

I’m sure it has something to do with memory or how another poorly coded app has made the stack unstable (I don’t know the exact technical specifics). The bottom line is, my app crashes.

If this sounds familiar, here are a few steps you can take to try and bring a crashy app to a usable state before you fire off that 1-star App Store review. >>>

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If you’re just discovering iPhoneography or photography in general, advice from someone with even just a little more time than you have can be a welcome gift. A lot of photographers over the years have given me guidance, either in person or through their writings. Each of them have helped me to discover my vision as a photographer or helped me better understand my tools.

Although these tips are presented in the context of iPhoneography, they’re good advice for any novice photographers, as well as a reminder of the basics for those who’ve been shooting a while.

Here are some of the tips that I’ve learned or was given along the way. >>>

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Updated regularly

iOS 4.3 hit iTunes today and with it another class of iPhones has been end-of-lifed. The iPhone 3G is no longer officially supported by iOS updates and iOS 4.2 is the end of the line for this device.

Life In LoFi has created this updated, searchable grid listing the latest version number and minimum iOS requirements of popular photo apps (and even a few obscure ones). The database also lists the maximum output resolutions and if there are any other known issues with the app. It’s a good reference to check the resolution of iPhone photo apps to see which ones save at full res and which ones don’t.

See how your favorite apps fare below, after the jump. >>>

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Your iPhone is a computer. To help keep it running smooth, rebooting should be a regular part of your iPhone’s maintenance. When I did Mac desktop support, rebooting the computer fixed about half the problems. Seriously.

The iPhone 4 — both the original GSM model and the new Verizon CDMA model — really needs more than just an occasion reboot. On any iPhone running iOS4, also quitting all open apps will help free up even more memory on the device and help RAM-intensive apps run more stable. I recommend this for any iDevice — iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad — running iOS 4.0 or newer.

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LomoLomo Lens Effects and Frames

With 11 “lens” effects and 6 different frames, LomoLomo may not have the largest set of photo effects in the App Store, but the analog film-style effects it has are lush and nicely done. Also nice is the random vignetting in four of the six frames. You can read my review of LomoLomo Pro version 1.2.1 here.

I’ve created a high resolution effects grid of all the LomoLomo lens effects and all of the frames of the latest version 1.2.1. The grid is good for all three versions of the app — LomoLomo, LomoLomo Pro and LomoLomo for iPad. All images were processed with the app’s Lomo Diana camera. The link below takes you to a 5 MP image you can download.

Click here to download the full size LomoLomo 1.2.1 Effects Grid in JPG format (827 KB)

LomoLomo Pro and LomoLomo work on any iPhone or iPod Touch with a camera and require iOS 4.0 or newer. There is also an iPad-native version of LomoLomo for iPad .

=M=

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Shining Through panograph opened in Photoshop to view transparency

You Gotta See This! is an easy, fun app that creates panography, a panoramic collage style of photography. Panography is different than panorama in that images are very visibly tiled to create a collage. Click here to read my original review of the app.

The recently released 1.4 update has a cool new theme, Shining Through, which lets you save images with a transparent background. You gotta see how to do it.

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