ClassicPan — Vintage Panoramic Camera
Version 1.0.1
The Bottom Line: Good potential for novel photos, but version 1.0 needs some fixes.
ClassicPan
I like shooting landscape images and I like shooting with a wide aspect ratio. To me, a good panorama is a single frame right out of life’s big movie. Camera HD, a straightforward yet versatile aspect ratio app, landed on my main camera page the day it was released and has stayed there ever since.
ClassicPAN is a vintage-style panoramic camera app from misskiwi. While the iPhone’s camera normally shoots photos with a 4:3 aspect ratio, ClassicPan stores images to your camera roll in 9:4 panorama format. Like Camera HD, this is achieved by cropping the top and bottom of the frame, resulting in a “fixed lens” type of pano without any of the wide-angle distortion.
This updated Camera Bag post will also go in the navbar above. I wanted to share the evolution of my iPhone. You can read my original Camera Bag post here.
Some of my other camera apps. Page 4 on my iPhone
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. One of the features that makes the iPhone camera unique is the availability of thousands of photography-related apps. For less than the cost of a DVD, you can basically get a whole new camera experience.
iPhone apps are constantly being created, updated and improved. Since I first wrote my original Camera Bag post, several new apps have been released and several apps have been improved to the point where they have leapfrogged ahead as far as functionality and performance.
I find myself shooting with many different apps than the first time I wrote about my iPhone’s camera bag. Here’s my updated toolbox — the go-to apps I’m currently using.
AutoStitch Panorama by Cloudburst Research has been updated to version 2.0. I really thought the last version, 1.1.2 was great and the new version brings speed improvements, high-resolution stitching and high resolution preview/cropping.
AutoStitch combines from 2 to 20 or more images and can create seamless (or nearly seamless) panoramas on your iPhone. This is cool in itself, especially for getting the really big shots.
Camera HD – Widescreen Photos is another excellent app from developer George Talusan. Like his other apps, it brings unique functionality to the iPhone. All this app does is crop your image to one of many selectable, preset aspect ratios, and does so quickly and easily. In the prefs, you select from 20 different aspect ratios, including 16:9 Widescreen HD, 1.85:1 American Theater, and 2.59:1 Cinerama. It’s actually been released for a while, but with the many other apps that have been released, good and bad, I think this one has fallen under the radar. This is a worthy app that deserves a second look. Read the rest of this entry →
We saw U2 last night at Cowboy Stadium in Arlington, Texas. I highly recommend seeing U2 on this tour or at least sometime in your life — they don’t disappoint. I highly recommend you avoid seeing concerts at Cowboy Stadium. There are too many people in the room, the sight lines can be bad, and the acoustics are terrible.
We didn’t get any good photography at U2. We got memory shots — mementos of our little, unique piece of the show and our space in the crowd.
After the show, the night and the fog were gorgeous. I grabbed these on the way home.
In Seattle, some of the things I saw, while gorgeous in their color and saturation, took on an entirely different feeling once that element was stripped out and the images were reduced to their essentials in black and white. “Barstools…” evokes a much grittier feeling when the color is stripped away. It has a feeling of the smoky, dusty early 60′s dive bars. The Photobooth against the cinderblock stands as a timeless monument in an empty amusement park. The natural contrast between the brightly lit Space Needle and the darkness of the night sky plays off each other well in color or black and white.
"Barstools in Monochrome"
Shot with Camera HD, modified with Photogene and CameraBag
"Photobooth"
Shot with ProCamera, modified with Photogene and CameraBag
While I didn’t take a ton of photos — I think I took about 175 which included safety shots — I was very pleased with the shots I got and my ability to work with them on my iPhone. I’ve narrowed my story to the shots you see here and in the first part of this gallery.
For such a tall city, I found myself wanting to shoot with a wide aspect ratio much of the time, something which Camera HD helps me do easily in camera. For me, it either helped enhance the horizon or the added width helped to narrow the focus of your view of the scene.
Here is Part II of the story.
"The S Line"
The S Line, Times Square Station
Shot with Camera Genius, modifed in CameraBag
"Subway"
Times Square, New York
Shot with Camera Genius, unenhanced
"Roxy Deli"
Times Square, New York
Shot with Camera Genius, modified in Photogene
"Stardust Diner"
7th Avenue, New York
Shot with Camera Genius, modified in Photogene
The beauty in the every day. Things we may walk past all the time and miss something wonderful.
I’ve become fascinated with neon light and how the iPhone camera interprets it, as well as how far you can push the image in post processing. I loved how the reds in the Roxy sign held their own in the never-ending day that is nighttime in Times Square. I loved how the buildings around the Stardust Diner sign picked up the ambient light, giving them a warmth which complimented the sign. Two neon signs — two very different settings. One always competing in the noise, the other a calm icon on a quiet late-night street.
"Imagine"
Central Park, New York
Shot with Camera XL, modified in Photogene
The postcard. The leaves and the subtle hint of shadows take the image from pristine to real for me.
"Carriage Ride in Central Park"
Shot with Camera HD, modified with Photogene
"Manhattan Monochrome"
New York La Guardia Airport
Shot with Zoom Lens, modifed with PhotoForge, monochromed in CameraBag
From New York La Guardia Airport, the skyline of Manhattan looks much much smaller than you see in the image — it’s a rough spot on the horizon. Even far away it was awe-inspiring with the sunset. While the colors were breathtaking, to me the image works better in black & white as it adds more contrast to the skyline than was there, even far away.
"The Jet Age"
New York La Guardia Airport
Shot with Camera HD, modifed with Photogene
Old aircraft hangars modernized. A Boeing 757 sits in the foreground at the gate. Classic lines in a modern aircraft. The juxtaposition of old meeting new.
