Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

5.0 Megapixel Camera

5.0 Megapixel Camera (5.0 MPX)
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: Good especially if you plan on printing images at larger than recommended sizes.

Sometimes you just need more megapixels in your images. 5.0 Megapixel Camera by CrowdCafé is a camera app that produces 5.0 MP images from your iPhone’s 2 MP or 3 MP camera.

The hardware of the iPhone’s camera is limited to capturing 2 or 3 megapixel images. Neither 5.0 Megapixel Camera or Camera XL (another resolution enhancing app) update the hardware or the software of the camera to shoot the image with more pixels. Both apps use interpolation to create the additional pixels — basically using software to insert a new pixel between two existing pixels and giving the new pixel a value that’s the average of the two existing pixels. The result is a larger image with greater detail than if you’d simply printed the original, smaller image at a larger size.

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October 2-5, 2009

"Lower Floor"

Pike Place Market, Seattle, Washington
Shot with ProCamera, unenhanced

A found shot inside the Pike Place Market. The lines and the perspective create their own depth of field. The color and the neon were perfect. The crowd flows, but the image captures a spot of quiet in the midst of the noisy, bustling market.

"Loback"

Pike Place Market, Seattle
Shot with ProCamera, enhanced with Photogene and Mill Colour

"The Troll"

Seattle, Washington
Shot with Camera XL, unmodified

"Seattle Hardware"

Seattle, Washington
Shot with ProCamera, modified with PhotoForge and CameraBag

I don’t know how old this sign is, although it’s very well maintained. I don’t recall if the store behind it was the hardware company. I suspect it wasn’t and the original tenant of this classic building near Pioneer Square is long gone. I liked the play between the bronze and the shadows. With the sun providing perfect contract for this shot, it was a nice visit to an older time.

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September 26-29, 2009

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.

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Camera XL — Megapixel Doubler
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: Recommend!

Camera XL – Megapixel Doubler by George Talusan is a new app for iPhone that promises to double the number of pixels in your iPhone images. Even among high end smart phones, the iPhone’s camera lags behind other smartphone cameras in its class. This app offers a workaround for one limitation of the iPhone. Using image upsampling or “rezzing up”, it doubles the resolution of your iPhone images. On the original iPhone and iPhone 3G, it takes the 2MP images and doubles them to 4MP; on the iPhone 3GS, it doubles the 3MP images to 6MP.

This is a good app to have and I recommend it. After kicking the tires for a couple of days, there are a lot of things I like about this app. Camera XL is yet another camera. You need to use its own built in camera to take advantage of the pixel doubling. Camera XL does NOT double the resolution of images that are either in your camera roll or in your iPhone image library. In fact, the app won’t even see any images in your photo albums –you can only open images from your camera roll.

It really does double the number of pixels in your image, although you’ll have to sync your iPhone to iPhoto or other desktop application to see the full-sized image. The upsampling algorithm is surprisingly good. The images I’ve shot don’t have any really glaring flaws. The images are comparable in image quality as resampling the image in Photoshop using Bicubic Smoother interpolation. The advantage to doing this in camera, though, is being able to do this on the fly and not having to lug around a laptop with Photoshop. Saving images takes quite a bit of time, so taking rapid fire shots isn’t an option with this app.

I like that there’s a setting to use the entire screen as a shutter release button. You can also email images from within the app. The resolution of the emailed images is greater than those emailed directly from the iPhone Photos app, but they’re not the full, upsampled resolution.

While Camera XL offers a bare-bones camera replacement, there are better camera replacements with many more features that I prefer to use. In future updates, I’d like to see the ability to rez up images that are already on my phone — including those in my iPhone photo albums — allowing me to use better camera apps and to apply filters or other image manipulation (like adjusting the color in the excellent apps Photogene or Photoforge for iPhone) before sizing the image up. While I realize that there’s a bit of image processing going on under the hood here, I’d still like to see image save times go a little faster. I’d like to be able to email the full-resolution images.

Image upsampling isn’t a replacement for having a better camera, but if the algorithm is good, it can sometimes yield acceptable results — I’ve used Genuine Fractals for Mac for years, often times with decent results. I was pleasantly surprised at the results I got from Camera XL. Hopefully, future updates will make Camera XL an indispensable tool for iPhone photographers. In a crowded field of iPhone apps, it is definitely a part of my iPhone camera bag.

Camera XL – Megapixel Doubler is available in the Apple App Store for $0.99. There is also a Camera XL Jr. version with ads (and a faint watermark) which you can try for free.

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