photography – Page 6 – frans goes blog

iPhone 3G S experiences

I promised to post my iPhone experiences at some point so here they come, even if in rather short form (realities of busy life these days). The key points are very positive ones: particularly the use of social media and Internet in general was radically transformed when I moved to iPhone. Everything is so much faster, more intuitive and pleasing to use. Listening of music, following video podcasts and Internet radio went up, too. The available applications (games, media, utilities) are fun and mostly moderately priced, but the App Store is also one of the obvious points of criticism. Apple has implemented a controlled environment for the use of iPhone, to a degree that the user sometimes starts to ask, who is really the owner of the phone, the actual owner, Apple, or even the operator that the user is locked with in the deal. It is of course perfectly possible to jailbreak iPhone, but the default situation for the regular user does not change. In this sense Symbian/S60 or Google Android based devices appear parts of much more open ecosystem. The lacking support of existing Internet standards is also obvious in the lack of support for Flash and Java in the iPhone browser. You can watch Youtube videos, since they have a specific iPhone format supported, but not regular Flash videos or animations that the net is full of. Also, and this is my final gripe with iPhone, the camera is below the standards I have gotten used to while being a Nokia N95 user. Images are blurry, too dark and more soft than you would expect from a 3 mega-pixel camera. This is a real pity, since the magnificent user experience and accessibility of all kinds of interesting functionalities would really make iPhone my dream device if camera and these other — relatively minor — issues would be dealt with. Now I continue to live in a two-phone (plus laptop, plus netbook, plus workstation…) configuration. Not everything can be expected from one environment, or manufacturer, I guess. Might be a good thing, even?

Official iPhone Flickr app not available in Finland?

The title pretty much says it: I have been waiting for a proper Flickr app to appear for iPhone, and now that an official one has been announced to be available, I am of course eagerly trying to install. But it seems that this app is for some reason filtered out of the Finnish iTunes Store; at least I cannot found it anywhere. Anyone out there with more luck?

Testing HD video

Got finally a camera today that can produce HD (720p) video clips. Testing the low-light characteristics of Canon PowerShot SX200 IX in the shot below: night time, HD and imported directly from .MOV into Youtube — the you can see that auto exposure creates lots of grain. Still some nice sky tones. (Click the “go full screen” symbol below, in the low right corner of the player.)

There will be a couple of more experiments posted into my profile later. My first impressions of this small camera are positive. It is surprising to see how versatile system this kind of pocket camera can today be. Digital photography has gone long way, at least as far as technology is concerned.

Moblogging with a camera phone

I have been playing with some mobile tools in my kitchen and living room (the mobile weekend of a family man, I know). The camera phone that I am mostly using, Nokia N95 8GB, just got a new firmware, V 31.0.015, which brought along some nice additional or enhanced features. These include better integration to online photo sharing services. I am using Flickr, and now it is just one click away to share a photo through the default Internet service provider. Also, I noticed that the phone screen automatically tilts to vertical/horisontal (this sensor tech might have been in the previous firmware, too, I am not sure). In the background I am running Location Tagger, which captures the GPS coordinates into the photos’ metadata in a format Flickr can also read. You need to be close to a window for this to work indoors, of course. The app can cache the location data, though, which is handy. I have also Fring now running in the background, which is a mobile instant messenger program that is able to tap into Skype, MSN Messenger, Google Talk and Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Last.fm and SIP Internet phone services, to start with. The downside now is that there is always something “interesting” going on in the damned device, so I might turn this off at some point. But the always-connected, automatically location tagging camera is something that I’d like to see in my SLR/main system, too, to look into the future.

Autumn vacation

I have been spending this week with my family, after a few months of busy working and traveling schedule. It has been mostly raining (slowing down some of the gardening work), but this has allowed me to spend more time with my son (pictured). Luka is growing very fast, running around and learning new words and tricks every day. Glad we got these few days together to learn to know each other a bit better (last autumn, when he just had born, I was all the time traveling around the world, and promised to change the situation this year).

Canon 5D mk II, HD video with a SLR

This looks very promising: the next generation system cameras/SLRs are going to provide amazing video recording features, on top of the amazing photo capabilities. At least you are left stunned at the level of detail and low-light dynamics of Canon’s forthcoming 5D MK II that Vincent Laforet used for shooting a short film ‘Reverie’ over a weekend. You can see the behind of the scenes documentary here:

http://vincentlaforet.smugmug.com/gallery/6021407_xEg87/1/#378608891_Jd2CT-A-LB

Edit: the original film is again available through here:

http://blog.vincentlaforet.com/2008/10/10/without-further-ado-reverie/

You can also download some original raw movie files from here:

Visiting Admiral

This and the next two weeks are probably the busiest ones in entire Autumn term (at least that is what I keep telling myself — we’ll see). There are many wonderful things in this fall, too, including spectacular crop yield of mushrooms. Also, Laura’s work on flowering plants is starting to yield results, as this visiting Admiral also proves. Other regulars have included peacock butterflies (neitoperhonen) and Camberwell Beauty/the mourning cloak (suruvaippa).

Unknown butterfly

This came flapping inside our car in last Midsummer day (23.6.2007). I have been looking around to identify the black-and-while beauty, but with small success so far. Any ideas? There were several of these flying fast around small path/road cutting through mixed woods in central Häme (a bit north from Tampere).

Nokia N95 8 GB and the era of ultraportables

Along with some new research projects where we look into the service distribution models of games, my new primary work phone has changed into Nokia N95 8GB model. So far I have been mostly satisfied; and in contrast to E70, this time it is possible to connect my Sony DR-BT50 headphones to the mobile phone (N95 supports A2DP over Bluetooth). N95 is also a decent media player and it is possible to listen to mp3 music and watch videos. Internet browser has improved and social media sites like YouTube and Flickr are taken in with some special consideration – image upload from the camera application to Flickr is now just one click away.

Games are still perhaps the biggest question mark of the upgraded N-Gage brand. I am not particularly enthusiastic about rally or sports games, and those feature visible in the opening portfolio. More games should be arriving soon, including pet simulation (Dogz), more pets simulation (Sims 2 Pets), golf, yet another Worms and Snakes, plus action: Brothers in Arms, ONE. The service in itself looks interesting, with player profiles, buddy lists and other social service basics in place.

All in all, it is surprising how powerful contemporary mobile phones already are. Yet, the usability of Nokia OS is still seriously behind e.g. that of Apple iPhone. Where you just want to have one thing to happen, N95 will still ask you verifications for this and that, get stuck in dialogues or wait for input from softkeys, where iPhone would automatically just have started the default action. But I have not yet used iPhone for anything beyond most casual first impression, so a more thorough comparison needs to wait for later. (Timetable for 3G iPhone launch, anyone?)

I must admit I am so text oriented user, that the biggest drawback of N95 for me is that it does not have a QWERTY keyboard. The size is compact for that reason, of course, but this means that I still need to carry two devices with me always.

The happy note is that ultraportable laptops like Asus Eee PC, HP’s 2133 Mini-Note PC and other UMPC and upscale/next gen PDAs are blooming and a gadget freak will have happy times ahead. (Asus Eee PC 900 review here: http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/04/asus-eee-pc-900-video-review.html)

Not travelling

I have made few somewhat painful personal decisions and radically cut down the amount of international travel I do. Travelling might be something we are told we have to do, that our careers require it, and that internationalisation or globalisation even dictates that we should be flying around the globe all the time, busily collaborating with everyone else. But why? Don’t we really have any communicational tools that we could use to cut down this insane waste of time, energy — both human energy and precious reserves of natural energy, turning it into carbon dioxide? I think we can do better. I was supposed to present game studies papers in two important conferences, CHI 2008 in Italy, and Crossroads conference of cultural studies in Jamaica. It was a real pity, but I decided not to go. Continue reading “Not travelling”