Doing Words

The best camera to have is the one with apps on it

// May 10th, 2010 // 0 Comments // Mobile, My life

They say the best camera to have is the one you have with you. Never more true than this evening when the universe hit me with a stunning sunset as I crossed the shared cycle path across the Warringah Freeway at Neutral Bay. I certainly wouldn’t have thought to take my DSLR out with me to pickup tomatoes from the shops.

Very little trickery used here, just the iPhone in my pocket with the apps Darkroom (for minimising blurring in low light) and Tiltshiftgen (for a touch of blur, saturation and brightness).

Check my Flickr feed and you’ll see a significant percentage of my photography in the past year has been low-resolution because I’ve been taking more shots on my iPhone than my DSLR.

It’s certainly not the quality of the lens or the performance of the shutter and sensor that make the iPhone my camera of choice; it’s the programmable power of the apps I’ve installed, the fact that I can post photos direct to Flickr, Facebook and Twitter. Most importantly it’s the way the iPhone is always in my pocket, on the arm of my chair, in the glovebox of my car, and since it became my alarm clock, on the side of my bed.

If I were a futurist I’d predict in the next five years, the photography industry will be dominated by devices that have lenses and sensors, but also have SIM cards, 3G and WIFI radios, address books, calendars and browsers. Quality of lens and sensor will still matter, but quality of OS and apps on your ‘camera’ will increasingly matter more than the lens and sensor.

It may be tough for a phone maker to make good cameras, but it’s well-nigh impossible for a camera maker to make good phones. Unless you’re a premium professional brand like Leica or Hasselblad, better merge or seek to be acquired by a Samsung or Nokia. Yes, Nikon and Canon, I’m looking at you.

The future of photography is not about what happens in the process of capturing the image, it’s about whether there was a camera present at all, and about what happens to the image after it’s been taken.

Hello? Are you still there?

// July 18th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Other news

You are? Well, it would be my fault entirely if you weren’t still here. Like the n00biest of bloggers I drifted off to go exploring the Indian side of the Himalayas for three weeks without telling the blogosphere that I was going away, or when I’d be back. More professional bloggers would have been posting ‘daily links’ type posts from internet cafes in tiny mountain villages, but I was having too much fun with a Leica V-Lux, D-Lux, C-Lux and even an M8 (hah! bet you were expecting a ‘B-Lux’ next) while pro bloggers were hunched over crawling analogue interweb connections – sucked in!

I kept an analogue journal of the trip which I’ll transcribe to the blog shortly, and I’m still uploading hundreds of 10mb JPGs to the Flickr account, so stay tuned for my best shots.

While I was gone, some practical jokers tried to set themselves on fire and crash their car into an airport terminal. But it was Glasgow airport, and it takes more than a flaming jeep to do any real damage to anything Glaswegian. You can head-butt my uncle Jim repeatedly until you knock yourself unconscious and he’ll use your limp body to wipe the floor of the pub clean of your blood (he and the rest of my mum’s family are Glaswegian.)

Apple launched the iPhone – the Product I Must Acquire Before I Die From Not Having One but according to Ben and Luke I need to sign up for a three year phone plan with AT&T with a US credit card and a US social security number to get one. And then find a way to get it to work in Australia.

In fact, screw using it as a phone! I need a new iPod urgently, since I accidentally left my Nano in the passenger door storage of the Raja of Shimla’s personal Suzuki Vitara (long story, but there was a taxi strike and our guide managed to persuade them to lend us the Raja’s driver and his 4WD to drive us eight hours to Sarahan…)

If I could use an iPhone just as an iPod, for iPhoto storage, and as an iCal/Addressbook/iSync-driven PIM, that would make me happy enough for the time-being.

In fact, maybe that’s how Apple should address international markets where it has trouble securing an exclusive telco deal – sell an unsubsidized handset as an iPod/iPhoto/PIM device with the phone components disabled until Apple can show potential telco suitors that it can grow local sales without the help of the telco.

Or maybe I’m still crazy from altitude sickness? What do you think?

Hello? Are you still there?

// July 18th, 2007 // 0 Comments // Other news

You are? Well, it would be my fault entirely if you weren’t still here. Like the n00biest of bloggers I drifted off to go exploring the Indian side of the Himalayas for three weeks without telling the blogosphere that I was going away, or when I’d be back. More professional bloggers would have been posting ‘daily links’ type posts from internet cafes in tiny mountain villages, but I was having too much fun with a Leica V-Lux, D-Lux, C-Lux and even an M8 (hah! bet you were expecting a ‘B-Lux’ next) while pro bloggers were hunched over crawling analogue interweb connections – sucked in!

I kept an analogue journal of the trip which I’ll transcribe to the blog shortly, and I’m still uploading hundreds of 10mb JPGs to the Flickr account, so stay tuned for my best shots.

While I was gone, some practical jokers tried to set themselves on fire and crash their car into an airport terminal. But it was Glasgow airport, and it takes more than a flaming jeep to do any real damage to anything Glaswegian. You can head-butt my uncle Jim repeatedly until you knock yourself unconscious and he’ll use your limp body to wipe the floor of the pub clean of your blood (he and the rest of my mum’s family are Glaswegian.)

Apple launched the iPhone – the Product I Must Acquire Before I Die From Not Having One but according to Ben and Luke I need to sign up for a three year phone plan with AT&T with a US credit card and a US social security number to get one. And then find a way to get it to work in Australia.

In fact, screw using it as a phone! I need a new iPod urgently, since I accidentally left my Nano in the passenger door storage of the Raja of Shimla’s personal Suzuki Vitara (long story, but there was a taxi strike and our guide managed to persuade them to lend us the Raja’s driver and his 4WD to drive us eight hours to Sarahan…)

If I could use an iPhone just as an iPod, for iPhoto storage, and as an iCal/Addressbook/iSync-driven PIM, that would make me happy enough for the time-being.

In fact, maybe that’s how Apple should address international markets where it has trouble securing an exclusive telco deal – sell an unsubsidized handset as an iPod/iPhoto/PIM device with the phone components disabled until Apple can show potential telco suitors that it can grow local sales without the help of the telco.

Or maybe I’m still crazy from altitude sickness? What do you think?