Posts Tagged ‘IOS’

Project 52 Week 16

Posted: 12/04/2012 in iPhone, photography, Project 52
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This week I’m going to talk to you a little about technology, which was the suggested theme for this weeks project 52 post.

Things may get a little geeky at points and I apologise for that I’m passionate about a number of geeky things though so you’ll either have to skip this one or put up with it, you never know you might learn something that will be useful in your life. Actually I doubt that you will unless you are slightly geeky.

left to right we have FujiFilm HS20EXR, Canon EOS 10d, Canon EOS 650

I mentioned recently that I’d managed to buy an old Canon EOS 650 film camera but wanted to borrow a lens to ensure that it all worked before investing any further in it, well I put out the shout and an old friend who I’ll call Mr Falkland came through and has leant me not only three of his lenses but his incredibly beautiful Canon EOS 10d semi professional body so that I can have an idea of what the lenses to before wasting valuable time and money on film and shooting blind. I know he’s an occasional reader so thank you Mr Falkland, I am hugely touched that you trust me not to break it. I plan to make the most of your incredibly generous loan and learn as much as I can.

Going into a little more detail about the picture contents included we have my trusty HS20EXR which looks dwarfed in this company, I still love her though, she’s a great camera and hugely flexible. The strap is obviously not original and is a retro look GoTo strap purchased for me by Mrs Bunny Chow as a 4th anniversary present.

Squashed into the middle and barely visible is Mr Falklands EOS10d fitted with a Sigma 30-100mm (I’m working from memory here so could be wrong) lense.

and then finally my Canon EOS650 in this instance fitted with Mr Falklands Sigma 18-30mm wide-angle lens and another GoTo vintage strap bought again by Mrs Bunny Chow.

I’ve not had much opportunity to play with either the loan or film camera as yet but will endeavour to get some shots done over the weekend to share with you all next week. (longer for the film stuff I suspect)

moving on.

The rather poor quality picture was taken with my new phone a HTC One X running Android in its latest Ice Cream Sandwich incarnation then skinned with HTC’s own sense interface. As many of my longer term readers will know I have been an iPhone user for a number of years now and decided to make the switch for a number of reasons which I’m going to list.

  1. I’m a geek and no self-respecting geek is entirely happy with how iOS locks you into doing things they way they see as being the right way.
  2. I couldn’t see enough of an update between the iPhone 4 that I had and the iPhone 4S to justify making the swap but wasn’t prepared to wait for the theoretical iPhone 5.
  3. 3. I wanted to see what all they hype about android was all about and if I’m honest just fancied a change.

So what do I think so far?

Pro’s so far:

  • The huge 4.7inch screen is beautiful to behold and the colours really pop, the iPhone’s retina display still has smaller pixels and deeper blacks though.
  • It’s different, I had an iPhone 3G followed by an iPhone 4 and other than the semi regular iOS updates which were evolutionary not revolutionary I’ve had the same basic concept for four years now or an eon in technological terms.
  • Widgets and live wallpapers are an amusing/fun thing even if not much more useful than a red circle reminding me that I have more emails to check than I have time for.

Con’s so far:

  • The camera on paper at least should offer superior performance to the iPhone with an aperture of f2.0 (smaller number means more light hitting the sensor) and 8mp as opposed to the iPhone 4’s aperture of f2.8 and 5mp. The reality is though that the picture quality from the iPhone’s sensor seems to offer much lower levels of noise (sparkly bits) in low and even medium light levels. This noise is obvious and apparent on the phone’s screen never mind when blown up to its full size on a computer screen. As a camera guy this is a big deal to me and time will tell if software updates and improve this major flaw. 
  • The 4.7 inch screen despite being a beauty to behold is just a tiny bit too big for my hands to comfortably type on single-handed. Not a big deal 90% of the time but if you have lady like hands something to be conscious of before considering one of these.
  • The screen is not as sensitive or as accurate as that of the iPhone, I’m sure that I’ll get used to this one as my friend who’s always been an Android man thinks it’s fine but to me at least it’s still a niggle, the difference is subtle but still there.
  • Despite its quad-core +1 processors, the fact that apps etc continue to run in the background unless you force them to stop means that it’s no faster than iOS the majority of the time. 

I’m still happy with the phone and realise that a lot of my niggles are more things just being different from what I have become accustomed to. Time will tell if they are things that affect my next phone upgrade and whether I go back to iOS or stick with Android in the future, but that day is at least a couple of years away so we’ll have to see how things unfold and where technology has gone by then.

If you’d like to see more of my pictures there are plenty available through my Google+ account, be sure to introduce yourself as not everything is posted publicly.

Next week the suggested theme will be in the Kitchen so as well as taking some pictures for you I may even make an effort to revive the fortunes of www.mrbunnychowcooks.com

Until then

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

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Cameramble

Posted: 29/02/2012 in iPhone, photography, Project 52
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Good Leap Day to you all dear readers,

today I’d like to talk about the contents of my Camera bag and my uses of those camera’s as well as talk a little about some of my inspirations.

look ma there's a tree

My current camera collection consists of the excellent and versatile Fuji film HS20EXR for those of you who are unfamiliar with it I’ll go into a little detail. It’s what is commonly known as a bridge camera, taking the convenience of a compact camera (no interchangeable lenses) and adding in features of a full-blown D-SLR with full manual controls and an incredible zoom extending all the way out to 30x or 24mm to 720mm in old money. It has many fantastic features that I wanted when looking for a camera to replace my much older stolen Fujifilm S5000 a fantastic little camera in its own right. I could go into huge amounts of detail about all of the things that I love about it but I think it would be more prudent to point you towards the review that initially persuaded me that it was the camera for me. The only other thing I will add is that one of the most powerful deciders for me was the fact that unlike many other camera’s today it still makes use of AA batteries meaning I can have a couple of sets of fully charged high power 2500MaH batteries with me and still be able to just buy disposable’s pretty much anywhere in the world.

Bunny Chow the invincible

The camera that you have seen the most from recently on this site is a fantastic cheap little compact from Canon called the IXUS 107. Technically this is identical to the IXUS 105
in every way except for the fact that it was a limited edition colour (baby blue) and happened to be what was in stock when I was shopping with the insurance vouchers from the earlier mentioned robbery. I have to confess that I didn’t put much research into this camera before purchase, and whilst I am more than happy with the image quality it produces when you consider it’s price and pocketable size it has no manual controls and is happiest if you leave the settings along and let it figure things out for itself. The only thing I tend to adjust is that when I shoot at night I’ll invariably put it into black and white mode as this seems to reduce the noise common to shooting at high ISO in low light.

Lastly but I guess by no means the least I use the camera that is always in my pocket the some what ubiquitous iPhone4. I have been forcing myself to carry the little Canon most of the time but no one can deny the sense behind the quote “the best camera is the one that’s with you” I’m not a die-hard iOS man in fact I’m hoping to jump over to the Android ship as soon as my contract expires but there is a reason why the most used camera over on Flickr is the iPhone, it’s convenient, it takes great snaps right out of the box and there are dozens if not hundreds of Apps for making your pictures look arty without trying too hard. I for one am going to hugely miss Hipstamatic which at the time of writing at least is an iOS exclusive app which uses software to replicate dozens of retro films, lenses, flashes etc. I adore the random nature of what it captures although you can if you choose individually mix and match these elements to exacting specifications I actually like the hit and miss nature of its shake to randomise function.

The Monkey Boy

So there you have it, the contents of my camera bag laid bare for derision and ridicule.

snowlights

Anyway continuing my ramble about camera’s and photography I’d like to make mention of some of the people and websites that blogging has exposed me to. First on the list absolutely has to be the incredibly talented but approachable Nick Mayo of http://nickexposed.com/ he posts pictures and the stories behind those pictures on a daily basis. I’ve learned a lot from him and look forward to learning more.

Next up I’d like to talk about Bellamy Hunt and his incredibly fascinating site http://www.japancamerahunter.com/ Bellamy as you can probably guess from the name of his site runs a business out of Japan seeking out camera’s for clients. He specialises in old film camera’s but the main reason I want to talk about the site is the incredibly fascinating posts Bellamy and his guests write about all aspects of photography and Camera porn in general. They do reviews, suggest idea’s and just speak about their own experiences of what they love with such passion and incredible knowledge that you cannot help but be inspired. 

The last person I’d like to talk about is the incredible Mike Shaw who is not only a blogger over at http://mikefshaw.blogspot.com/ but more importantly for me at least he’s a huge personality over on Google+ you can find his profile here. Mike is an incredible man and incredible photographer, his portraits strike right at the core of human emotion and his landscapes are just beautiful. Mike suffers from depression and shares openly an honestly about this both in his stories and pictures. I really do wish I could understand how someone so compassionate and talented (he has over 700000 followers on G+ at the time of writing) can find the time not only to share his own stories but interact with someone like me. He was even generous enough to share my name amongst others as upcoming inspirational photographers. Wow what an honour, I can tell you that my email and google+ streams nearly exploded on that day, how he keeps up I’ll never know. I will continue to admire and support Mike through his troubles and hope that many of you join me.

This is turning into quite a ramble but I’m not going to apologise it’s what I do I’m afraid, I’ve been thinking about my photography a lot recently during quiet times when I’ve been out walking the dog, I of course would love to throw lots of money at it and buy copies of Photoshop, lightroom etc to go with the Leica rangefinder collection and big professional standard D-SLR with f1.4 prime lenses but of course I know that this won’t improve my eye one jot it will just make me lazy. Why bother chasing fantastic shots when I can just edit them later. Sure if I had the money I might invest in some of the above but I don’t so it’s irrelevant even thinking about it.

technology for the children

Something that I would like to do though is try shooting with lots of different camera’s especially older ones so if any of you out there have an old camera of any description lying unloved in a drawer that you’d like to donate to me I’d be most grateful. I have no prerequisites in this blatant begging process, I don’t care if it’s film or digital working or not, I’m sure that whatever it is I can learn something from it even if it’s just in the taking it apart and seeing how it all works inside because it’s beyond economical repair.

Otherwise how are you my friends of the blogosphere, are you keeping well?

I always love to hear from you and am getting pretty good at being interactive both within these pages and over on my google+ profile where you can not only interact with me but see lots more of my photography than I share here. I tend to post most of my pictures publicly so you don’t even need to sign up until you’re ready.

Thank you for taking the time to read this far.

Take care and until the next time

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

P.S.

The photo’s within the post are a few of the ones of which I’m most proud, and play no real part in the narative, I just like them. If you want to use any of them for personal use then please feel free, I’m happy for them to be published on personal blogs etc. as long as you provide a link back and credit.