Monthly Archives: January 2020

A wrist strap for the iPhone

iPhone

Avoiding ‘Woopsie’.

When snapping away with the iPhone at the car show the other day, I kept the iPhone’s camera turned on at all times and in my left hand, ready for instant action. Half way through this sojourn I had what can only be described as a Big Moment and almost dropped the bloody thing on the ground. Hard unyielding ground, protective case be damned. These things never work when needed; I use mine to hold credit cards and my driver’s license.

So it occurred to me that what is called for is a wrist tether and after reviewing the awful choices on Amazon I decided to craft my own. A custom tether – I’m selling these for $499, free shipping, to all iPhone 11 Pro owners. Lesser models need not apply. Comes with an autographed Certificate of Authenticity.

A 3 foot Lightning cable is purchased form Amazon for all of $7.



It’s cut at 22″ from the Lightning connector end.



Two pieces of heat shrink tubing are cut to 3″ (small) and 4″ (large) length. The small must accommodate two passes of the cable. The large must be able to slip over the Lightning connector.



The cable is doubled up after measuring for the correct wrist strap loop diameter. Leave 2.5″ of the tail exposed and heat shrink the tubing in place.



Next the broad diameter tubing is slipped over the Lightning connector and over the small diameter shrunken tubing; the tail is doubled back into the large tubing.



The large diameter tubing is heat shrunk into place and the wrist strap/tether is complete.



Belt and suspenders:

Apple has carefully designed the Lightning connector to prevent excessive force requirements for insertion or removal. Give the above assembly a strong yank and phone and wrist strap part company.

So a fail-safe is added in the form of a monofilament loop, one end attached to an old credit card, the other to the end of the wrist strap.



I used a very fine #60 drill to make a hole in the credit card
to permit pass-through of the length of 30lb. monofilament.



The monofilament is secured on both ends with a length of heat shrink-tubing, the tail
is reversed and a second length of larger diameter tubing is installed atop.



The credit card is installed in the sliding opening for credit cards,
the opening is shut and the whole assembly is very secure. In the event of a
serious yank the Lightning cable will still separate from the iPhone,
but the credit card will save all.

The credit card is actually installed with the loop inserted first, for maximum security, not as shown in the image above.

No more ‘Woopsie’.

I use a Lameeku iPhone 11 Pro wallet and am very pleased with it.

Focos depth masks

iPhone, Photographs

A closer look at a useful app.

I made mention of the inexpensive Focos app as part of my preliminary look at the new iPhone 11 Pro.

Since then I have done more reading and learning and set forth below how to use manual masking to optimise out of focus areas.

I mistakenly stated that Focos used the depth map which iPhone 11 saves with the image. In fact iPhone 11 only saves such a depth map – a detailed database showing the distance of each pixel in the image from the lens – with images taken using the Portrait mode. In Portrait mode the iPhone 11 switches to the 2x lens and, indeed, the extent of the blurring of out of focus areas can be changed in the iPhone stock Photos app. Go into edit mode, tap the yellow concentric circle at top left and you can adjust the aperture and hence the OOF effect.

Yet Focos allows DOF manipulation even on images taken on pre-iPhone X models, the first iPhone with a depth sensor. That sensor is also used as part of the FaceID security access protection system for the device.

How does Focos do this? It uses Artificial Intelligence to guesstimate the distance of image points from the lens, such AI based on analysis of over one million images, according to the developer. This allows the photographer to not only change the degree of blurring in post processing, but also to change the exact point of sharpest focus, something that cannot be done in iPhone X and 11 Portrait mode images, or in any other image from those iPhones in post-processing.

Mostly, for solid components in the picture, Focos does a good job at establishing its own depth map based on this AI approach. But sometimes it’s not so good.

Take this image:



Original iPhone 11 image, no Portrait mode.

Passing this through Focos keeps the jacket and embossed stitching razor sharp, but the hair is not sharply rendered.

In such cases, Focos has a manual facility where the depth map and the sharp area can be changed.

The default depth map (red areas) for this image has been extended to add the back of the veteran’s head, originally not shaded in red:



The sharp area mask has been extended in Focos on the iPhone.

Rather than using an imprecise finger to mask the sharp area, I use an inexpensive electrostatic pen, something like this:



Pen used for masking.

Further, while the image can be enlarged on the iPhone for greater masking precision, it’s far easier to do this on the larger iPad screen, so I use AirDrop to export the image to Photos on the iPad, and have at it there. The aperture/OOF effect are adjusted in this screen:



Adjusting the degree of blur on the iPad.

Then the blur appearance is modified using your lens of choice. I invariably use the Leitz 50mm Elmar as I like the benign bokeh it delivers – and because I used one for years:



Lens choices, shown on the iPad.

And here is the happy result, which takes less time to do than it does to explain:



The final result.

So for those instances where Focos does a poor auto-masking job, manual masking easily fixes what ails it.

What happens when the going gets tough? This is the sort of image which is a nightmare for computational photography when it’s a case of blurring backgrounds. In Portrait mode the iPhone 11 does a very poor job:



SOOC in Portrait mode.

At f/4.5, the camera’s selected aperture, some of the spokes have gone missing. This is likely because there are simply too few pixels in the depth map sensor to permit creation of a sufficiently detailed enough map. The spokes are small in the image and likely preclude sufficiently accurate depth map recording. As this image was taken using Portrait mode, meaning the iPhone has stored a depth map, how does it look when the aperture is increased to the maximum available, f/1.4 in the Photos app? Even worse:



Aperture changed in iPhone Photos edit mode. At maximum aperture spokes disappear.

How about a regular, non-Portrait mode image snapped on the iPhone 11 Pro and manipulated in Focos for an f/1.4 aperture? Still awful, though better than the iPhone’s Portrait mode + in camera depth map delivers, but some OOF areas are shown sharp:



The final result.

So until depth sensors get finer ‘grained’ both the iPhone’s Portrait mode and Focos’s AI approach leave something to be desired. And only a true masochist would seek to edit the spoked wheel image for proper rendering. Simply move the slider to f/16 in either image and all is sharp. Forget about bokeh. That will have to do for now as we await a better iPhone depth sensor – which is likely, given Apple’s increasing focus on 3D rendering in future iPhones.

When should you use Focos in lieu of the iPhone’s portrait mode? If taking bursts, as Portrait mode prohibits those. Or when you need the far greater versatility Focos offers for manipulating OOF areas. Otherwise, the iPhone 11 Pro’s native Portrait mode is perfectly fine, as long as your preferred daily rider and photo subject is not a classic bike with spoked wheels!

Barrett-Jackson 2020

Photographs

Mega show and auction.

The annual mega car show and auction, run by Barrett-Jackson, is running this week in Scottsdale. It’s a couple of years since I attended and as it’s just a mile down the road there really is no excuse for missing it.

Two things to note this year. Attendance appears to have quadrupled (I rode my scooter to avoid a parking lot trek) and prices have gone through the roof. That said, my hot dog was only $395 and they threw in a Diet Coke for a scant $49.95 extra. The pickles were free. I expect the B-Js will charge for oxygen next year, provided a recession does not wipe them out. That would certainly substitute for crowd control.

My attention was captured by two attributes – the strange and the magnificent.



Yesteryear’s ice cream man.


Oval Office ride.


Cruella DeVil’s wheels.


All leather interior.


Big, Beefy Buick.


Cobra, Cobra, Cobra. Carroll Shelby was onto something when
he stuffed a 427 c.u. Ford motor into a lightweight AC chassis.


BMW Isetta, 1957. 300cc, front access, just don’t let anyone park directly in front of you.


Francisco Scaramanga’s ride. 150hp Lycoming engine, 12,000 foot service ceiling.


Luxe interior of the $100,000 Airstream trailer. A film set favorite.


Boss Hogg.


Pirate surfer babe.


Packard. No expense spared.


Sale prep.


Devil’s Packard.


Surfin’ USA.


Gorgeous VW camper van.


Sunbeam Tiger. Ford V8 under the hood and a tiger in the tank.


1951 GMC 3100 Custom Panel Van.


Ford knew how to say “solid”.


Packard opted for “elegant”.


1941 Packard straight eight convertible. Perfection.


Forgotten generation.


Coker had a large classic tyre display.


Snake oil will always be with us.


Waiting for his ride.

All snaps on the iPhone 11 Pro.

I took 141 images and 140 were perfectly exposed. The other saw the flash go off for some reason and was awful. Not sure how it got turned on but, frankly, with Night Mode, the flash on the iPhone can be dispensed with.

A couple of things I noted.

There was not one DSLR or serious looking camera to be seen and there were thousands of people in attendance. In what is a photo-rich setting, cell phones dominated.

Second, popping in and out of the tents, some very poorly lit, Night Mode would kick in seamlessly when required and the results were perfectly exposed and color corrected, regardless of the light source. I have never published so many images with so little post-processing. Absent a crop or two here and there, and a couple where I touched the Clarity slider in LR, these are all straight out of the camera. All three rear-facing lenses were used in about equal measure.

Battery life is a non-issue with the iPhone 11 Pro (and even less so with the larger ‘Plus’ model). I was down to 74% from 100% after three hours of keeping the camera turned on (meaning it was showing everything on the display), during which time I also emailed many images to friends. Anyone opting for an external battery for an iPhone 11 is likely wasting money or has special needs.

The supreme fake

Photographers

He got away with it.

The French ‘artist’ Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) started it. He would exhibit common objects – toilet bowls, dinner plates, you name it – as ‘art’ and the fools passing as critics lauded him for his insights and originality. Duchamp was a fake and he new it. He must have got a good laugh at the expense of his critics. But his fakery did not make him rich. You see, he was French where art rules over income.

Andy Warhol (1928-87) saw Duchamp’s work and, being American, smelled profit. He crafted a mysterious image for himself and proceeded to paint ridiculous canvases of Campbell’s soup cans which now sell for $50 million and up. To my considerable disgust, Cornell University’s otherwise superb Johnson Museum of Art houses one of these pieces of garbage which should be immediately sold, the proceeds applied to reducing students’ fees – and maybe, you know, letting some more Americans into STEM classes?

Warhol’s crowning cinematic achievement? A static 24 hour reel of the Empire State Building. God alone knows what chemicals his audience was ingesting. People paid good American money to watch this tripe.

Proving that there’s one born every minute, a New York Times art writer falls for it and repeats all the utter nonsense written about this skillful grifter. You can read his nonsense by clicking the ‘art’ image below. Can you believe this crap? “Given the exponential influence of Warhol, it’s hard not to think about this show of his photographs as a historic template for our current Instagram moment, in which every commonplace detail of people’s lives is recorded and posted for an anonymous audience, and the ubiquitous “selfie,” an emblem of the endless lust for fame that replaces actual lived experience. What an odd and burdensome legacy for the pantheonic artist.” . Pantheonic? Yup.



Click the image to read nonsense.

Warhol was, indeed, the supreme fake, and laughed all the way to the bank with his fakery.

For more fun quotes from Pseuds’ Corner, click here.