Ingenious.

The Lumin app for the iPhone allows the use of the phone’s camera as a magnifier, with or without illumination from the built-in LED. That’s incredibly clever, and I have found it ideal for determining serial numbers on hardware for insurance purposes. Such numbers are increasingly screen printed in very small fonts on equipment and the their falling size and my aging eyesight conspire doubly against me.

You can take a snap of the area imaged and email it to yourself with ease – here’s an example of the serial number on my Panny G3:

Other uses include looking at restaurant menus in poorly lit diners, spotting that wood splinter in your finger, examining your Border Terrier’s nose to try and determine just how it manages to stay frigid, and …. well, you get the idea.

There are many flashlight apps in the iPhone AppStore, but none that can compare to this. Try and buy an illuminated magnifier for $1.99 that fits in your vest pocket and doubles as a flashlight.

Clutter or value added?

A friend sent along a link to Olloclip (eh?), a maker of auxiliary lenses for the iPhone 4/4S. Click the picture to go to their site.

Click the picture

This particular variant adds wide angle, fish eye and macro capabilities when clipped over the iPhone’s rear facing lens.

Auxiliary lenses are nothing new. Zeiss Ikon in their Contaflex and Kodak in their Retina IIc/IIIc folders and Retina Reflex cameras used this approach in the 1960s. The standard lens would have a small removable element which could be replaced with wide and long focus front elements, invariably gargantuan and, in the case of the Contaflex, there was even a macro and a monocular adapter. The bulk and clutter these added to the camera bag were in no way repaid by image quality. The wides were not very wide, typically 32-35mm, and you could get better long focal length quality by simply enlarging the 35mm negative more, in preference to using the attachment. Most of the ‘teles’ were 75-80mm with the Retina Reflex boasting a 200mm.

Accordingly, I confess I have mostly negative opinions of this sort of thing. First, auxiliary lenses seldom are much to talk about when it comes to definition. Look at the fish eye examples on that site and the definition is pretty awful. Second, you are fiddling about with attachments rather than taking pictures.

So the Olloclip device, and its cousins, none of which I have used by the way, fail the test of ‘small and simple’. Futzing about with add on gadgets when snapping with the quite decent camera in the iPhone 4S seems, to me, to destroy the small and fast concept, and the displayed images suggest that anything larger than a wallet sized print will embarrass both photographer and viewer. On the other hand, I just made some 13″ x 19″ prints from my naked 4S and the quality needs no excuses. I see no pressing reason to mess with that.

A study in skill.

The city is fixing some old sewer pipes locally and the pup and I needed no encouragement to watch the action on our evening walk.

Komatsu Digger operator. iPhone 4S, processed in Snapseed.

This enormous digger was replacing the old sewer pipes and it was truly a fascination to watch the operator move the pieces into place, manipulating the huge bucket and hydraulic arms with the delicacy and precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel. As he finished work for the day he placed the heavy, steel cover plates – probably 8′ x 20′ in size – over the trench with such sureness that they abutted perfectly, yet never quite touched. His equally skilled colleague was operating a backhoe with exquisite precision, demonstrating that he could move a single pebble of the crushed rock filler along the road without damage to the surface, using a nine cubic yard scoop. Incredibly impressive.

It is never less than totally satisfying for this observer to see a skill expertly demonstrated, regardless of the occupation involved.

The time is ripe.

I have yet to see anyone asking hard questions about where new product ideas came from at AAPL in the past decade. Did Steve Jobs wake up, shout Eureka! and conclude the world needed an iPad? I doubt it. Jobs was adept at looking at mass market products whose execution/UI were poor (PCs, the Walkman, cell phones, laptops, mobile devices) and making them better.

I have long argued that Apple should make a camera – look at the simply awful UIs of every camera out there. Knobs, button, horrendous software/menus, etc. The world needs a Wii-like camera, the ease of use of the one in the iPhone with a physical design that makes it easy to hold. Add in Siri and get rid of all those stupid buttons. Why shouldn’t you speak to your camera? “Use HDR in this one”. “Blur the background”. “Stop motion”. “Focus on the eyes”. And like other fields Apple has entered, with existing low margins and commodity characteristics (PCs, phones) there’s room for a premium offering which works better.

The current rumor, resurfacing again, has it that Apple should make a television set. A camera melds better with Apple’s business model which seeks to force upgrades every 2-3 years. That characteristic is completely absent from the television market where technological change has ceased and ‘brains’ can be added with the likes of an AppleTV at very low cost. And those ‘brains’ can be upgraded for $100 in 3 years’ time.

Digital idiocy. Today’s dinosaur, awaiting obsolescence – the DSLR.

In its thinking behind the design of the camera in the iPhone 4S Apple has clearly studied the needs of photographers. The outstandingly low shutter lag and inter-frame delay testify to the realization that not only sports shooters need those attributes. Mommy wanting to get little Johnny in the frame – rather than the background he has just vacated – spur the realization that the market for fast and responsive gear is anything but exclusively a professional one. Add in-camera HDR as the iPhone 4S does and one of the biggest drawbacks of the digital sensor is addressed – burned out highlights. But the 4S can only go so far. As a camera its ergonomics stink. As a design concept it has enormous promise. The five element lens is all plastic. That makes it light. I frankly don’t care what my lens is made of if its light, small and sharp. If it’s sharp because of software, that’s fine with me. If that same software confers limited depth of field that’s even better. ‘Fast’ lenses will soon be a thing of the past. All lenses will be ‘fast’ thanks to better sensors and better software. And, I’ll venture the guess, that’s also fine with all but the 0.1% of fetishists who get off on resolution charts.

What got me thinking about this topic yet again the other day was a silly little snap I took when getting the groceries:

Woof!

The car was turning the corner and the magnificent Standard Poodle was pretty much directing things through the sunroof. In a second the picture would be gone. I grabbed the 4S from the belt holster, made the camera live without by passing the lock screen (two stabs at the Home button) and the snap was in the bag. Now if Apple can do that in the crappy form factor of a cell phone, why not do it right with a dedicated camera?

C’mon Apple, photographers everywhere are waiting to be told they need to pay up for fast and simple.

A QR tripod mount for the iPhone 4/4S

Steve Jobs was right. ‘Simple is hard’, he said, when talking of sweating the details of a design. And, sadly, most of the accessory makers for the iPhone have tried for quick bucks and refused to sweat the details. ‘Think Different’, whatever the grammatical shortfallings of that mantra, is one foreign to their thinking, or lack thereof.

And so it is with tripod mounts. The plenitude of offerings out there is underwhelming to say the least. Most take the guise of snap-on backs or ugly straps which go across the face of the iPhone. But one, brought to us by the same funding mechanism which saw the outstanding success of the Luna-Tik iPod watch band, Kickstarter, really does Think Different.

The makers of the Glif had a similar success in raising capital for the funding of the injection molding process required to manufacture the device, though as I had decided to pass on the flawed iPhone 4 I had no interest in it. Now that the identically sized and shaped iPhone 4S is here with none of the antenna issues of the iPhone 4, I bought a Glif from Amazon and tried it out.

Suffice it to say that this is the iPhone tripod mount for thinking people. Small, light, take-anywhere and superbly functional, you can see it in use below.

The Glif can also function as an iPhone support, so check their site if eyestrain is your thing.

The Glif holds the iPhone securely and shaking it as hard as I could I was unable to make it part company with the iPhone. A GorillaPod would make a perfect mobile tripod accessory for the Glif. Until now I have resisted buying one as it just seems too flimsy for even a small DSLR. But given the iPhone’s low weight, the GorillaPod will likely be finding a home here soon.

For taking movies just start the movie from the iPhone. For still shots, as there is no remote release available for the iPhone making the likelihood of camera shake higher, blow $0.99 on the Camera+ iPhone app which includes a nice self timer. Touch the self timer screen and it switches between 5, 15 and 30 seconds.

Bertie poses for Camera+ with its self timer.

More importantly, if you are into the whole ‘lone figure in the landscape’ thing, the self timer is just what the doctor ordered when you have to be the model.

If you use a screen protector or a case or some other encumbrance on your iPhone, forget it. The Glif is not for you.

iPhone 5 update: When Apple came out with its toy-like iPhone 5, a device whose flimsy feel and compromised assembly (uneven seams in mine) does not remotely live up to that of the 4/4S, it also made the phone thinner, rendering the above Glif useless. There’s now a slimmer model available for the iPhone 5 and it works just as well.