Good idea, but concept flawed I believe by iPhone hardware limitations.

My first test of this app was a complete failure. On one of my recent dinner walk in downtown Los Angeles I took some street scenes images. Being a dark and stormy night, I knew I was pushing my iPhone 3G camera. The images in standard mode, 1600x1200 pixels, were easily save to the Camera Role. But in 5.0 MPX Mode the app crashed every time while saving the image. Not a single 5.0 MPX Mode image was successfully saved.

I did power down my iPhone and restart. This trick did not make a difference. In 5.0 MPX mode, the app still crashed.

5 Megapixel Camera works by up-sampling the original iPhone pic. It adds pixels between existing pixels and assigns the new pixel a value by averaging the original neighboring pixels. I suspect the grain and high contrast of the night images gave 5 Megapixel fits.


Examples posted on iTunes store that go my attention to 5 Megapixel Camera.

On my 2nd try during flat daylight lighting - mixed results. I tried to shoot a normal 1200x1600 pixel normal image and match it with a similar photo shot at 1920x2560 pixel. Again 5 Megapixel Camera locked up about half the time when trying to save. Bummer.

And when the 5.0 MPX image did save - it took 15 - 20 seconds. After opening up the images on my computer, I could see the additional detail.

But the 5 megapixel feature seems to push the processing power of my 3G model iPhone. Way too many crashes. So I will go back to up-sampling in Photoshop. A much more reliable workflow.

5 Megapixel Camera does have other useful features. The main three I find useful are self-timer Countdown Mode, Time-Lapse Mode and the Big Button Shutter which turns the entire screen into the shutter.

The App has had several hundred reviews. About 50% give this app 5 stars. Most of the others 1 star. I also gave it a single star.

Why - the main feature crashes on my 3G iPhone and I could not troubleshoot this bug since the the developer CrowdCafe web site/support site is not up and running.

My suspicion is that this app works fine on the 3Gs model iPhone but does not on older models. This would explain why many reviewers love the app and the rest don't. But there is no way to check this theory of mine.

The bad: Takes about 20 seconds to up-sample and save a 1920x2560 image -when the process does not crash. Also the CrowdCafe web site and camera support web site are not up and running.

The good: Has several useful features like "Big Button" that turns the entire screen into a shutter, Time Lapse photography and self-timer Countdown Mode.

One Star out of five.

5 Megapixel Camera is currently 99 cents at the App Store in iTunes.


When 5 Megapixel was able to save an image I got good results. Enlargement of 2 megapixel image is on left, 5 megapixel version on right.

One of my sons put me on to this iPhone App. iVideoCamera adds video to the non-video iPhone 3G model. Unlike the more expensive iPhone 3Gs, the 3G model does not support video out of the box.

So instead of buying the 3Gs, I paid a total of 99 cents to shoot video.

What was most surprising, my first attempt actually produced a video on YouTube.

During one of my dinner breaks, I visited the Los Angeles Police Department Memorial Wall. For three minutes and 45 seconds I rambled along about the memorial and iVideoCamera. Once done, I saved the video to the iPhone cameraroll, then uploaded to YouTube.

The only problem came when trying to connect to YouTube. I had to try three times to connect. For the third time, I moved farther away from the large LAPD building to see if I could get better AT&T reception. It worked, but on the AT&T network took about 15 minutes to upload.

The video quality was not good, but most of the blame is on me, not the software. The current version captures unlimited video at ten frames a second at 160 x 213 resolution. Guess what, if you move and pan, you get blur. When I held my iPhone study I got a decent image.

I tried two more short videos this last week with better results. These two videos were shot at the lower quality setting. Higher quality 320x426 resolution is possible for clips lasting about 30 seconds.





The finished video can be uploaded to several web sites like YouTube. The app has a large number of reviews - some 2700 for this version. Most reviews either love the app or hate it, not much of a middle ground.

Most complaints are about low frames per second or small resolution. I ignored these because for 99 cents on a non-video camera, what do you expect.

The one common complaint is a bug mentioned by numerous reviewers - they could not upload to facebook.

The one feature I would like see improved is easy exporting to my desktop computer. Currently I have to ftp the file on my home wifi network. But once set up through Transmit, I was able easily able to move several videos to my desktop.

iVideoCamera is developed and sold by Laan Labs at http://labs.laan.com/.

Rose left at water's edge at Port Hueneme following the memorial program for the victims of Alaska Airlines Flight 261. Eighty-eight people died following a mechanical failure on the aircraft on January 31, 2000. Over 400 attended the program held at the Memorial Sundial for Flight 261 located at Port Hueneme.

Additional photos are posted at the Los Angeles Times web site. Link.

Two photos from my early walk tonight in downtown Los Angeles.

The iPad looks like a hit, but not for me. I am planning to wait a year or two for additional features and better software like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. Otherwise I have no use for the iPad.

The key features I liked were the external keyboard and case.



Is the iPad a computer, left, or a book, right? The new dock for the iPad, left includes a keyboard that turns the iPad into a computer. The new case, right, makes it into a book. Either way the new iPad and these accessories will attract a lot of interest from educators. I suspect iPads will be scooped up by school districts, resulting in declining MacBook sales.

The bad: no video conference camera, video output, USB ports or multitasking.

The good: price. At $499, the iPad is half the price I was expecting.

I will take a pass on the original iPad. I need a better way to import and export images (USB ports) and software multitasking to easily jump between programs. I will stick with my trusty MacBook.

At 11 a.m. this morning I sent out my morning diet coke twitter message:

"Shaq beats Lakers, more rain, stocks down another 50 - but I have my diet coke. Let there be rainbows!"

At 2:30 p.m. on the way to work, I shot this pic.


While headed eastbound on the Ventura freeway, this great rainbow popped out in the Woodland Hills area.

Life is good.

Last Thursday dinner break was during the monthly Art Walk in downtown Los Angeles. Robert Lachman and I went over to check out the Luminosity exhibit at the corner of 4th and Spring. Time for a slide show.




Artwork by Sean Sobczak on display at the Continental Gallery on Art Walk night 1/14/10. Show is titled “Luminosity.”

I finished working on these images last night, a week after shooting them - more playing around more with Topaz plugins.

Flickr



Playground equipment at Peppertree Park in Newbury Park after using Topaz Simplify.



A self-portrait shadow at Peppertree Park after using Topaz Simplify cartoon preset.



Photo from my iPhone using Topaz Simplify to give artist look and hide the grain in shadow areas.



Fountain in downtown Los Angeles given bump with Topaz Detail.

Last week I used one of my walks to visit the Triforium in downtown Los Angeles. From Wikipedia: "The Triforium is the name of a six story 60 ton public sculpture in the Los Angeles Mall Civic Center complex, located at the intersection of Temple and Main Streets in Downtown Los Angeles."

The work by artist Joseph Young was originally installed in 1975 and has been rebuilt in recent years. On this visit I wanted to try a few slow exposure camera twirls. By the look of my flickr Triforium photo set, below, I got carried away. This morning I uploaded about 50 frames.

I was having way too much fun.

While I am not covering Newbury Park High soccer this season, I had to shoot the Alumni matches. Besides my son Nick was playing for the Alumni.

Here are the links to Dotphoto albums:

NPHS Girls Alumni

NPHS Boys Alumni


After all the years of getting faces with ball, just for once I wanted something different. So here is my feet and ball photo from Alumni game. Of course I ran it through Topaz Adjust.