photography

A total solar eclipse – the entire sun blocked by the passage of the moon – is one of the most awe-inspiring natural events you can experience. I travelled to Germany to view one in 1999, and I remember it vividly today. The light getting gradually dimmer and dimmer, a deep twilight and then the sudden and dramatic transition into total darkness.

Monday will see America’s first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in almost a century. You need to be in quite a narrow band of the U.S. to experience the totality (see map below), but you can experience a partial eclipse from anywhere in the country …

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One of the problems of being a keen photographer is that it’s easy to slip into a mode where you treat every photograph as if it were a professional assignment. You can end up carrying around a lot of kit, and then spending a lot of time editing photos.

I now make a conscious effort to decide my objective in advance. Is it artistic – where the kit and the time will be justified by the result – or am I simply seeking to capture a memory of an event, aka a snapshot?

Even for proper photography, I rarely carry a DSLR these days: my trusty Sony a6300 copes with most things. But when I’m just after a snapshot, I try to keep things simple …

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Former Google senior vice president of Social, Vic Gundotra, has said that Android phones are literally years behind the iPhone when it comes to photography – and it’s Android’s fault.

Gundotra started by praising the quality of the iPhone 7 Plus camera in a Facebook post.

The end of the DSLR for most people has already arrived. I left my professional camera at home and took these shots at dinner with my iPhone 7 using computational photography (portrait mode as Apple calls it). Hard not to call these results (in a restaurant, taken on a mobile phone with no flash) stunning. Great job Apple.

But he went further …

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I’ve always been a keen photographer. At 14, my father bought me an old fully-manual film SLR, and my aunt gave me her old darkroom equipment, so my bedroom became a darkroom with a bed in the corner.

When the first DLSRs hit the market, I waited impatiently for them to drop below the $1000 mark. That early Nikon D70 was replaced by a D3 which I still have today. If you had suggested then that it could be just a few short years before cameraphones could replace a DSLR, I’d have laughed.

But camera technology has developed at an astonishing pace. That D3 already spends most of its time gathering dust in a drawer. My Sony a6300 compact camera delivers near-identical results in most situations. And the camera I use most on an everyday basis is my iPhone.

There are just four remaining pieces of the puzzle before an iPhone can replace a DSLR, and it looks to me like we’re just 2-3 years away from cracking all of them …

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The move by Apple and other smartphone manufacturers to dual cameras could be just the start, suggests a CNET piece. It argues that future smartphones could have three, four, five or more cameras …

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Unusually for me, there aren’t many words in this drone diary – mostly I’m going to let the video do the talking!

When I reviewed the Litchi app last time – an app that lets the drone fly completely autonomously on a pre-programmed path – I mentioned a plan I had in mind for a future project at that tumbledown castle.

The plan was to take a dancer there and shoot a dance routine from the air in a beautiful setting. This required the cooperation of the weather, but it all came together earlier this month. It was a lot of fun, and I think the result really shows the value of a video camera you’re able to position exactly where you want it – whether up high or down low …

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Adobe has released a new version of Photoshop Lightroom for iOS that includes more powerful tools for shooting on the iPhone. Authentic HDR is a new mode that rivals competing high-dynamic-range methods. Version 2.7 also includes exporting raw images and a new widget for 3D Touch and the Today view in Notification Center.

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Apple’s Shot on iPhone campaign certainly helps promote the capabilities of what has been described as the world’s most popular camera, and they can also inspire iPhone owners to up their own photographic game. In the latest offering (via CNN), Apple partnered with 15 photographers around the world to capture the new year’s even festivities in cities ranging from Sydney, Australia, to Iceland.

But if the spectacular fireworks photos in particular inspired you to take your own shots next time you attend a display, you should know that there’s a little more to it than just pointing your iPhone at the sky and hoping for the best …

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Christmas has come and gone, but for many the holiday celebrations will continue onwards for the next week. Apple’s latest flagship iPhone may just be sitting wrapped and tucked away for many of you, and we decided it was a great time to introduce some enhanced photography apps.

Here are some of the best photography apps in the iOS App Store that can help you take advantage of the best that your new iPhone 7 can offer…

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Not the most artistic of photos, but illustrates my point …

I did cringe slightly as I wrote that headline, as it would be more correctly stated as ‘How to get shallow depth of field’ – bokeh being the particular appearance of the out-of-focus areas. But, thanks to Apple, the world is using one term to refer to the other, so I gave in where the headline was concerned.

Only the iPhone 7 Plus, with its dual-camera system, has the ability to generate artificial shallow depth of field, an effect activated in yesterday’s beta. But all iPhones are capable of generating optical shallow depth of field in very limited circumstances, and it’s actually really easy to do so …

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If you’re still waiting for your iPhone 7 or 7 Plus to arrive and want to get a sense of what the camera can do – or you have yours already and are looking for some inspiration – a Redditor has collated all of Apple’s sample photos and videos. You can view them on Imgur, or download them from Dropbox at maximum quality.

He used a simple but ingenious method to obtain them …

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While companies like Apple shoot most of their own photography and/or create their own renders, most companies rely a great deal on so-called ‘stock photography’ – photos shot on spec by photographers in the hope of licensing them to companies later.

Selling stock photography can be extremely hard work. You have to upload and keyword them, and the percentage of photos that sell is very low even for top-notch photographers. But if you want to give it a shot, Adobe has just made the process really painless …

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This weekend’s discussion of the Sony a6300 got me thinking about the iPhone’s camera, and how great it can be when wielded properly. Our own Ben Lovejoy shared his tips for taking good iPhone photos a few months ago, and now I’d like to share my 10 go-to tips for snapping better iPhone pictures.
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The iPhone can shoot 4K video, and now even the iPad can shoot 4K video. Yet, there are times when you need the flexibility and power provided by a standalone camera.

Standalone cameras have inherent advantages over smartphone cameras, despite the major strides made by iPhone photography over the last few years. Even with amazing third-party apps like FiLMiC Pro, which lets you adjust things like ISO and shutter speed, you’re still stuck with a constant aperture and fixed lens.

While smartphones have replaced point and shoot cameras for a vast amount of people, standalone cameras, especially ones with interchangeable lenses like the recently-released 24MP Sony a6300, still have their place.

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Adobe is out with an updated version of Lightroom for iPhone and iPad today which includes one highly requested feature. Starting with versions 2.2, Lightroom for iOS supports full resolution image output. This means quality is retained when editing and sharing photographs using Lightroom whether the image was shot on the device or imported from another device.

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When Apple first made the move into larger-screen phones with the launch of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, there was only tiny difference between them in terms of features: the larger-screened model included optical image stabilization while the smaller one didn’t. This was likely driven simply by the practicality of fitting the technology into the larger device rather than any real intention to differentiate the two devices feature-wise.

But the rumors suggest that the iPhone 7 Plus may offer a dual-camera system, offering optical zoom, while the smaller iPhone 7 won’t. A fresh report today suggests that a number of camera lens makers have sent dual-lens samples to Apple for testing with the iPhone 7 Plus.

Assuming the optical image stabilization also remains exclusive to the Plus, the combination of the two features means that – for the first time – some of those who might have opted for the smaller model now have reason to consider the larger one instead. Could this suggested second step by Apple indicate that it intends to increasingly differentiate the two flagship iPhone models as time goes on … ?

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We heard a report in November that Apple was testing an iPhone 7 model with dual rear cameras, and a patent application published today not only confirms that Apple is indeed exploring the idea, but reveals some extremely exciting possibilities with such a setup.

The most basic of these, noted by Patently Apple, is effectively optical zoom. By fitting two separate camera modules behind the lens, and creating a single lens with both standard and telephoto sections, you’d be able to switch between two different focal lengths. For the first time, you’d be able to take a zoomed-in photo without cropping away pixels to end up with a lower-resolution image.

But the possible applications described in the patent go way beyond this …

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Apple has heavily touted the camera capabilities of the iPhone 6/iPhone 6s and iPhone 6 Plus/iPhone 6s Plus since the first introduction of the devices in 2014. The company ran a worldwide ad campaign called “Shot on iPhone” that showcased some of the beautiful photographs taken with iPhones. Now, the Chief Official White House Photographer has shared a collection of images that he took throughout 2015 with his iPhone.

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Two weeks after quietly updating the Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader to USB 3.0 and adding iPhone support to the formerly iPad-only accessory, Apple is signaling that similar changes may be coming to its cousin, the Lightning to USB Camera Adapter. Notably, Apple has updated the USB Camera Adapter’s official page to add support for the iPhone 5, 5c, 5s, 6, 6 Plus, 6s, and 6s Plus, mirroring a change to the SD Card Camera Reader that was discovered alongside iOS 9.2. Though iPhone compatibility was added in iOS 9.2, Apple previously left the USB Camera Adapter’s page unchanged.

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