Taking iPhoneography to the next level

Posted: September 14th, 2011 ˑ Filled under: Photography ˑ No Comments

The last week I’ve been experimenting with the camera function of my Iphone. The whole iPhoneography hype has interested me for some time now. The idea of taking a quick shot on the street when you see something interesting is great. This video has inspired me a lot. Richard Koci Hernandez is really an iPhoneography pro. There is a lot of truth in his tips. An iphone gives you the ability to take a picture without people noticing it! What a great artist.

Too bad a lot of camera apps are so slow to start. Even the standard one. That’s why during my holiday I just left the app open and locked my Iphone. Ok this is not good for your battery, 0% within a couple of hours but otherwise you miss some nice shots. Thank God for friendly shop owners who let me use my charger for a few minutes. I hope that the new camera function on the iOS 5 update will be faster.

A friend of mine, who is also an iphone geek, suggested I buy an Olloclip. This is a quick 3-in-1 click on lens solution for the Iphone 4 that includes a fisheye, wide-angle and macro lens. When my friend showed me the website I couldn’t resist buying one. After using it for the first time I was convinced. My favorite lens is the fisheye. It really gives your picture something extra. The only downside is that when you use it with Instagram you won’t see the full effect of the fisheye due to the square frame. You can solve this problem by using a picture from your camera roll but then you’ll have 2 black boarders. (As you can see in the first picture above) Damn you instagram, haha.

The wide-angle is great for landscapes or group photos. It gives you more freedom to make a large composition. I even used it a couple of times to form a panorama shot in the Pano App but then you risk deformation in your photo. I haven’t used the macro lens that much because you have to get extremely close to the subject. It is great to take a picture of a fabric or a texture though, just not really my cup of tea.

Even in poor light conditions the Iphone does his job. You can see that there is a lot of grain in the pictures but I don’t mind. You get an analogue feel when you combine the grain with a retro filter. But most of the time I don’t edit the pictures. It depends on the subject.

For the moment I’m using the app: camera +. It has a lot of functions such as : stabilizer, timer, burst, manual focus and WB. After taking a picture you can edit them. There are a couple of preset settings: clarity, portrait, landscape, etc. Besides that you can add a filter. The retro filters are my favorite. They are comparable with the filters on Instagram! If you aren’t using a special camera app you should download this one. It gives you a lot more creative freedom.
Below you can see my favorite iPhoneography apps! I will review them some other time.