iPhone 11 Pro x Moment 15mm Fisheye

Now that I’ve had the iPhone 11 Pro for a few months, I just wanted to do a quick post about the value of using Moment lenses with this phone. I have the Moment 60mm, which is a telephoto equivalent; the Moment 18mm Wide Lens, and the Moment 15mm, or "Superfish", and I used them all regularly with my iPhone 7.

My Moment collection

My Moment collection

But when the iPhone 11 was first announced, I wondered about whether these lens attachments would still be as useful, given that the iPhone now has those focal lengths covered with its built-in trio of lenses. Also, the Moment lenses require having a Moment case, with its bayonet lens mount, but the new iPhone 11 cases didn’t ship until sometime in December. By the time I finally received mine, I’d kind of gotten used to not having access to my Moment lenses at all, and was getting along just fine without them:

My iPhone 11 Pro with Moment Case

My iPhone 11 Pro with Moment Case

Anyay, I finally got my case, but I wasn't using the lenses. It was just more convenient to not have to carry them around, plus I could be seamlessly switching between the focal lenghts of my iPhone's stock lenses.

I was out shooting some low-light photography, and I eventually figured out at least one answer for why you'd still want to use these lenses: Night Mode. Apple's Ultrawide lens (0.5x, as it's indicated in the iPhone's Camera app) is great, but is limited in a couple of ways. First, it's got a smaller aperture than the Wide (aka default or 1x) lens, meaning it lets in less light. It also doesn't work with Night Mode, which makes it doubly tough to use in low light situations. But, you can solve that by using one of Moment's Wide or Fisheye lenses stacked on top of the built-in iPhone Wide lens:

As you can see in the images above, Night Mode is impressive, but with the Moment 15mm Fisheye (fka the Moment "Superfish"), the field of view improves dramatically. These images are straight out of camera, with no adjustments, though as a matter of preference I'd normally correct some of the fisheye distortion using the Moment Pro Camera App.

Just as a matter of comparison, here's an image shot with the built-in iPhone 11 Ultrawide:

Same scene as the first two images, shot with the Ultrawide

Same scene as the first two images, shot with the Ultrawide

My intention with this comparison isn't to disparage the Ultrawide; it's a fantastic addition to the hardware, and I'm willing to bet it'll get improved optics on Apple's next iPhone, which is safe to assume we'll hear about in September. It's just to illustrate what a difference Night Mode makes, and to show how you can compound those advantages with an add-on like the Moment lenses.

Similar results are available on the other end of the spectrum; namely, stacking a Moment telephoto lens on top of the built-in Tele lens will get you that much closer to your subject. Just be aware that you won't be able to use Portrait mode, because when a Moment lens is mounted on the iPhone's 2x lens, it obstructs the iPhone's other lenses, which it uses to read the scene and generate depth of field and bokeh.

Attached Moment lenses block the iPhone’s other lenses

Attached Moment lenses block the iPhone’s other lenses

Your First Mac

As part of their 30th Anniversary of the Mac celebration, Apple has a cool year-by-year visualization of peoples' first Macs and what they used them for. Scrubbing through the timeline, it's interesting watching Internet & Email surge into popularity in the mid-90s - followed by the decline of Desktop Publishing shortly thereafter.

I've used Macs since college - in my freshman year, one of my friends had a Mac SE II, which was an amazing machine for playing Tetris (and writing papers, of course). Later, when I transferred to SCAD, the labs also had a bunch of Quadras and various other assorted Macs in the Desktop Publishing and Computer Art departments.

I've worked on nothing but Macs at the various advertising gigs I've had since I graduated, but the first Mac that I bought for myself was a 15" G4 PowerBook in 2001. The thing had 8MB of VRAM and a 500Mhz processor, and it cost me close to $4000, but it lasted a good 6 years before it started to feel old and sluggish. It shipped with OS 9, but I remember running at least up through OS 10.4 (maybe even 10.5) on it, which is kind of impressive, looking back on it. It's still one of my favorite Macs, in terms of its design, although it had its issues (the stress cracks near the hinges, the heat, etc.).

My setup, circa 2007. MacBook Pro and G5 Tower.

My setup, circa 2007. MacBook Pro and G5 Tower.

Around 2003, I had a brief part-time gig at the Soho Apple Store. That was a fun gig, and the employee discount helped me get a G5 tower and one of those giant plastic-bezeled 23" Cinema Displays.

Eventually, I upgraded from my old PowerBook to one of the Intel-based (and now aluminum rather than titanium) 15" MacBook Pros.

2009 - iMac 27" and MacBook Pro

2009 - iMac 27" and MacBook Pro

When the G5 got long in the tooth, I replaced that with a 27" iMac. This was about the time I was finally sold on the iMac as a high-end machine - by now there was no point in spending $2500 on a MacPro (tower only!) just because I considered myself a power user.

A couple of years later, I got my first (and only, so far) iPad (the 2nd-gen version), and ended up selling my MacBook Pro.

Current setup: unibody MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt Cinema Display

Current setup: unibody MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt Cinema Display

For a while there, I was rocking the iMac/iPad combination, and it was cool, but I missed the ability to go completely mobile and get work done. Don't misconstrue that as me validating the "iPads-are-for-content-consumption" trope - the fact is, my 9-to-5 requires me to work on desktop-only apps like Flash Professional and Photoshop. Plus, I use Aperture to manage my giant photo libraries (though I'm dabbling with Lightroom more and more lately, given the neglect Aperture has been suffering).

I've always held on to the philosophy that I should get the best computer I could afford, and that way I could extend its useful life for as long as possible, and then sell it for a pretty decent price. That's worked for me for the last 13 years and 5 Macs.

So that's my Mac history - what's yours?

Source: http://www.apple.com/30-years/your-first-mac/

iPad Art - Morgan Freeman Finger Painting

I'm genuinely surprised that there are still people who bring out the "iPads are for consuming content" trope.

On another note, this got me remembering something from my old art school days. The abstract expressionists, if I remember right, were all about boiling down a medium to the essence of that medium. The things unique to painting that make it essentially painting are paint and a canvas (and maybe a brush). They weren't keen on one medium emulating another, and as such, weren't into photorealistic painting. But here's Kyle Lambert taking it a step further, using a virtual canvas on a digital thing to emulate photography. Interesting stuff.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEdRLlqdgA4

Pencil | FiftyThree

I've been quite pleased with my iPad 2 over the last two-and-a-half years, not feeling the familiar twinge of gadget envy when newer devices like the iPad 3, 4, or Mini came out.

That's started changing lately, particularly as the Apple cogniscenti have been pushing out their reviews of the iPad Air (and Mini), but I've been coping - even though I'm noticing more and more lagging here and there during day-to-day use of my aging precioussssss.

But just today I was reading about Wacom's Intuos Creative Stylus, and I was shocked to see that it was incompatible with the iPad 2. It's expensive, but I won't lie - I was bummed.

And now this: the Pencil, by FiftyThree, makers of one of my very favorite apps, Paper. Again, it's incompatible with my iPad, and the culprit is low-energy Bluetooth, which only made its appearance on Apple's tablets post-iPad 2.

If I'm being realistic about it, I don't think I can exactly afford to upgrade my iPad at the moment. But it's official: I'm definitely lusting after a new one.

Source: http://www.fiftythree.com/pencil

A Serious Imaging Company →

From Dave Caolo on TUAW:

Finally, the message delivered by the iPhone 5s camera is clear: Apple is becoming a serious imaging company. They spent a lot of time on that camera. You don't need a point-and-shoot camera anymore. There's no need to find a cable or a memory card reader. This is your camera.

This is why it's so frustrating to serious photographers that on the other side of the serious imaging equation -- ie. serious image processing -- all we're getting from Apple is crickets.

I remember being all excited and diving in to the Aperture 3.0 update just as my wife and I were leaving for a vacation in Paris. We took that vacation in February 2010. The current version of Aperture is 3.4.5. In contrast, Adobe Lightroom version 3.0 was released in June of 2010. Lightroom 5.2 release candidate is available now on Adobe Labs.

On the other hand, during the keynote, Phil Schiller did say that the new camera system is "for the rest of us", though - for the folks that just want to get take a picture, and let their cameraphone do the work.

Broken

First time in four years of owning an iPhone that this has happened to me. I guess I was due? I still don't really plan on getting a case. I might, at most, get one of the anti-glare screen protectors that I had on my iPhone 4, but I think that's it. ​I'll just have to not drop the replacement phone they (eventually) give me.

​8 days later...

RetinaBook Pro

I stopped by the West 14th Street Apple Store, and having seen it in person, I can join in the chorus: Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Retinal Display definitely looks amazing. Thin, light, fast as hell. I’m in the camp that thinks it’s pricey, but will get cheaper in a generation or so (like the MacBook Air did). It’s the direction the notebook industry as a whole will invariably go in.

Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Nerd

Self-Portrait
Was messing around with some new gear I got after being inspired by the wonderful and talented Syl Arena’s excellent Speedliter’s Intensive Workshop which I attended at Adorama a few weeks ago, and came up with this shot of me nerding out in my office. Aside from my super-shiny face (sorry, didn’t have a makeup artist or stylist available at the time), I really like this shot. The framing could stand to be a hair wider, but my 17-55mm lens is in the shop for repairs to the IS system.
Camera info: I’m using Canon’s EOS Utility to focus, change camera settings and shoot via Live View on my laptop (because even though Aperture 3 now finally supports tethered shooting with most modern Canon cameras, it only gives you a shutter button and no other control over the camera). You can sort of see my Live View display via Screen Sharing in the lower corner of the iMac in the background.
Aperture Hot Folder is feeding the images into Aperture on my laptop. Also visible on the iMac are some earlier tests I did in Aperture, while the camera was tethered to that computer.

 

Feel free to check out the photo in larger sizes and poke around in the metadata over on Flickr.

Aperture 3 Unsung Feature: Simultaneous Use on Multiple Machines

Courtesy of Apple

I don’t know if I’m pointing out something everyone already knows, but one of the features of Aperture 3 that I really like is the ability to run it on my two machines at the same time, using the same license, on the same network. In previous versions, when Aperture was launched, it would detect that the same serial number was already in use on another machine on the network, flash you a dialog box alerting you to this, and quit immediately.

Aperture 3 and Syncing Multiple Libraries

Joseph Linaschke over at ApertureExpert.com has an excellent article that goes over in detail one of my favorite new features of Aperture 3: the ability to not only manage multiple libraries, but to synchronize them as well. If you work with Aperture on both a desktop and a laptop, it is now possible, for instance to have a pared down version of your library that goes on the road with you, and can be synced back to the main library once you’re back home. You can also export any project (or album or book, etc.) as a Library, move it to another machine, and open it up with no fuss. Changes made to the project — including metadata, adjustments, etc. — on either machine are applied when you sync, and Aperture does a great job handling conflicts between the two, allowing you to specify which library’s changes should take precedence. Head on over to the article for more details on how it all works.

Aperture Quick Tip: Update Your Metadata Presets

Aperture’s metadata is saved in an XML document and can be easily updated.

Aperture users: Are you using Metadata Presets? If not, you should consider it - they’re really handy for entering metadata on large numbers of images, particularly at the point of import. I have one fairly generic preset that just has my copyright info, country, and name, which I use for everyday shooting, and come up with others depending on the shoot (travel, events, etc). What I realized when the new year rolled around was that my copyright still said “©2009 Simon Abrams. All Rights Reserved.”, and that I had no easy way of changing it, due to Aperture’s woefully spartan interface for managing or editing metadata presets. In Aperture’s current incarnation, all you can do is add, rename or delete a preset; you can’t edit any of the text within it.

So what to do? Well, a little poking around in the Application Support folder (specifically ~/Library/Application Support/Aperture) reveals that Aperture’s metadata presets are (quasi-)conveniently contained in an XML document. Simply opening up the file in your text editor of choice enables you to make changes to the metadata content, save it, and voila, you’re in business. Of course, ideally, you’d be able to make these simple edits in Aperture itself - maybe we can add this to our wishlist for (the increasingly vaporware-ish) Aperture 3.