Macro Me, iPhone Style

Fingerprint taken by using a water droplet at a macro lens.

Being a macro enthusiast, you can imagine my excitement when my friend and expert Starbucks barista Carlos Cespedes came to me with this question; “Is it true you can put a water droplet on you mobile phone camera lens and take closeup images of insects?” “Well, let’s find out”, I said, and proceeded to locate a droplet of water to prove him right.

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It helps when you put the trashbag INSIDE the trashcan...

Queen of Hearts

Detail: Liliana Porter, Alice: The Way Out, 1994. Ceramic Mosaic, 50th Street Station.

The Rest of My Day…

Detail: Dorothy Hafner, Tango in the Garden, 2006

Detail: W. Cole Brigham, Charles Merrill Memorial Window, 1912

Detail: W. Cole Brigham, Charles Merrill Memorial Window, 1912

These are selected images from a visit to the Brooklyn Museum. They are all from the iPhone 4S, reduced from 3264 x 2448 px to 1600 x 1200 px.

I didn’t bring a camera with me on this outing, relying solely on the super-wide iPhone camera.

Museums can be a great venue for creative photography if one approaches it from the right perspective. Tight crops of two and three-dimensional artwork can yield beautiful images and avoid the inevitable reflections in glass cases. A black iPhone with a black case or bumper can help to camouflage itself, especially if held close to the glass.

Tile Mosaic, Penn Station, NY

Early morning commute on the 1, a few moments to kill between trains. A momento, a little piece of art, to take home. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw, the image was cropped and very slightly geometrically corrected.

Lighting in subway stations is harsh and unpredictable. In this case, it was mediocre, but the iPhone’s HDR capture mode helped to fill in the blown out specular highlight, and to even out the color. This made it easier to add vibrancy using the Saturation and Vibrance sliders. Very little exposure adjustment was needed as the iPhone did an excellent job in calculating the shutter speed.

Abandoned Bicycle

Bird Convention

Autumn Leaves

Serendipitous Sunset

iPhone 4S; 1/20 s @ f/2.4, ISO 200

I stepped out of my house to put something in my car, and this is what I saw. I just happened to have my iPhone in my pocket. I double-clicked the home button and tapped the camera icon to turn on the camera from the home screen without having to log in. I made sure it was set to HDR, because moments before, I used the psuedo flash. Seconds later, the sunset was gone.

Conde Nast in a Fog

Four Times Square, aka the Condé Nast Building, veiled in morning fog.

Walking south along Broadway on this temperate morning, I came upon this. It had been foggy since the previous evening. The iPhone 4S camera was able to resolve all the highlight detail in the sky, capturing the fog in full detail, which was what the picture is all about.

Lately, I’ve been keeping the iPhone camera’s HDR turned on full time. It seems to be its forté. The iPhone captures both regular and HDR images at same time, so you can see the difference, and if you don’t like it, you can simply use the standard exposure. There’s no down side. This is how the image looks without HDR:

With HDR off, the top of the building disappears completely.

Not only is there more detail, but certain colors which are difficult to capture, like reds for example, retain their richness. The shadows became a little darker, but if this were a low key image, they would have opened up. Even so, they are easily lightened in Adobe Camera Raw with Fill Light. However, Recovery does nothing to bring back the lost detail in the sky compared with the iPhones’s HDR feature.

I’m discovering that the iPhone 4S is one of the most capable, fully automatic cameras I’ve ever used.

Halloween Nor’Easter 2011

When a tree fell on my neighbor’s deck, I reached for the iPhone. With its all-glass exterior and the “bumper” which acts like a rubber gasket to guard against the elements, it’s fairly impervious to the rigors of a snowstorm. Bottom line, it got the shot in the pinch, and the pictures are sharp. I was able to send them to my neighbor directly from the iPhone through either messaging or email.

Fall Flowers

Mums