Yesterday at the Shanghai World Expo Canon exhibited a new camera concept, the Wonder Camera.

Fans everywhere of Sleeper inspired design rejoiced…

Engadget story on the Wonder Camera and via Electronista.

I received my iPhone 4 last Wednesday, one of the group to get them a day early from Apple.

Initial thoughts:

• Overall, it is speedy but no hugely speedy over the iPhone 3Gs. I’d rate it at about 25% faster and that seems to be confirmed by a recent Ars Technica review.
• The immediate tactile impression is that it feels like a block of glass. Very well made, very solid, quite refined, but I found myself not wanting to put it down knowing that it would be resting on the glass back. In fact, I felt a bit nervous until I found a case for it – a simple Incipio NGP case, already in stock at a local AT&T store. This is a great soft case if you are looking for something discreet which doesn’t add bulk and still offers some protection.
• Once you turn the iPhone 4 on it’s all about the screen. The screen is drop dead gorgeous. For images and text I never felt the previous iPhone screens were bad (maybe off color a bit, etc.) but once you see the new screen there is no going back. The color is very accurate but more so photos on the iPhone 4 have a depth and level of detail that makes your draw drop. It’s rivaling what you get with a calibrated high-end desktop monitor. The experience with text is similar and it is, as Apple says, more print-like because it is so sharp and clear.
• Call quality has jumped up a notch or two with crystal clear clarity on the phone end. In terms of signal robustness, I have had one dropped call in the six days I’ve had the phone. I was also able to listen to streaming internet radio via an app for much of a 3.5 hour drive from Washington, DC north this past weekend. I would rate this similar to my experience with the 3Gs.

The camera has been updated on the new phone. Still images are more detailed and sharper. Video takes a big leap forward, moving up to HD. My main video camera is a seven year old Panasonic which uses mini-DV tapes. It is not HD and I love the camera but it has sat on a shelf since getting video in the 3Gs. I don’t want to deal with tapes and, yes, I know that this is comparing apples and oranges (cel phone vs. dedicated video camera) but for me convenience has been winning out.

I was looking forward to seeing if the HD capability on the iPhone 4 will negate the need for a Flip camera or similar for simple video. It will. If it does for you will depend upon what your standards and needs are – but again if convenience is the determinant then the video on the iPhone 4 can fit the bill. The biggest drawbacks to it are that the camera is so light it can make getting steady video a challenge, the iPhone 4 video does exhibit some rubberyness in the image if the camera or the subject moves too quickly, and some greater control over color, exposure, and focus would be nice.

This was shot and edited on the iPhone. The edit was made using Apple’s new iMovie app.

An HD version of the movie can be found here (for a limited time due to bandwidth.)

Video was shot on Chesapeake Bay in St. Leonard, MD, and in Washington, DC, at the Hillwood Estate Museum and Gardens.

Webb Cove, Stonington, ME, 2007.

You have to think that at some point in the past man stood on the shore and looked out across the water. Behind him was the land he knew, in front of him the water, the horizon, and the sky. Not having the ability to go to the sky, nor having the ability to travel under the water beyond one breath, he thought, I need to go across there. I need to visit the land off in the distance. I need to discover the land I cannot see. Then, having done that, having ventured across oceans and returned, the next realms were above and below.

To go to outer space, to work one mile down beneath the surface of the water, both are inhospitable environments which test the limits of our technology. Complicate each with additional risk factors, going to space with a reusable rocket like the Space Shuttle, or not only venturing one mile down but actually working there via robots and drilling for oil, and you have situations which demand great respect for planning and fail-safe backups.

The New York Times had an article recently exploring the parallels between the current Gulf situation and Melville’s Moby Dick. What has struck me though is how the oil spill in the Gulf reminds me of the two Space Shuttle disasters. Obviously, the goals in each are wildly different, science and exploration versus profit. But in each case, it was technology which brought us to the forefront of what was possible and it was human planning and decisions which determined whether it could be done safely and smartly.

The Challenger and Columbia Shuttle missions both revealed instances where corners were cut when better backup systems could have been incorporated. For Challenger, ejector seats and pressurized suits were foregone even though they had been included in test flights. For Columbia, the mission brought front and center the issues of designing a re-usable spacecraft without including a method of checking the integrity of the ship before re-entry and of not providing a way to repair simple exterior issues while in flight.

Similarly, in the Gulf of Mexico BP cut corners in its quest to turn a profit quickly and the government was lax its oversight. One would think that to drill for oil without the utmost in safeguards would be a deal breaker. While a business person might argue that the cost of that is too high, it inhibits exploration and production, what we are seeing is that the cost of not doing that is even greater.

The leading edge of technology may make things possible but it’s the human element which will always be the mitigating factor.

For the moment I’m watching the iPad from afar. Already the owner of an iPhone and a laptop, the iPad is not jumping out at me as a necessity. You can’t tether to it when shooting without a laptop or a computer in the middle, so no benefit there. You can do what you can do on the iPhone, only larger, but also without the versatility of a laptop.

One area where it does show promise is as a portfolio but whether it can stand on its own or if it needs to act in concert with a printed portfolio is to be determined. The other area where it may have some effect is the magazine industry – potentially providing a new way for readers to view publications and a new way for publishers to present their content.

Some photographers and publishers are predicting a sea change, which when coupled with the video capabilities of new dslr’s or the Red camera, will drive motion to become the new still image. Witness the Alexx Henry videos such as this one for Viv magazine. When I watch it though – I just shake my head. Sure it can be done but how often and on whose budget? When I see the amount of work, the equipment used, and the size of the crews involved it’s hard to believe that this level of production is sustainable in any way.

Rob Haggart of aPhotoEditor.com has an insightful evaluation of the iPad and its implications for work, viewing photographs, and the magazine industry. Video samples of it in use as photographer’s portfolio and as a magazine e-reader are included.

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May 4th, 2010 – Update:

In addition to running aPhotoEditor.com, Rob Haggart is also the force behind aPhotoFolio.com. My site runs off his service. Rob announced yesterday that aPhotoFolio.com is the first portfolio web design company to release custom iPad versions of their members’ sites.

As seen below in the comments, regardless of where you fall on the iPad and its usefulness, having a site which re-formats itself to take advantage of the iPad is a smart move.

My web site is, as always,  jonroemer.com. To see how it re-formats itself for an iPad, view it on an iPad, or get a preview of the iPad version by going to ipad.jonroemer.com. This forces your web browser, on any computer, to launch the iPad version. It’s not as functional as it is on the iPad (you can’t swipe to move through the images or the thumbnails) but it gives a clear sense of layout and the automatic reformatting.

A week ago Friday I was at the KGB Bar on East 4th in NYC to photograph writers reading from their works. The light in the bar was as low as low can get. Not wanting to disturb the activity with a flash, I had the bartender turn all the fixtures up full. This provided the bare minimum of light needed to work (ISO 3200, the limit on my Canon 1Ds Mark III’s.)

85mm f/1.2L II, f/1.2 @ 1/60

85mm f/1.2L II, f/1.2 @ 1/60

85mm f/1.2L II, f/1.2 @ 1/60

As fun as it is to be a fly on the wall with the 85mm f/1.2 II lens, it was a blast to continue to push the new 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II and the new 24mm f/1.4 II lenses to their limits.

70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, 135mm and f/2.8 @ 1/10

70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, 100mm and f/2.8 @ 1/8

70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, 150mm and f/2.8 @ 1/40

70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, 70mm and f/2.8 @ 1/10

Probably not a big surprise but there was more light on the street at 9pm than in the bar. These images are at ISO 1600.

24mm f/1.4L II, f/1.8 @ 1/40

70-200mm f/2.8L IS II, 70mm and f/2.8 @ 1/15

Both lenses are great improvements over their predecessors. The 24mm f/1.4 II is just shy of the new 24mm TSE II lens in terms of quality. It has little to no chromatic aberration, less distortion, and is noticeably sharper overall. Wide open it has none of the fuzzy hazy dreamy look common to Canon’s older f/1.4 lenses.

The 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II builds on the previous generation (a very good lens in its own right) and kicks it up a few notches. It’s sharper, focuses faster, and as seen above, it extends the IS range. Getting sharp images at 1/8 second with the new lens is very easy. The old model lens was about 2/3 stop more limited, with it 1/15 second handheld was my limit.

The new 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II is also a more consistent focuser than the old version. My copy of the old version would often have trouble with vertical images. It was not uncommon to get a vertical sequence which would miss focus when a horizontal sequence of the same subject was fine. I have yet to have this occur with the new lens in three weeks of shooting.

I assume the 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II and the 24mm f/1.4 II both have Canon’s new lens coatings, similar to the 24mm TSE II and 17mm TSE. I don’t know how they work but work they do. Combined with the lower distortion, images from the new lenses feel crisper and more three dimensional.

All of the images above were processed in Aperture 3 with no noise reduction and only a touch of sharpening added to the sized-down jpegs.

Photoshop turned 20 yesterday – so it’s time to bring out a couple of quick stories.

I first started using Photoshop back with version 2.5. It was on a Windows PC in 1992 or 1993. Back then, if you bought a mid-level or higher scanner Photoshop was often included for free and that’s how I came to own it. While I didn’t dive in head first, I played with it for many years and initially used it as a tool to clean up and prep scans. It wasn’t until the advent of good digital cameras in the late 90′s, early 00′s, that it became integral to how I work.

I have two brushes with Photoshop greatness in my career. The first is indirect and occurred when Adobe Camera Raw came out. In spite of the all the hoopla over it I found it to be challenged at best when working with Nikon raw files. My comments led an extended email correspondence with author Bruce Fraser and to spending lots of time photographing a MacBeth ColorChecker so that Bruce could test the files and pass information along to Adobe.

The second was much more direct. One of the successive versions of Adobe Camera Raw had a bug or two in it. I found them and posted them on an Adobe forum. Shortly after I got an email from Thomas Knoll, co-author/developer/inventor of Photoshop, with an invitation to be a beta tester for Adobe Camera Raw. I did that for a couple of years, Camera Raw versions 2.2~3.3. After 3.3 the beta program seemed to fizzle out. Releases went right to public betas or whatever part of the program I was in was asked to do less.  It was never quite clear since communication was often one-sided (from Adobe outward.)

By the spring of 2006 I was starting to use Apple’s Aperture as my main raw processor and it was time to move on. Regardless of all the shifting about with raw processors over the years (Nikon Capture, MacBibble, ACR, DPP, Aperture) as digital capture matured from an infant to a pre-teen (?), the one constant has been Photoshop for almost all work beyond the initial raw conversion.

Happy Birthday Photoshop!

San Francisco, CA, 1/27/10, 12:28PM EST – Apple Inc. surprised the world today unveiling its newest device, the iCaplet – a small pill embossed with the Apple logo. Media and fans were sent into a frenzy of excitement and confusion. The world had expected the iTablet – a thin netbook sized computer which would revolutionize print media the way that iPods and iPhones had reinvented music and smart phones.

Apple's iCaplet (actual size.)

With the crowd at the Yerba Buena Center both cheering and booing, Apple CEO Steve Jobs, held sway saying, “Now, this is the coolest thing I have ever done! This device is amazing and it will change your life! I know you expected a tablet based computer but the more we studied it the more we couldn’t see the value in something bigger than a cell phone and smaller than a laptop. I mean, come on, WTF?! You don’t need that, trust me, I looked into it. What you need is the iCaplet. You swallow this, wait a minute for it to boot up your system, and then the whole world opens up. It enables you to read books and magazines, it helps you turn pages. Music, what about music? Yes, it does music. All the music you have ever heard in your life, brought with you, where ever you go. You can sing it at the top of your lungs or if in a crowd and discretion is advised the iCaplet will enable you to hum it inside you head. That’s right, I did just say that – it creates a world where you can hear music inside your head without others around you hearing it. Amazing, and only from Apple. That’s the iCaplet, our first product that lets you take a bit of Apple inside you, where ever you go.”

Jobs then brought out Jonathan Ive, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, who explained how Apple was able to get all of its technology and expertise into a device the size of a pill of aspirin. Won over, the crowd couldn’t wait to get out and get a taste of this new device. But, as is usually the case, there was Jobs’, “… and one more thing.” What was it? The iCaplet not only lets you leave your computers, interact with people, and go out into the world, it also can cure the common headache.

The iCaplet is available immediately at all Apple stores. It will be sold in blister packs of two, six, and eight. It will also be available in bottles of 50, 100, and 250 next month.

I’ve seen this popping up on photo blogs (H2H, APE, and PFI) – Lady GaGa has been named Creative Director at Polaroid.

How can we bridge what is so tangible about the instant film Polaroid camera with what is so, um, kind of immediate about the digital camera?

Hmm, if Polaroid knew the answer to that they’d still be a manufacturer not just the ghost of a brand name.

And, if their new creative director is just now asking this question…