Higher res version available here.

Work begins on the new studio. Hands on construction by Dave Klemmer and crew. Design/Build by Jim McAuliffe and Rich Carroll of McAuliffe + Carroll Architects. Jim and Rich also designed the other projects on our property; back patio/shed (here and here), main floor/front entrance (this image plus the next three.)

Video was shot with a Canon 1D Mark IV, edited in Final Cut Pro, and grading/color styling done in Color.

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.

Apple released OS update, v10.6.4, today. Word is that it adds tethered capability for the Canon 1Ds Mark III , Canon 5D Mark II, and for other Canon bodies. 10.6.4 also updates the way Aperture 3.x handles metadata, making it more widely readable in third-party programs.

I look forward to testing both of these changes. With tethering, Canon’s DPP and EOS Utility have been rock solid but since all my files end up in Aperture, it would be great to cut to the chase.

With metadata, issues have arisen due to inconsistencies in standards between programs. A case in point, Photoshop doesn’t handle metadata consistently between Bridge and CS4. With Aperture 3.x, neither Bridge nor CS4 read all of Aperture’s metadata but Bridge read much more of it. Regardless, it’s incumbent upon Apple to make Aperture as metadata friendly as possible – most images end up in Photoshop at some point (if not in-house, then when they reach the client.) So, the situation where CS4 deleted most of the metadata if an Aperture produced file was re-saved in Photoshop was unacceptable.

MacCreate article

ApertureExpert.com article

6/16: Metadata updates/corrections are confirmed. Export a file in Aperture, open it in Photoshop, and then open File Info via the File menu. Everything is exactly where it should be – IPTC, Description, Caption, etc.

6/16: Tethered support: here’s the updated list from Apple.

Memorial Day Parade:

Princeton, NJ, May 29, 2010

World’s preppiest dog:

Fireworks for Princeton University’s Reunions:

Kayaking, May 30th, enjoying the late afternoon sun:

Carnegie Lake, Princeton, NJ, May 30, 2010

Delaware & Raritan Canal, May 31st, Isabel goes solo:

Stills and video, Apple iPhone and Canon G10.

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.

____

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.

One of the new features in Aperture 3 is the ability to create exportable slideshows. Images included can be still or moving and multiple soundtracks are supported. When you are ready to output you can choose the aspect ratio and export to different formats via presets (low res. to 1080p HD) or create your own.

It’s helpful to take a look in Aperture’s help file first to learn the lay of the land. Once done, it’s very easy. I tested this out creating a video for my daughter’s bat mitzvah, exporting it in 720p HD, and then running the video from my laptop direct into the hall’s HD projection system. It worked perfectly.

As with all things Aperture you can work from raws, tiffs, jpegs, or Photoshop format image files. Video included is similar but the controls are limited. You can trim a clip from within Aperture and that’s about it.

The video I created spans the past thirteen years. So, it covers the transition from film to digital. Still images in it run the gamut from scanned prints and scanned negatives (Nikon & Leica 35mm, Mamiya RZ) to Point & Shoot Digital (Olympus 2500L, Canon S2-Canon G10, iPhone) to DSLR (Nikon D1 & D1x, Canon 1Ds Mark I, II, & III). About half of the images are direct from raw files. There are three video clips included, the first from a Canon S2 and the last two from the iPhone 3Gs.

I used Aperture to do my edit, first gathering images already in the database into an album. I added the new scans and video clips. Then I started editing and ranking the images via the color tags (the 1-5 star based rankings were already in use and I didn’t want to disturb those settings.) I was able to quickly pare down the take from 369 images to 122 plus the three video clips.

540p HD Version.

Some of the preset export formats are *.m4v, Apple’s iTunes video format. If that’s the case and you want to use a more universal format you can open the file in Quicktime and re-save it. This will save it as *.mov.

All of the export options are video files. They can be sent automatically to iTunes and/or Apple TV, they can be shared online, or run via a computer to another device. They can also be burned to playable DVD but not within Aperture. To do that you need to open iDVD and add the movie file to a project within it.

iTunes just sold their ten billionth song, Johnny Cash’s Guess Things Happen That Way. Kind of cool that it’s Johnny Cash, that the title fits, that its got a great jaunty spare 50′s production quality to it, and that it’s out of the current mainstream.

And now, ladies and gentleman, Mr. Johnny Cash:

Guess Things Happen That Way on iTunes.