Stonington, ME, August 25, 2010.

Sunshine, ME, August 24, 2010.

Then we looked inside…

Batman? Green Hornet?

Same parking lot, something more Maine-esqe:

~1:30 PM, *driving in, wondering how hot our rooftop location will be.

Setup #1: camera #1, light, laptop, and 7' Sunbuster at the ready.

Setup #2: camera #2 and light ready to go.

We pack up. Mike marks light & camera spots for our return on Friday.

*Hard to believe I had my car washed just over a week ago.

Promotional gift from Excel Dental Labs, Year Unknown (click to enlarge)

Nicely personalized, perfect bound (?), already tasted long ago.

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.

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.

Princeton, NJ, April 26, 2010

Cherry tree blossoms on my car, in the rain. iPhone photo x4.

Bryant Park, NY, NY, March 8, 2010.

Proof that there are views in Manhattan where Stieglitz and photogravure are still alive.

Washington Square, New York, NY, April 2, 2010.

This past Friday I was in Washington Square; beautiful day, the late afternoon sun, sitting on the steps of a Washington Square North brownstone. No better way to pass the time than to watch the world go by in NYC.

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.

Delaware-Raritan Canal, February 27, 2010

Post-sunset, same spot, it was all about the color.

Updike Farmstead on Sunday:

Updike Farmstead, February 28, 2010

Old growth forest, deer tracks.

I brought Bix with me on both outings. On Sunday, there was a large herd of deer watching us. At first they hid in the trees. But then on our way back, the deer, having had enough, darted out across an empty field and back into the woods. I have never seen a herd this large, 2-3 dozen strong. Bix, whose fur is so overgrown he can barely see, missed the action visually but was all too happy to explore the tracks left out in the open.