Shot with iPhone 4s – right out of the camera. Imported into Aperture, converted to black and white, minor edge sharpening added. Copyright Scott Bourne, 2012 – All Rights Reserved.

I just finally got an Apple iPhone 4s. The camera included with this phone simply blows me away. I now see why under $200 point and shoot sales are dropping like a rock. The pictures you can make with this phone meet or exceed the quality that you can get out of many of the sub $200 point and shoot cameras. In fact, with proper lighting and technique, this camera can perform up to the level of some of the $400 and $500 point and shoots.

Let’s start with the basics. The iPhone 4s camera is an eight megapixel affair with better dynamic range than the old iPhone camera. The lens is sharper, the camera lag time better, and the lens faster. The white balance is more accurate and the low-light performance (while not up to par with DSLRs) is better than previous iPhone cameras. Both shadow and highlight detail are also better.

The new iPhone 4s has a fixed aperture lens of f/2.4. That’s one half stop faster than the iPhone 4 cameras.

One of my favorite features in the new iPhone 4s camera is the ability to press the volume button on the top of the camera to trip the shutter instead of having to reach around and press the menu button to make a photo.

The overall color and image quality are better than I would expect from a camera phone. The new sensor is completely redesigned and it features larger capacity pixels, gathering more light.

As with other iPhone cameras, there is very little manual control. You can touch the screen to force the camera to set exposure and focus automatically for that area. There is a small flash which can be set to fire manually or on auto – letting the camera decide when it is and is not necessary.

The iPhone 4s is one of the most user-friendly cameras in the world. Since you can access this camera for as little as $199 (including the rest of the iPhone) I think it’s a great value. The best camera is the one you have with you and I never go anywhere without my phone, so I always have a camera. And now – I always have a camera that is competent enough to take photos that could print as large as 8×10″ if properly exposed in good light.

I wish there were more options available via the iPhone’s preferences to control things like exposure, ISO, etc., but since this is after all a phone first and a camera second, I think the compromises are generally fair. Are there better smart phone cameras out there? I often hear that the Nokia phones have great cameras but then again every time someone tries to demo that for me their phone crashes. The iPhone just works. I’m very happy with it and can highly recommend it for anyone who is looking for a smart phone camera.

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When Nik Software released Snapseed for the iPad it got quite a lot of attention. I’m one of those rare people who doesn’t use an iPad for content creation. My iPad essentially serves only two purposes…

1. To show off my portfolio
2. To consume data

I wasn’t all that interested in fixing photos on my iPad. But my laptop? That’s a different story. So when I heard that Snapseed was available for my Mac laptop, I went to the App Store, plunked down my $19.95 and started playing.

While most serious photographers I know (me included) like Nik ColorEfex Pro, Snapseed is much less expensive and frankly aimed at just having a little fun. That doesn’t mean you can’t do real photo work with it. You can. It’s just that it’s not meant to be a replacement for something like Photoshop.

Here are some of the key features:

* Tune Image—Quickly correct photos shot in difficult lighting situations, create depth and vibrancy with Ambience, or adjust White Balance, Saturation, Contrast and more

*Auto Correct—Automatically analyzes your photo and adjusts color and exposure, or you can use the sliders to add or reduce the enhancements

*Control Points—Make precise selections and enhancements in seconds with Nik Software’s revolutionary U Point technology

*Tilt-Shift—Creates a narrow in-focus area designed to simulate depth of field, common in a Miniature Scene look

*Details—Enhances details with traditional sharpening as well as Nik Software’s unique
Structure control found in the professional Nik Software product line

*Crop & Straighten—Rotate or straighten with simple slider controls and select from a variety of standard aspect ratios while cropping

*Grunge—Explore styles and textures without limits and give photos a totally unique look

*Drama—Add custom effects to a photo which range from subtle enhancements of textures to wildly creative and artistic effects

*Vintage—Nine unique nostalgic films, plus controls like saturation, textures and vignettes make any photo look like a vintage color film photo from the 50’s, 60’s or 70’s

*Frames—Add unique borders to photos by choosing styles and textures

*Black and White—Give photos a classic look with this darkroom-inspired filter. Select styles, grain, vignettes, and more for a perfectly nostalgic look

*Sharing—Share photos on Facebook and Flickr, email photos, and print them using your home printer

Some of my favorite tools are Grunge, Vintage, Tilt & Shift and Drama – all of which give photos a cool look very quickly.  It is a simple workflow. You just drag your photo into Snapseed, make your adjustments, apply filters, export, etc.

One thing that would make Snapseed better is if it could export directly from Aperture or Lightroom, etc. Now you have to export the image from your editing application then drag it into Snapseed. It’s no big deal but it would be nice if it had better connection with other apps.

Snapseed supports:
• Mac OS 10.6.6 and 10.7.2
• Requires 64-bit processor (Intel Core 2 Duo or later
• JPEG, TIFF (in RGB color mode), and RAW file formats

It’s a very versatile program that is fun and easy to use. Within minutes of opening the program you’ll be an expert. Everyone from casual shutterbugs to serious shooters will enjoy Snapseed and at $19.95 it’s a no brainer.

Highly addictive and highly recommended.

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The world is getting smaller – as in mobile devices like smart phones and tablets are replacing laptops. The obvious response for computer laptop makers is to try to “catch up” by scaling down. Enter the new Apple MacBook Air.

This ultra-light laptop was the first of its kind. I bought the very first version of the Air on the very first day it was available. It’s come a long, long way since those days.

I recently decided that lugging around my ultra-fast and ultra-heavy 17″ MacBookPro didn’t make sense. I needed a tax write off so I picked up the latest 13″ MacBookAir fully loaded. My test machine for this article is running with a 1.8 GHz Intel Core i7, four gigabytes of 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM, Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB and a crazy fast 250GB SSD drive. I also ordered the Apple SuperDrive, Thunderbolt cable and AppleCare.

Coming from Apple’s heaviest laptop to one of its lightest is very freeing. This thing is barely thicker than my iPad. I can walk around on a photo shoot with this in my hand and it’s lighter than most of my cameras.

The connectivity is much improved over the previous versions. There’s a new Thunderbolt port which I use to connect to the Promise Pegasus R6 for 10 TB of usable RAID storage, plus two TB of redundant storage. There’s a port for connecting a CD Rom drive (extra) and two USB ports. There’s a headphone jack and one feature I just love – a fast built-in SD card reader. While I have never been a huge fan of SD cards it’s clear that the manufactures are. More and more of the cameras I use support SD so this is a very convenient feature. Believe it or not, no matter how many card readers I buy (and it seems like I’ve bought dozens) I can never find one when I need one so thanks Apple for saving my bacon with the SD reader.

The ergonomics are better than ever. The screen is bright and easy to read and the backlit keyboard was very important to me since I often write at night. The computer doesn’t get hot on my lap. The touchpad works very well.

For me, the biggest improvement in the new MacBook Air is speed. In everyday use, the 13-inch Air feels incredibly snappy, thanks in large part to the way Apple integrates flash memory into the design. The Air boots almost instantly. Just as impressive, the Air’s flash memory achieved a crazy-fast file transfer rate of 127 MBps!

And the final speed test? Running Aperture. I used to lament the fact that Aperture wouldn’t run on my original Air. Okay it would RUN but not in an acceptable way. It was dog slow and utterly unusable. On this new i7 Air Aperture glides along making the new 13″ MacBook Air perfect for travel.

The battery will last a good six hours or more if you baby it but I love to run full on so I get about half that. It’s comparable with other laptops I’ve used.

The 13″ MacBook Air as I’ve configured it is indeed spendy. I paid just north of $2000 plus tax. But I priced a comparable laptop from Samsung running Windows and the price ended up being nearly identical, with the Samsung being about $50 more expensive.

If you want an ultra-light, small laptop for photography and can afford it, the 13″ MacBook Air is worth a look. It’s fast, well-designed, has decent battery life, a nice display, great connectivity and easy to carry.

Highly recommended.

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I have more than 100 hard disk drives and arrays laying around. It’s the bane of my existence. Everywhere I step there are hard drives and cables. I’ve tried, used and owned just about every brand of hard drive system in use. I like many of them. I just need to get rid of the rest, but I LOVE the PROMISE Pegasus R6. Here’s why…

The LightPeak technology that provides the underpinnings of Thunderbolt is amazing. Thunderbolt isn’t widely adopted and it’s expensive, but there’s no chance anyone would deny it’s very, very fast. It’s faster than USB 3.0 or Firewire 800.

The R6 supports multiple RAID configurations. It comes RAID 5 right out of the box and ready to connect to your Mac. There are a few things you should know right off the bat. The drive doesn’t come with a cable. At this price, that’s almost criminal. So have a Thunderbolt cable ready if you want to use the R6 on arrival. The next thing you should know is that it takes about 10 hours for the drive to self-configure once you plug it in. After the lights stop flashing, the unit will show up on your Mac like any other drive.

I bought my Pegasus with 12TB of storage – two of that reserved for data redundancy. The unit houses six, two-TB 3.5-inch hard drives. They spin at 7200 RPM and are fast enough for video, audio, you name it. The R6 has that brushed aluminum Mac look that most Mac peripherals use and it’s quite handsome – not that it matters. The footprint is similar to other drive bays on the market which hold 12TB of data.

As a photographer, my main concern with one of these drives is that they are safe and fast. While I’ve only had a week to test the R6 so far, I feel like it’s both. There’s absolutely no denying the fact it’s fast. How fast? REAL fast. As in so fast that you don’t need a fancy software benchmarking tool to know it. I used to chuckle when I’d read posts from the pixel peepers bragging that their hard drive was x milliseconds faster than their pal’s hard drive. This isn’t one of those kinds of things. This drive is many times faster than most drives I’ve tested.

I have some fast SATA3 drives and the Pegasus R6 is AT LEAST four times faster. You read that right four times. I should mention these are internal drives. To further put this in perspective, all my new computers shipped with SSD drives. The R6 is almost twice as fast!!!

I tried to do some real world tests using the software and files I’d normally work with to establish how the R6 worked. I finished up with one of my favorite tests. I transferred the equivalent of a CD full of data in less than four seconds.

We ended up buying six of these R6 units so I was able to test their ability to daisy chain. I only tried it with two units but it worked flawlessly and didn’t appear to slow down transfer rates.

I didn’t test the software that came with the R6 nor did I change the RAID configuration to RAID 0 which should make the drive even faster. While I didn’t quite get 800 MB/s performance promised by Promise’s marketing department, I got close.

There are a few caveats. This unit only works with Macs. The drive is noisy – not that much more than other drives I’ve tested, but too noisy for those in a pro-audio environment to use this without additional sound protection. The other thing to note is the high price. Like the old guy at the race shop used to tell me when I was building hot rods, “Speed cost money son – how fast can you afford to go?” In this case I think it’s worth it.

If you’re a photographer or film maker looking for the fastest data transfer rates available in a device that just plugs into the Mac without the addition of a special card, I believe the Pegasus is the drive you are looking for.

Highly recommended.
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I finally have photo portfolio manager on my iPad that does the tablet justice. The latest version (3.2.4) is compatible with iOS5. It allows for multiple folders, screen shots, multiple sized images, and backup.

This $2.99 app lets you use FTP, HTTP, USB, Peer to Peer or just about any other method you can think of to transfer photos to and from your computer. I set up my iPad to show my portfolios. You can have several. In my test I set up one for my photos from Bosque del Apache and another I set up features car racing pics.

Open up the Photo Manager Pro server and you get a special URL to type into your browser. Assuming both your computer and iPad are using the same WIFI network, everything just talks to everything and whatever you do on one device is mirrored on the other. Now THAT is easy.

On my computer I made two folders – Bosque and Car. I then populated these folders with dozens of images. As I worked on this process, the folders and images magically showed up on my iPad. Cool!

If that’s all this program did it would be worth the $2.99. But once the images are on the iPad – you can sort and organize them, display them alone or in slide shows that include transitions and music, or just compare them. You can use password protection, you can share images. You can search on just about any criteria and backup and restore images from/to any device.

The program is fast and stable and best of all, the images look great.

I am sure that these sorts of apps are like pizza. Everyone has their own idea of how it should be made. But for me, this is the best of the bunch. I use this app regularly now and highly recommend it to any photographer who is trying to build a portfolio of images on the iPad.

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The short, squat design lends to the ability to support very large loads without failure. The head lock knob is built snug to the body. It’s very large and easy to find and turn. That’s one of my favorite features about these new heads. The Arca-Swiss style quick release is the gold standard with most professional nature and landscape photographers and Induro even throws in a generic Arca-Swiss compatible mounting plate.

The quick release system has double safety locks in the form of small screws set into the ends of the plate. This acts as a stop gap in case you forget to lock the plate down securely on the head. The screws will catch and keep your precious camera/lens from hitting the ground.

There are built-in degree markings and a bubble level so you can use this for things like panoramic photography and any other sort of photography that requires precise leveling of the camera.

Like all the Induro products I’ve tested so far, the BHL3 is sturdy, well-made, light weight given its rated load capacity and downright affordable.

This is the one going on top of my tripod.

Highly recommended.

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When I am on the road I am terribly paranoid about data loss. Here’s a nightmare scene – you travel to Italy from the U.S., you take your old laptop because you’ve heard horror stories about Customs arbitrarily seizing and holding for ransom various computers, your old hard drive fails with all of your cool new Italy images onboard. Life as you know it ends.

This could have been me…but because I am extra anal about backup…it wasn’t.

I’ve used dozens of different portable hard drive solutions to store, backup and archive my digital photographs in the field, but after extensive testing, I am switching to the ioSafe.

The ioSafe Rugged Portable 500 GB drive costs less than $200 most places. It’s a 5400 RPM 500 GB drive made of billet-machined aluminum and titanium. It’s compact, beefy, well-built, reliable and comes with a Kensington® Lock compatible slot. It weighs two pounds and connects to my MacBookPro with a Firewire 800 or USB 2.0 cable.

The company advertises this as a rugged, go-anywhere drive that’s perfect for harsh environments. Based on my experience, that’s accurate. They boast that it’s even waterproof. I haven’t tested that claim but based on everything else I’ve seen, I’d believe it.

During my testing, I filled the drive with data, then, in a real-world situation, knocked it off my desk onto a carpeted floor. No damage – no data loss. I then got a bit tougher. I took it out into the studio, held it over my head and let go onto the tile floor. Some cosmetic damage to the drive, but no data loss. I am convinced.

The company says that the drive is “crush protected” up to 5,000 pounds. I don’t know what that means but it sounds good. They also offer a data warranty and recovery service which you have to activate when you purchase the drive.

ioSafe specializes in what they call “disaster-proof hardware.” They have made bigger versions of this drive and a version that is USB 3.0 only. All are reasonably-priced given their speed, build-quality and performance. But they are NOT the cheapest portable drives you can buy – not by a long shot. But as my dad used to say, “If you have a $10 head, buy a $10 motorcycle helmet. I consider my photographic data to be my prize possession so I don’t want the cheapest portable drive. I want the best. I was particularly drawn to these drives because of my intended use, i.e., when I am on the road.

While ioSafe seems more well-known in the Mac community, this drive works on our lone Windows PC test machines with no problem.

No drive is perfect and they all fail eventually, but I think the ioSafe is about as reliable as they come.

Highly recommended.

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