Touch. The new way to See.

Ooh, this is a rare treat. I get to talk about two of my favourite things :- photography and Apple tech. Now that I have a shiny iPod Touch, (oh no – not an iTouch..) I have been able to test some of the many photography aids available from the App Store. These are also accessible to iPhone users – even more so in fact as the iPhone can make use of the GPS facilities. Some have obvious uses, some not so obvious.

There are a number of variables that I need to check before going out with the camera – depending on what shot I am planning to take. The weather is often the most important but I’ve yet to find a reliable app that is better than just checking one of the online weather forecasts directly from Safari. Here in the UK I tend to check the weather at the BBC website.

For the rest of the essential info I use VelaClock. I already had the Mac OS Widget which I found very useful for checking sunrise / sunset and also moon rise/set and also the times of the various dusks and dawns. The iPhone / iPod Touch app is pretty similar to the widget, especially since the last update which allows you to change the date away from ‘now’.

I have to know the times for Africa and NYC too… just in case
VelaClock gives me all this detail and a very readable graphical view too. Another advantage is that it doesn’t need a internet connection to work, the display will stay updated whilst you are away from WIFI.

The only piece of information that might be handy for braver togs is the percentage illumination of the moon. I often like to try a bit of night shooting but the amount of light from the moon would be handy to know to gauge exposure time – as we shall see. Another app is able to help out with this and that is iEphemeris. It comes in a free lite version but the pro version is better and not that expensive. For those that don’t know (me included..) an Ephemeris is a table of values that gives the positions of astronomical objects in the sky at a given time or times.

The data given is pretty comprehensive and as shown here we can see that the last quarter moon at the moment is 43% full.

So to translate that kind of data into an exposure we can flip over to another app.. PhotoBuddy. This is one of those hyperfocal distance calculator doodads but it does more besides. The view below view gives exposure presets for all kinds of situations, based on the Sunny 16 rule and then stop up and down for different light situations. We can see that for our Last Quarter moon we should try f/2.8 for 60 secs at ISO 800.

Using this info helped me grab this shot recently.

Another view gives you the ability to enter exposure info and then ‘lock’ a particular setting and then change the parameters to suit a particular set of conditions. For example, the example above.. for the same shot you could lock the shutter but change the ISO down to 400 which would double up the exposure time to 120 secs.

Its easy to do these calculations when its just a stop or two but I also have a 10 stop ND filter and this app helps me calculate a 10 stop difference. I admit, I have to cheat a bit and just set the aperture and shutter, then lock the shutter speed whilst changing the ISO through 10 stops. Maybe I’ll suggest to the apps author to include some common filter stops..

So I’m out. I know there’s a good moon. I know how to set the exposure.. Now what? Fun time

The iPhone and iPod Touch both have many ‘Flashlight’ apps. I think the idea for these was born during the New York power cuts a few years ago. There were reports of people using iPod displays to help guide them down unlit corridors and stairwells.

Now the idea has come full circle and the Flashlight app is a reality.
But they are pretty hopeless for finding your way in the dark or illuminating a subject for focussing in the dark, so now what?

Light trails anyone? Its dumb but great fun!

As for the rest of the apps I use? Well I have two for checking my local tide tables, since I visit the coast quite often and of the many (and far to many to go into here) Flickr clients, I occasionally use Mobile Fotos but I don’t find it useful with keeping up to date with comments and the like, so I just browse either the mobile version or the full Flickr site through Safari.

Its still a pretty good way to present your pics full screen though, better than zooming into the page on your stream.

The last few are obvious. Google Earth is great for checking out locations, although the desktop version is better and faster. And to keep right on top of my contacts and favourite Flickr groups I use an RSS reader (NetNewsWire) both on iPod and iMac, kept in sync with newsgator, to give me up-to-date info.

All of these apps are available at the time of writing on the Apple App Store through iTunes. The can be downloaded either on a computer or directly to the iPhone or iTouch.. (rats, I promised I wouldn’t call it the iTouch. Now I’m in trouble!)