iPhone applications for analogue photography?

[EASmithV]

How about a color meter?

 

[keithwms]

Hmm, I took some mild ridicule here a while back for suggesting that a cell phone with camera could make a nice meter with built-in reciprocity tables and so forth. Now we can buy it already?!

 

[polyglot]

EASmithV: I'm considering it, but it would probably be very difficult or impossible to calibrate. In particular, there is no guarantee that Apple uses the same camera chips in all phones, so their spectral sensitivity may vary. It might be possible to calibrate each against a Gretag-Macbeth chart though.

You can buy a simple meter app already. I hope to be selling a couple of apps with all the bells & whistles soon, but I haven't got the development environment working just yet. Once the applications are getting near to being available, I will be sure to let y'all know.

Don't ever take ridicule for claiming that something could or ought to be done. Unless it's perpetual motion

 

[Lee L]

I don't have an iPhone, but I have a technical question. If Apple doesn't approve your apps can you still install them without jailbreaking the phone?

Lee

 

[polyglot]

You can install nothing even on your own phone without paying the $99 for a developer key. I'm pretty sure that allows you to test any of your own code on your phone. Approval is for putting stuff on the App Store - if denied, then no one will see the app except for you. This sort of photography-related thing is not what Apple gets antsy about though.

 

[GeorgeDexter]

Killer AP: Make the light meter read in foot candles, too. Interior designers sometimes have need of a meter that reads out in foot candles. Sekonic used to have one, but they discontinued it. I don't know if anybody else does, but it could expand your market. Make the photographic light meter such that you can input filter factors, too, so it adds them automatically.

George

 

[GeorgeDexter]

I don't know if this is practical, but how about an infrared light spot meter? I'm tired of guessing/bracketing my IR exposures. Perhaps you could even input the filter type you're using. Just a thought.

 

[polyglot]

Thanks for the foot-candles suggestion! IR metering will not be possible because there is an IR-cut filter (high-pass) on the phone-camera's sensor.

 

[Lee L]

You can install nothing even on your own phone without paying the $99 for a developer key. I'm pretty sure that allows you to test any of your own code on your phone. Approval is for putting stuff on the App Store - if denied, then no one will see the app except for you. This sort of photography-related thing is not what Apple gets antsy about though.

Thanks for the info. That was my impression. However, it raises another question. Can the app be shared with anyone who has the SDK, or is any code somehow tied through code or an EULA to one phone to prevent this kind of sharing or a secondary market that cicrcumvents the app store?

Lee

 

[scootermm]

Am I the only one who sees an immense amount of irony in a complex electronic gadget being repurposed to serve as a tool for analog photography?

A moleskin and a pencil is incredibly versatile, by the way.

 

[polyglot]

Lee: not sure if/how the dev key is managed but I suspect it would be tied to one or two phones. If two ppl both had dev keys, A could write code, give B the source and they could both install it. But C, with no key, does not get to play unless they jailbreak.

scooter: true but a moleskine does not meter, nor does it compute in bellows factors and reciprocity failure with the flick of a finger. And a bunch of other things. I ain't gonna take your notebooks away though; wherever would I put them all!?

 

[Lee L]

I ain't gonna take your notebooks away though; wherever would I put them all!?

Recycle them, just like a 2 year old cell phone.

Thanks for the info on iPhone development. I've been in the GPL world long enough that I no longer keep track of this kind of thing, and was wondering how, and to what extent Apple was keeping control over the iPhone apps.

Lee

 

[scootermm]

scooter: true but a moleskine does not meter, nor does it compute in bellows factors and reciprocity failure with the flick of a finger. And a bunch of other things. I ain't gonna take your notebooks away though; wherever would I put them all!?

all very true.
I just found it fairly ironic is all... and kinda humorous.

But don't get me wrong... I love my iPhone, with its immediate weather info, sunrise/sunset, and of course... Barclays Premier League scores and info

 

[eclarke]

I'd like to see a logbook style app that lets me keep track of my exposures and other notes. As an added bonus, it would also record the location at which the photograph was taken using GPS.

PhotoJot does all of this, lets you make 4 snapshots, records the location, allows recording of all exposure info, notes and accesses the maps function. If it had voice notes and calendar type events, it would be perfect..Evan Clarke

 

[Rolleiflexible]

If I could have an iPhone application for
photography, I would want it to do one
thing only: Give me, in the simplest form
possible, the functionality of a Johnson
Exposure Calculator:

http://www.photomemorabilia.co.uk/Johnsons_of_Hendon/JoH_Exposure_Calculators.html

It would have a rolling wheel for EI, another
for light conditions, a third for latitude. Plug
them in, and it spits out an EV and a range of
shutter/aperture combinations.

An iPhone would make this a snap, easier than
the original Johnson calculator to use. Unlike
the other suggestions, this would actually offer
users a new tool that would be simple to use,
much simpler and faster than the Johnson was.

If you do offer one, please make it a standalone
app -- don't combine it with a lot of other stuff.
There is virtue in simplicity.

 

[polyglot]

Rolleiflexible: I can certainly have a look into the Johnson Calculator.

I just got a PM from someone saying that an iPhone developer can install each build onto up to 100 iPhones for the purpose of beta testing.

 

[white.elephant]

The Johnson calculator would be awesome, I agree.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Having just bought an iTouch from a fellow APUGger, one the first free app I downloaded was the iHandy Level, which uses the motion detector to function as a spirit level, and it reads out the angle digitally, so that with a floppy view camera that doesn't have detentes, levels, or scales, you could use it to measure tilt angles on the front and rear standard, and use it for things like making the standards parallel when the base or the rail of the camera is tilted up or down, or use it Sinar style to find the tilt angle on the rear standard, reset the rear standard to plumb, and then transfer that tilt angle to the front standard. These are all things I do with the Suunto Tandem clinometer-compass, so it's handy to have found another tool that at least does the clinometer functions, for when the Suunto Tandem is in another camera bag.

Now the next step would be to turn it into the Rodenstock Calculator, which can determine tilt/swing angles, and do some of the functions mentioned above like calculating bellows factor. Of course the Rodenstock Calculator does these things well already, and it's very compact, but it doesn't actually measure tilt angles, as one can with an iTouch or iPhone.

I'm not sure if the motion sensor can also give swing angles in some way. Does it have a compass function?

 

[mpirie]

Polyglot,

What about an app that uses the iPhone GPS location, then allows you to tell it you'd like the sun to be further round, and calculates when you need to return to the scene for the sun to be in the right place for the shot?

It could then add an entry in your iCal which would remind you it was time to go back to the scene instead of hanging around for hours as well as show you the route from the GPS?

Needless to say, this is recorded and would be ported in such a way that would tie in with your shooting log?

Mind you, with the weather we've had recently in Norway, any sun would be nice, regardless of whether it was in the right location or not :rolleyes:

Mike

 

[mmcclellan]

While you're at it, can you make the app also available for the G1 Google phone? Don't just think iPhone! Thanks.

 

[mmcclellan]

How about if your shooting notes could then be e-mailed in some usable document format so you could easily add it to a shooting record that you maintain back at home base? Something whereby you could just update a file or some software so the notes and shooting data would accumulate over time? Just a thought.