Smart Phone apps for the APUG'er

Roger Cole · Jun 9, 2015

Ken Nadvornick said:
Sounds like the upcoming APUG system software upgrade is going to be right up your alley. No more need to confess publicly just how much we all annoy you. No more fighting with yourself to ignore all of the annoying photographic purist threads, only to lose that battle again and again.

With the mere flip of a configuration switch you will be able to completely remove yourself from the purist side of photography that has always been the core of APUG, while at the same time still have full visibility and access to "look at and perhaps accept some newer technologies" over on the DPUG side.

Just think how happy everyone involved is going to be...

Ken

DREW WILEY · Jun 23, 2015

Hmmm.... I wonder how people pioneered exploration of the planet without any cell phone apps or GPS? Did they simply sit in their caves the whole time playing video games? And as anyone who has spent a bit of time in the mountains knows perfectly well, cell phone coverage simply doesn't exist in many of those places and even satellite GPS can be flaky. The rescue rangers and even helicopter pilots up in our hills navigate by sight. It's worked for me since I was a little tyke, over thousand of miles of foot travel in rough terrain. I can understand a compass or GPS in undifferentiated flat terrain or in a forest during a whiteout. But been there, done that too without any such toys. You like toys, fine. I don't. Can't do much about jet contrails overhead, but otherwise, leave us to hear birds and coyotes in the wilderness and leave the phone buzzes and paintball guns behind. You might actually discover something called life.

Sirius Glass · Jun 23, 2015

DREW WILEY said:
Hmmm.... I wonder how people pioneered exploration of the planet without any cell phone apps or GPS? Did they simply sit in their caves the whole time playing video games? And as anyone who has spent a bit of time in the mountains knows perfectly well, cell phone coverage simply doesn't exist in many of those places and even satellite GPS can be flaky. The rescue rangers and even helicopter pilots up in our hills navigate by sight. It's worked for me since I was a little tyke, over thousand of miles of foot travel in rough terrain. I can understand a compass or GPS in undifferentiated flat terrain or in a forest during a whiteout. But been there, done that too without any such toys. You like toys, fine. I don't. Can't do much about jet contrails overhead, but otherwise, leave us to hear birds and coyotes in the wilderness and leave the phone buzzes and paintball guns behind. You might actually discover something called life.

Yes, but would would the smart phone users and the digi-snappers do if they were given a life to live? They would then need selfie sticks to take photo selfies and video selfies to share their hollow and barely existent life with their dead-head so called friends.

pbromaghin · Jun 23, 2015

My wife and I are coming to the end of our phone contract. She is going to upgrade to the next iPhone. I have an earlier one and use only the phone and text, sometimes the calculator. I will likely switch to a dumb phone.

bobwysiwyg · Jun 23, 2015

DREW WILEY said:
Hmmm....And as anyone who has spent a bit of time in the mountains knows perfectly well, ... and even satellite GPS can be flaky.

Short of being in a cave, how so??

DREW WILEY · Jun 23, 2015

I'd hate to risk my life on the reliability of a damn battery. My nephew did a major expedition to an unexplored section of the Karakorum
sponsored by a GPS company and the signals completely failed. Any those damn navigation aids can get you in trouble if you don't know your way around to begin with. Here in town several people have been run over while fiddling with them, and they'll take you right over a cliff. Just like a map, you need to know how to read them. A Park engineer pal and I used to have contesst getting back to the truck on the last day of each backpack. I'd just use my personal experience and he'd use the latest GPS. I always won despite being twice his age and carrying a much heavier pack. It might be nice to have one of those emergency GPS backcounty signal things for old age use, but they can backfire when people use them for the wrong reason and distract limited rescue resources from true emergencies.

Sirius Glass · Jun 23, 2015

DREW WILEY said:
Hmmm.... And as anyone who has spent a bit of time in the mountains knows perfectly well, cell phone coverage simply doesn't exist in many of those places and even satellite GPS can be flaky.

bobwysiwyg said:

Short of being in a cave, how so??

Click to expand...

Mountains and steep walled canyons cause multipath1 2 3 which causes changes in TDOA [Time Difference Of Arrival] and results in erroneous events. For example on the Poison Spider Mesa trail in Moab as vehicles are going up the switch backs next to the Colorado river the GPS for some vehicles the drivers report that the GPS shows them in the river.

1 http://gpsinformation.net/multipath.htm
2 http://www.navipedia.net/index.php/Multipath
3 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/logi...5599415/5606063/05606130.pdf?arnumber=5606130

Paul Verizzo · Jun 23, 2015

Jeez, Drew. I bring up a handy little app for photographers and we're now talking wilderness navigation, battery failure, and stupid people relying on technology that they shouldn't.

I grew up loving maps of every kind, used to do orienteering, navigated and piloted boats plenty from charts. Backpacked a fair bit in the Rockies back of beyond. So, please stop with your incessant moral superiority because you can't tell the difference between "handy" and over reliance and stupid people who don't understand what can go wrong.

You know, Kodak showed Ansel Adams their primitive digital cameras not long before he died. He loved it! Surely, if AA can appreciate the good things that the future can bring, you can, too. At least sometimes?

LJH · Jun 23, 2015

Shutters can stuff up, so do you leave those at home as well, Drew?

Shoe laces can break. Leave your shoes, too?

Do you come across many trolls when you're in the wilderness?

DREW WILEY · Jun 24, 2015

What brand of GPS did the Australian aborigines prefer over the past 40,000 years or so? And by definition the only trolls in the wilderness
are those carrying a Smartphone. And that analogy to what AA might have hypothetically used, had it been available? That's the kind of predictably corny comment that just invites an equally insipid response. Let's just be glad he didn't have those things, or we'd never have the
kinds of images he produced to begin with. Maybe something else interesting, but not those. Maybe twenty-thousand Ansel selfies with his
bent nose, Stetson brim, and beard hair blocking the scenery in every frame. Required reading: Desert Solitaire by Ed Abbey.

benjiboy · Jun 24, 2015

I have three top of the range digital light meters, I have however tried 2 light meter apps on my android smartphone they are both miles out and about as much use as one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

DREW WILEY · Jun 24, 2015

I use only Pentax spotmeters, though I once owned a Minolta one which read identically. I've dropped these in icy streams (twice in the same summer), and had to rely on memory for my exposure, which all came out perfectly, even the 4x5 chromes. But even these devices are fairly low tech and can be dried out. I keep a little dessication box in the truck for when I return from potentially soggy trips. It consists of a tight Tupperware-style lid, some sealant tape, and freshly baked-out indicator silica gel inside. If a lens or meters gets fogged up due to moisture, I'll put in there, seal it up, and wait a couple weeks. Usually work without need for an expensive repair. Don't try that out in the desert where the water might have high mineral content, or you risk permanent damage to lenses. Some of those dissolved chemicals will actually bond to glass, just like silicates. All camera gear is obviously some kind of technology, but the less technology the better, at
least if you ever need to repair things in the field.

Sirius Glass · Jun 24, 2015

benjiboy said:
I have three top of the range digital light meters, I have however tried 2 light meter apps on my android smartphone they are both miles out and about as much use as one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

Since the so called apps do not have a calibrated source, I would suspect that they are neither accurate nor precise.

Nodda Duma · Jun 24, 2015

Some of the stuff the military fields -- and I mean gadgets being lugged around by grunts barely out of diapers -- would blow your mind in how advanced they are technologically. That includes optics.

Technology is not necessarily the opposite of ruggedness.

cliveh · Jun 24, 2015

The best smart phone app would be one that says get a life and then turns itself off and nullifies itself into a blank superficial plastic surface that has little relation to the real world.

DREW WILEY · Jun 24, 2015

Some of those high-end optics were both designed and mfg just a few blocks from here, though the company has now shifted one town over. Unbelievable stuff. I've seen some images and have even sold them some peripheral supplies like sealants. But most of us simply don't have
the same credit ceiling on our credit cards as NASA, the DEA, NEA, and select military agencies do, nor do we own things like nuclear subs
and space stations to move our gear around.

Paul Verizzo · Jun 24, 2015

Nodda Duma said:
Some of the stuff the military fields -- and I mean gadgets being lugged around by grunts barely out of diapers -- would blow your mind in how advanced they are technologically. That includes optics.

Technology is not necessarily the opposite of ruggedness.

In the summer of 1999 I was working at a Boy Scout camp in Colorado. The Navy SEALS or some other military outfit did a parachute jump for the boys. The advance ground crew came and set a "black box" with lots of red digits on the ground, this was the target for the paratroopers. GPS was in use by civilians, but Clinton had only relatively let civilians access the level of military accuracy. And, of course, almost no one had anything GPS anyway.

DREW WILEY · Jun 24, 2015

When I was a foolhardy kid and had just gotten my driver's license, I borrowed my dad's brand new Chevy station wagon and took it over hundreds of miles of jeep trails in the desert. I saw some flares go off way out in the middle of Saline Valley so somehow made my way
across it. Encountered a bunch of Seals doing a paratrooper exercise, who asked us how the hell we ever made it there in a station wagon.
They were searching for a couple of paratroopers and never did find them! Those bare hills above there are incredibly rugged. My friend had brought some venison steaks, but a coyote stole one of them right from atop the Coleman stove. Then the next morning we almost got trampled by wild burros while sleeping on the ground. Then to top it off, I managed to bust the oil pan on the car, still many hours from a
paved road. There are plenty of stories of people dying from heat and thirst out on those backroads. How we got out of there is a bit too long of a story for here. But we obviously did, and my dad was sure not amused by what his new Chevy looked like when I finally got back!

Roger Cole · Jun 24, 2015

benjiboy said:
I have three top of the range digital light meters, I have however tried 2 light meter apps on my android smartphone they are both miles out and about as much use as one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

Interesting - I have Pocket Light Meter on my iPhone and it agrees completely, or within my range to determine given the different coverage areas, with my Luna Pro SBC and my Soligor Spot Sensor.

Paul Verizzo · Jun 24, 2015

Roger Cole said:
Interesting - I have Pocket Light Meter on my iPhone and it agrees completely, or within my range to determine given the different coverage areas, with my Luna Pro SBC and my Soligor Spot Sensor.

On the light meter app that I started this thread with, it was off 2.7 stops on my Nokia 925. The good news is that it's adjustable. On my Nokia 810, it seems to be spot on.

My lab certified exposure standard is The Rule of Sunny Sixteen. I pick a number of "average" scenes to see where the averages are. Close enough.

Roger Cole · Jun 26, 2015

I'm on an iPhone 6 now. If I had to guess I would think the consistent hardware from Apple would make it a lot easier for a developer to create an accurate and consistent meter as opposed to the broad hardware variations that can be encountered with Android (I'm not sure how many vendors make Microsoft phones.)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk and 100% recycled electrons - because I care.

Paul Verizzo · Jun 26, 2015

Roger Cole said:
I'm on an iPhone 6 now. If I had to guess I would think the consistent hardware from Apple would make it a lot easier for a developer to create an accurate and consistent meter as opposed to the broad hardware variations that can be encountered with Android (I'm not sure how many vendors make Microsoft phones.)

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk and 100% recycled electrons - because I care.

A good question. All of the light meter apps I tried with the 925 were hugely off, only this one I've recommended had an adjustment feature. Then, oddly, the 810 seems to be spot on w/o adjustment. Since the 925 made photos just fine, it's hard to understand (me, a mere mortal) how the exact same OS, in the exact same brand of phones, can vary so much.

Windows Phone is essentially only available through Microsoft Mobility, MS bought the Nokia phone brand and technologies a year ago. HTC makes one model, and Samsung did once. FWIW, WP has replaced Blackberry as the #3 OS in terms of sales. How fast and how far the mighty can fall!

Smart Phone apps for the APUG'er

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