Digital Camera World » iPad

ioShutter review: use your iPhone or iPad as a remote shutter release

jmeyer — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 16:30:58 +0000

ioShutter allows you to transform your iPhone or iPad device into a remote shutter release for your camera. But is it any good? Find out in our ioShutter review.

An ingenious take on a remote shutter release, ioShutter turns your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad into a remote for your SLR.

In addition to single or continuous shooting modes, ioShutter can perform long exposures and time-lapse sequences, triggering the shutter upon a shake of your iPhone or a clap of your hands.

It’s based on an app, so there’s scope for more functionality in future updates and the optional £6.99/$9.99 ’Pro’ app already contains more customisation capability.

In the field, ioShutter performs flawlessly in every mode, but compatibility is currently restricted to most Canon and Pentax cameras, plus a few Samsung and Hasselblad models (a Nikon version is currently in development).

However, such innovation comes at a high price. Wireless remotes can be bought for much less, and for the same money there’s stiff competition from fully-featured intervalometer triggers like the excellent Hähnel Giga T Pro II.

SCORE: 4/5

Win an Apple iPad with Photography Week

samanthacliffe — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 10:10:27 +0000

Photography Week is a new weekly photography magazine designed for the Apple iPad. It offers an exciting new experience for enthusiast photographers and is brought to you by the makers of Digital Camera World.

To celebrate their launch, they’re giving you the opportunity to win a 16GB, Wi-Fi enabled, retina display iPad – in a colour of your choice – plus an annual subscription to Photography Week!

Enter their competition here.
Interested in learning more about Photography Week?
This new digital-only magazine takes full advantage of the interactive features available on tablet devices, starting with the iPad.

Every issue is packed with advice for becoming a better photographer and will include:

Video guides to the latest techniques and camera gear
Image galleries of breathtaking photos from around the world
Interviews with leading professional photographers
Practical advice for improving your pictures
Photo contests with prizes for the best entries
Built-in Facebook, Flickr and Twitter functionality

Sound good? Well it gets better, as they are offering their first 5 issues for free as part of a risk-free trial! Just sign up for their newsletter and to keep updated and find out when and how to start your free trial.

They’re also really active on Facebook and Twitter, where they like to ask their reader’s opinions on issues in photography for inclusion in the magazine. Looking to have your photography featured in a magazine? Share your pictures with Photography Week and you could be seeing your work published!

You might also be interested in:

See inspirational photography on Photography Week’s blog
Nikon D600 vs D800: 20 things you need to know
Canon EOS 6D: Hands on video review
99 common photography problems and how to solve them

13 best free iPad photo apps

jmeyer — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:27:05 +0000

The iPad is a fantastic tool for photographers, with many uses ranging from a showcase for your best images to image manipulation. There’s a huge number of useful iPad photo apps you can download to make it an even better experience, and what’s more all of those applications featured in this list are completely free.

All of the free iPad photo apps on this list were available at the time of writing.

Best iPad Photo Apps: InstaEditor

This is one of a variety of editors which is powered by the online editing service, Aviary.

Other versions, which all offer pretty much the same editing tools include Photo Editor + and Photo Editor Lite.

Basic, but useful editing tools include adjusting Brightness, Saturation and Sharpness.

There are also lots of filters to experiment with, to give your photos a creative twist.

Download InstaEditor

iPad Pictures: how to download photos to your tablet

jmeyer — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 02:00:00 +0000

When Apple released its new tablet earlier this year, many photographers’ eyes widened at the 2048×1536 screen resolution of the new iPad. Pictures could suddenly be viewed in much better quality than previous generations – at a resolution of 3.1 megapixels – higher than most computer monitors. What’s more, the 9.7-inch 264ppi display comes close to the 300dpi we like to print at.

While you can’t currently use your iPad to control a camera directly there’s plenty you can do in terms of organising and sharing shots. The clear, bright screen makes your an excellent way to showcase your work, with the touchscreen making it easy to navigate smoothly between your iPad pictures.

You can also apply basic edits to your iPad pictures, from applying retro filters to brightness and contrast adjustments, and it’s even possible to process Raw files. Apps are also available to organise, rate and caption your images.

The iPad’s wireless internet capabilities also mean you can send your photos to friends, upload them to the internet and post them on Facebook.

Step-by-step how to download photos to iPad

01 Camera connections
The official iPad Camera Connection Kit (£25) comes with a USB port and an SD card slot. This means any camera can be connected, but remember to pack a mini-USB cable if you’re going to be connecting a CompactFlash-equipped model. The USB port doesn’t function like the general-use port on a computer – this one’s only for connecting cameras, and only for iPads.

02 Check your settings
Older cameras need to have PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol) mode enabled before they can be connected over USB, so if your iPad reports that the connected USB device is not supported, dive into the camera’s menus to enable PTP. The device connected to the iPad needs to have its own power, as the tablet doesn’t supply much through the USB port.

03 Watch the download
Images download reasonably quickly, although if you’re transferring a large number of Raw files it can still take a while. Even a Sandisk Extreme 60MB/s CompactFlash card doesn’t come near USB2’s maximum data transfer rate of 480MB/s, so this is one area in which card speed is a definite bottleneck, and a faster card can make a serious difference.

04 Where next?
Mac users can sync the photos already on their iPad with iPhoto, or import the highest-rated images in their Aperture library to turn it into a mobile portfolio. Photoshop Elements and Lightroom users have similar options, accessed through the photo-organising section, and these work on Windows as well. Images can be posted to Flickr (share them with us at www.flickr.com/groups/photoplusmagazine), Twitter or our wall at www.facebook.com/PhotoPlusMag, as long as you have an internet connection.

Top Tip
It’s possible to edit both Raw and JPEG images on your iPad. For JPEGs, Apple’s own iPhoto is a powerful app in its iPad incarnation, offering red-eye removal as well as tweaks to brightness, saturation and sharpness.

While it’s possible to edit Raw files, the options for doing so are fewer, and the tablet’s limited power makes it a slow process.

Note, too, that the uncalibrated screen means colours may not be accurate when viewed on your monitor. PiRAWnha (£2.99) and PhotoRaw (£6.99, free version also available) offer Raw options similar to Digital Photo Professional’s.

6 popular photography apps for iPad, iPod Touch tested and rated

jmeyer — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:00:39 +0000

With more and more photographers using tablets and smartphones to pursue their hobby, even the most ardent purists are learning the word ‘apps’. We took six of the most popular photography apps for iPad and iPod Touch and put them to the test to see how well they really help photographers.

LongTime Exposure Calculator

Price: Free
Available for: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad This app takes the pain out of recalculating the exposure value when using ND filters. A two- column display allows exposure (30-1/8000 sec) and filter (from 1 to 20 stops) values to be dialled-in for a recalculated exposure time.

DOFMaster

Price: £1.49
Available for: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
High-end users looking to calculate depth of field and hyperfocal distance will like this app. Easy-to-use columns span focal length from 3 to 1,200mm, aperture from f/1 to f/64 and focus distance. Cameras are listed by brand and sensor size, so it’s easy to match up to your kit.

Geotag Photos Pro

Price: £2.49
Available for: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad
Geotag Photos Pro uses your iPhone’s GPS to track your location, and images from an external camera – not the iPhone’s own images – can then be synched with the location data by correlating date and time information (although this part does require a computer).

Teach Yourself Photoshop

Price: £11.99
Available for: iPad
From the makers of Digital Camera, this app takes you from the basics of Photoshop Elements to advanced editing in CS5. Divided into ten sections, each category contains six video lessons. Run the app on an iPad alongside your computer for instant expert tuition.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris

Price: £5.99
Available for: iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, desktop (Mac, PC, Linux)
Projects sun and moon rise and set paths for any date/time. Offset your location against the terrain to assess whether light paths will be blocked or cast shadows. Perfect for landscape shooters.

RoadTour OutDoors GB with National Parks OS Maps

Price: £4.99
Available for: iPhone, iPad
This app makes it possible to carry a 1:50,000- scale map of the UK on your iPhone. But without specific photographic spots – unless you record your own GPS routes – this is more for off-road walkers than serious landscape photographers.

New iPad features 5MP camera, Retina display

jmeyer — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:05:35 +0000

The new iPad is finally here, boasting several new features for photographers.

Following months of speculation, Apple has confirmed its third-generation iPad tablet, which offers users a new 5-megapixel iSight camera with advanced optics.

The new iPad camera uses a backside illumination sensor, auto white balance and face detection, as well as record full HD video at 1080p.

Another boon for photographers is the new iPad’s Retina display, which Apple claims makes iPad photos more crisp and lifelike. The iPad’s photos and videos are rich with detail, the company says, due to the tablet’s AX5 chip.

The Retina display on the new iPad offers 2048×1536 resolution, 44% greater colour saturation than the iPad 2, and 3.1 million pixels — four times the number of pixels in the iPad 2 and a million more than an HDTV, Apple claims.

Other features for photographers on the new iPad include a new iPhoto app and WiFi + 4G wireless technology.

The new iPad price will remain the same as the previous generation, suggesting the iPad 2 price tag could could drop.

Apple said its new tablet will be in stores by 16 March, while pre-orders are accepted now.

iPad 2: do photographers really need the new Apple tablet?

jmeyer — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 16:03:14 +0000

UPDATE: OK, so now we know the new iPad offers some pretty nice features for photographers, namely its new 5-megapixel camera and Retina display. But the question remains… with the iPad 2 likely now to drop in price, is this now-outdated Apple tablet an affordable tool to enhance your photography? Below we give you our reasons why it is.

With the iPad HD (formerly known as iPad 3, iPad 2S and prior to that as Prince) said to be announced today, soon we will hopefully know the answer to many of the burning questions surrounding Apple’s latest tablet. Will it have an SD card slot? Retina display? A better camera?

Surely it must! But while the rest of the world gets caught up in the hype of Apple’s latest tablet, we thought we’d step back and take a look at the very-soon-to-be-outdated iPad 2 and examine whether this second-generation Apple tablet is a serious tool for photographers

After all, the iPad 2 price is likely to drop in your local shops in the coming months. Can the iPad 2 satisfy your needs as a photographer? Here are 10 reasons why we think it can.

10 ways the iPad 2 can enhance your photography

1. With its 9.7in LED-backlit display, the iPad 2 offers a classy way of showing off your photography portfolio. The 4:3 aspect ratio should appeal to photographers, and the iPad 2 allows you to scroll through images at full screen or in stacks of thumbnails.

2. The touch feature of the iPad 2 makes it simple to flick through your photos. If you’ve just taken 50 images of the same landscape at a range of different exposures and camera angles, the iPad 2 iOS makes it very simple to sort the good from the bad.

3. If you’ve bought a new DSLR or compact camera in the past year, it undoubtedly boasts some level of HD video capture. The rear iPad 2 camera can record 720p HD video at up to 30 frames per second with audio, giving you this extra element of functionality.

4. The iPad makes sharing images even easier, from its obvious ability to upload your photos directly to Flickr or other photo-sharing websites. Or if you’re a traditionalist, use Apple’s AirPrint software to print your photos wirelessly.

5. For just a few pounds there are a raft of iPad apps for photographers available at the App Store. You can get a range of creative filters, editing programmes and picture frames.

6. The iPad 2 has a couple of really useful built-in apps for photographers. The Photos app allows you to create advanced slide shows backed by music, while the Photo Booth app uses the front camera to take self-portraits and apply creative effects.

7. Are you a wedding photographer The iPad could be the most important piece of all your wedding photography equipment. Take a group shot, pass it around. People will love it. And if they don’t, then you know to take the shot again!

8. With the heaviest model weighing just 613g, or 1.35 pounds, the iPad 2 is considerably lighter than your laptop. What’s more, it’s likely quicker to start up and shut down when on the move. The iPad 2 also boasts around 10 hours of battery time.

9. Using Apple’s AirPlay application, you can stream your photos wirelessly from your iPad 2 onto your HDTV via Apple TV. Or use video mirroring (for which you’ll need the separate Digital AV Adapter) to turn your whole TV screen into your iPad 2.

10. Finally, if you’re out in the field and stuck for how to take a shot, with an iPad in your bag you can log on to Digital Camera World wherever you are and find the answer in our photography tutorials or photography tips section!

Report: Instagram becomes largest mobile social network

jmeyer — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 16:48:24 +0000

The mobile photo network Instagram has passed the 25-million-user mark, making it the largest mobile-based social network, according to new claims.

Dirk Singer, who heads UK social media agency Rabbit and writes the blog Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics, claims that his analysis of Instagram’s two web viewers, Statigram and Ink361, show that the photo network has overtaken rival Foursquare, which boasts 22 million users.

Singer says he has discovered that numbers at the end of the urls in these web viewers are consistent with Instagram user numbers, which suggests Instagram has now reached 25 million user.

Image via Lies, Damned Lies & Statistics

Singer cites Instagram founder Kevin Systrom’s page which shows his No. 3 user number in the url, compared to @holliejsmith, the newest member as of Singer’s time of writing, at 25,973,449.

Instagram has not yet acknowledged the report.

Via Mashable

Photoshop Touch now available for iPad

jmeyer — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 11:39:47 +0000

Adobe has launched its Photoshop Touch app for iPad users.

Adobe Photoshop Touch is now available for the iPad 2 and offers core Photoshop features, as well as new functions for creating and sharing images in an app that was custom-built for tablets, Adobe says.

Photoshop Touch lets users combine multiple photos into layered images, make essential edits and apply professional effects to create beautiful artwork, touch up photos, paint, lay out ideas and much more. The Scribble Selection Tool allows users to extract objects in an image by scribbling on what to keep and what to remove.

Photoshop Touch’s Refine Edge function also lets users edit typically hard-to-select areas with soft edges, and when you’re done editing the Adobe app lets you share your creations through integration with Facebook and Google Image Search.

For a short demonstration of how to use Photoshop Touch, Adobe has released the video below:

Adobe Photoshop Touch – price set for £6.99 – is available through the iTunes App Store.

You can buy Photoshop Touch here.