At a recent office balcony party, I spoke to a colleague who’s also into photography (by which I mean he’s also afflicted by the coin-draining hobby of buying cameras), and realized that maybe I’ve made some progress. My last purchase was the Sony RX-100, which he also bought, and then sold, and then bought a Fuji X20, and then sold, and then bought a used Fuji X100S (pictured). The urge has not visited me lately, unless you count the $200 Q Camera which no amount of money on Earth can buy at the moment because they’ve only made one sold-out and poorly handled batch.
Some iPhone photos from a recent visit. I’d been meaning to see the Eames one for months, but it’s always a bit hard to get out to the Marina Bay Sands because there isn’t a lot to do afterwards if you’re not in the mood for an expensive meal or drinks.
There are quite a few pieces in the Eames area, including some original interactive activities from an educational exhibit they designed, although the gallery layout leaves a little to be desired. A roughshod detail here, an odd pathway there, and lots of furniture out of reach, labeled “do not touch”, leaves you empty; it’s only at the very end when you sink into a permitted Ottoman that you feel the humanity of their designs.
The Chanel Black Jacket photo exhibition is much more enjoyable to explore, because there’s nothing between you and the content on display.
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Here are the official exhibition summaries:
Explore the life and work of Charles and Ray Eames, the most famous couple in design.
Most known for their timeless furniture creations, their influence and innovation extended far beyond that into architecture, exhibition design, toy making and film.
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CHANEL’s photographic exhibition dedicated to Karl Lagerfeld’s book “The Little Black Jacket: CHANEL’s classic revisited by Karl Lagerfeld and Carine Roitfeld” opens in Singapore, joining a new stage of the exhibition that underlines CHANEL’s values of creativity and modernity.
Discover the exhibition that pays tribute to CHANEL’s little black jacket. Through over a hundred photographs the jacket is adapted and worn differently by some of today’s greatest personalities in contemporary culture. Slipped on by the French singer, Vanessa Paradis, transformed into a headdress for the American actress, Sarah Jessica Parker, or adapted to Alice Dellal’s neo-punk look – this fashion masterpiece can adapt to any style.
Pacific Rim has a load of digital marketing bits out online, some created by Qualcomm Snapdragon (official microprocessor of the film’s Jaeger robots) on their Facebook page. One of the best is this Jaeger Designer app, which lets you modify a Unity 3D model with different parts and colors, and then render a poster featuring your own country’s robot defender, which you can also name. I think Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment sits nicely alongside the U.S.’s Gipsy Danger and Japan’s Coyote Tango.
Seeing the movie this Friday night in IMAX 3D and pretty damned excited.
Here are some of my favorite photos from 5 days of eating and sightseeing in Hong Kong; the ones I knew I was lucky to have as soon as I hit the button. As I said a couple of days ago, the Sony RX100 is now my favorite compact camera — just that little bit more versatile than a Ricoh GRD thanks to its 3.8x optical zoom, and, while bigger, still small enough to carry in a pocket. In terms of pure image quality, it takes better photos than any of the small-sensored compacts I’ve fooled around with.
Still, while going through the entire set on Flickr, I was surprised by how many came from the iPhone 5. At this size, can you tell which of the ones below came from an iPhone? Click through to find out.
There are a couple of photos from Art|Basel 2013, which was running at the HK Convention and Exhibition Center (HKCEC) from Thursday to the weekend. One of the low points was sitting at the cafe area and listening to a bunch of very rich people complaining about how their cameras and iPads and iPhone 5s batteries weren’t enough to last through a busy day of buying art (and taking photos of art with the flash on) even after shutting down all the apps by double-clicking the home button (=_=). They also complained that there wasn’t enough art amazing enough to buy on the spot. I wanted to tell them to spend some money on a battery pack over at Wan Chai.
About two weeks ago, I kinda realized that two people I knew online were in a band together, and preparing to put out their first EP. I visited their website, bought the record when it came out, and ended up seeing them live at the Esplanade last Friday. Hear for yourself through the embedded player below.
A couple of days ago, a new bottled version of Guinness Draught was launched locally. My friend and colleague Bert (@bertnert), probably the biggest Guinness fan I know, got me in the door to try a few of them out. As the embedded tweet should show, it’s pretty close to the experience of drinking a ‘surger’ or ‘widget’ can of the stout. Unlike drinking from a pint glass, you don’t get a foamy head but the creaminess is there and quite satisfactory.
There was also a Guinness World Record attempt going on that night, to see how far a full bottle could be slid down a narrow bar counter. The previous record was 10 meters, and the record was broken, and then broken again by the four plucked-from-Facebook contestants. I think it now stands at around 12.5 meters.
Occipital’s ClearCam (usually $1.99) was one of my favorite camera apps; it exemplified the kind of surprising software experience that made the iPhone special; an inexpensive downloadable bundle that seemed to change what the hardware in your hands could do: it took photos at a higher quality and resolution than the sensor in the phone allowed.
How? By capturing a burst of photos (5-6) and combining them to average out noise, sharpen edges, and boost light sensitivity with a proven technique called Super Resolution. It was the only app of its kind on the store, and Occipital seemed to know their imaging stuff, having also made the outstanding 360 Panorama (featured in my list of essential camera and photo apps).
It allowed the 5mp iPhone 4 to capture crisp 11mp images, but upon the release of the 8mp iPhone 4S, the app simply stopped working. I never found a replacement, and didn’t believe it would be coming back, thinking the processing requirements of working on an 8mp image were perhaps too much for a phone to handle.
Now, more than a year on, the app has finally received an update. If you have an iPhone 5, you can now shoot at an astounding maximum size of 18mp. The results are far better than if you took an 8mp photo and resampled it in Photoshop. This isn’t a simple resize; even when brought down to the same resolution as a standard shot, it’s a cleaner image being assembled — the fact that it’s also twice the resolution is just the kicker.
The advantage is especially apparent in noisy low-light shots, shown in the 100% detail shots below. Notice how the lines in the larger ClearCam capture manage to be cleaner, and how the smooth surface areas have much less visible noise. The quality of the noise reduction is much higher than you would get from noise reduction post-processing based off a single image. A simple Unsharp Mask operation would improve the ClearCam shot even further.
100% detail from 8mp standard camera shot100% detail from 18mp ClearCam shot
Over my experience with the app, I’ve found the ClearCam versions are just as usable, if not more so. Outside of photography, it’s extremely handy for whiteboard captures in a work environment.
One of the most exciting advantages of having clean 18mp shots is that it gives you a lot of freedom to crop and still have something the size of a normal shot. It’s almost as good as having a 2x or more optical zoom on your iPhone.
(Above) This was cropped from a wider shot, to frame the stairway (I liked the old-fashioned sign) and old lady leaning on the rails. The final photo is still a generous 11mp!
As long as you don’t have too much movement going on in the shot, ClearCam’s “Enhanced” mode is worth using as your default means of capture. The app also offers a “Quick” mode, which takes 3-4 standard resolution shots in a quick burst, and then analyzes them to save only the clearest, least-blurry photo to your Camera Roll. It’s an alternative to the “Stabilizer Mode” that many other apps offer, where your photo is only taken once your hands are still. Often, when it’s really hard to steady yourself (when it’s freezing, for example), you can be stuck holding your phone for a long time waiting for the shutter to trigger.
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