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Category: Photos

  • iPhone 5 Camera Comparison vs. Ricoh GR Digital III

    The new iPhone 5 features an improved camera, mainly in the area of image signal processing in the A6 chip, which reportedly allows it to do intelligent sharpening, noise removal, and pixel binning for low-light situations. The lens elements have also been rearranged, resulting in a slightly different field of vision from the iPhone 4S. There’s also the new sapphire crystal lens cover which resists scratches — unfortunately, I already have a tiny speck of dust on the inside of mine, which I’ll have to get them to clean at some point.

    I’m more interested in seeing how the iPhone 5 competes with other point and shoot cameras than with the iPhone 4S. Here are two scenes taken with the Ricoh GR Digital III (my review here), a high-end compact comparable to Panasonic’s LUMIX LX3/5/7 series, and Canon’s S90/95/100 cameras.

    The photos below are direct from camera and have not been fixed or enhanced. The GRD III is something of a prosumer camera, and if handled correctly, i.e. with manual controls and lots of fiddling, is capable of some great results. For parity with the iPhone 5, these photos were taken in fully automatic mode, letting the camera figure things out.

    Ricoh GRD 3

    I had to take this shot twice because the Ricoh chose a very shallow focus, directed on the leaves in the middle, which left the stone duck and foreground leaves blurred out. It’s a little underexposed, but the larger sensor gives some beautiful detail to the fern.

    iPhone 5

    The iPhone 5 analyzed the same scene, and chose to keep a relatively deep focus for a usable shot the first time around. The photo is also noticeably warmer (pleasant, but perhaps inaccurate) and brighter. This photo is good to go without any editing, which is how most users want it. No problems with sharpness in the details.

    Ricoh GRD 3

    The GRD had trouble focusing again, and ended up with a spot in the middle (above and to the right of her nose), which keeps the dog’s legs in focus but not the face. Although what fine details that were in focus got captured with a good amount of clarity, the photo is pretty dull and boring on the whole. Your aunt would not consider this a keeper without a trip to iPhoto.

    iPhone 5

    Again, brighter and warmer. I don’t think the iPhone makes everything warmer, only in shade and indoor lighting conditions. None of the daylight shots I’ve seen so far look overly warm. Sharpness is consistent across all areas of interest, and noise is acceptable for ISO 400. Fine fur details are not as well resolved as in the GRD photo, but this may be down to JPEG compression. Using an app that allows setting lower JPEG compression, such as 645 Pro, may compensate for this.

    For most purposes, I can’t see why the iPhone 5 wouldn’t be an adequate camera replacement. In terms of straight-from-the-camera usability, these photos are astounding compared to the GRD III, which used to cost in the region of USD$500-600 (it has now been replaced by the GRD IV model).

    I’ve gone on a few trips where I ended up taking all or most of my photos on an iPhone 4/4S, with few regrets. Focusing on the 4S was a little touchy, and it tended to take photos before focus had fully locked, if you hit the button too soon; this seems to work the way it should on the iPhone 5.

  • Slava’s Snowshow, Singapore

    Snow storm, Slava's Snow Show.
    Snowstorm finale, Instagrammed from my iPhone

    My girlfriend and I attended last night’s performance of the award-winning Slava’s Snowshow (now on till the 9th of September, at the Marina Bay Sands theaters), which isn’t easily described because it has clowns, but isn’t really for kids; its narrative has no binding logic, but it says a lot without words; there’s snow, as promised, but really it’s about dreams, playacting, physical comedy, scenes of profound Godot-esque surrealism (as you’d expect from Russian clowns) , departures, alienation, and (I got the sense of this) having fun by being lost.

    The Times of London called it “a theatre classic of the 20th century”, and its creator, Slava Polunin, was formerly of the Cirque du Soleil where he served as a clown-in-chief of sorts.

    I don’t want to spoil it too much, but as long as you’re sitting in the stalls, you can’t escape being immersed in its key scenes. The performers regularly break the fourth wall (does this apply to the stage?), multiple objects and effects break free from the front and rush to the back of the hall, creating for adults a sense of wonderment that evokes memories of childhood play.

    Even at around 80 minutes, it’s all over a little too quickly. I wish I’d paid a little more attention to the details, and the use of music (which was excellent, and the hall handled acoustics well). It’s something I can definitely see myself going for again someday, somewhere else in the world.

    There’s about a week and a half to go, and tickets are still available. Try the link below for the Marina Bay Sands’ website.

    Event info

    Photo credit: Marina Bay Sands

  • Headphone portraits

    A few weeks back, I started taking photos of my coworkers in the creative department as they sat at their desks wearing headphones. Almost everyone in the office has their own unique brand/model, and I noticed that in some cases those choices strongly reflected their personal biases towards style, quality, or indifference to electronics. The thing I envy most about designers is their ability to listen to music whilst doing their work. Music is also the best part about the moments of my job where I’m not writing, but looking at spreadsheets and wireframes.

    ~

    All of these were taken and processed with VSCO CAM, an idiosyncratic and crashy camera app for iOS that excels at reproducing the look of film photography. VSCO makes a bunch of Lightroom presets that are fantastic looking and expensive enough that only pros would buy them, but this app is just 99c and I quite recommend it as long as you understand that its effects are applied as stacked layers (the order in which you apply them ultimately matters).

    Audio-Technica QuietPoint noise-cancelling

    Apple earbuds with remote (old design)

    (He’s since moved on to the) AIAIAI Tracks

    Sony PIIQ

    Nixon Trooper (these broke this week)

    Incase Sonic

    Klipsch S4i

    Not sure, but these might be old Audio-Technicas
    Sony MDR-XD100

    Bose A2E

  • Visiting Italy

    I’ve just gotten back from two weeks in Italy, about 50% of that time on business for a client-side conference. I logged as much as I could on the road at http://hipgeo.com/sangsara, which turned out to be a pretty nifty service now that they’ve enabled offline posting in their iOS app. You take photos or write short posts, and those are geotagged and uploaded to your stream when you have a connection. At the end of it all, you can create a “trip post”, which summarizes your movements on a map. Here’s my Italian trip summed up in too much detail.

    A trio of us Sapient guys landed in Milan’s Malpensa Airport, stayed a night, then rented a car and drove down to the sleepy beachside town of Ravenna, then went back up to Milan where we spent the rest of the trip, save for a day in Florence. Here are some photo highlights (I decided to travel light with just my iPhone), the rest are on my Flickr.

  • New office day photos

    The SapientNitro Singapore team moved into our new offices today, a few hundred meters deeper into the CBD area. I used the excellent “1-bit camera” iPhone app to document this historic occasion in Classic Mac-dithered black and white.

    If you see the place in color though, it’s really quite nice.

  • Australia, Days 5-8 on the Road

  • Australia, Day 4 in Photos

    Took a ferry out past the Sydney Opera House on a ferry to Manly Beach, where we ate great steak and ribs, followed by really good Hakata-style ramen in the evening at a place called Ryo-Tei near St Leonards, staffed by a trip of Japanese Australian girls and some dudes in the kitchen.

  • Australia, Day 2 in Photos

    A weekend market in Paddington, a museum exhibit about Sydney’s convict history, and St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.