sangsara.net

Tag: Cameras

  • Week 7.24

    Week 7.24

    We landed in Auckland, New Zealand Monday morning and immediately flew down to Wellington, and we’ve been driving our way back north for the past few days. I’m currently writing this while sitting beside a Buddha’s head in a poolside garden, in a small new hotel outside of Rotorua.

    Four hours ago, I was parasailing above Lake Taupō in my usual urban uniform of jeans and a t-shirt — if you know me, you’ll know that I don’t sign up for even remotely dangerous things, especially over large bodies of water; in the cringey words of Below Deck repeat charter guest, Dean Slover, I said “homie don’t play that!” But Kim convinced me to, and we survived. They played Maroon 5 songs on the boat going out, and so by the time we were lifted some 50 meters in the air to float in blissful silence high above the town, I was having a good time. Lake Taupō is a volcanic caldera that’s nearly the same size as Singapore, but because it’s all flat you can just about see from one end to the other from up there. New Zealand challenges the city dweller’s sense of scale like all good nature vacations.

    Since leaving Wellington, the road trip portion of the trip so far has been mostly measured in burgers, fish and chips, and winery stops, specifically in the Martinborough and Hawke’s Bay areas where the tastings have been revealing of each company’s nature: some overly commercial and strictly scripted, versus others more informal, just going on vibes the only way they know. I think the difference shows up in the wine, with wineries in the latter category being more playful with flavor, more likely to put better stuff in a low-priced lineup. But I would say that, as someone who’s now had a crash course in holding up his glass against the light to observe the color.

    I’m now lying in bed on Sunday evening having just finished the last leg of our driving tour, which took us to the famous Whangamata Beach bordering the Bay of Plenty, and Hunua Falls, where we did another little nature walk and met a nice dog and helped its owners get a photo together with their iPad. Old people really carry full-sized iPads around on hikes to use as large-screened cameras. Mind blown.

    A couple of observations on this road trip. So much roadkill! Easily a hundred little bundles of fur spotted spread across tarmac just today alone. Some decayed and washed away, little more than stains. Some still fresh, bloating, bleeding. We avoided making contact with all but a couple. A ritual evolved, mainly to stay alert but also out of pity for these bunnies or squirrels(?): upon spotting one, I would put my palms together and say “rest in peace”, and Kim would follow with “in all your pieces”.

    FM radio is still not a great experience; it’s a wonder how people survived on it for so long. Fortunately I had a lot of downloaded music on my iPhone, which also navigated us with offline maps. CarPlay is excellent, and Apple Maps was good enough for nearly every leg of the journey. We listened to Lorde’s albums, of course, as well as the Sunkissed Summer playlist she compiled on Apple Music, and other New Zealand legends like Bic Runga and Crowded House. At one point I put on some J Dilla but learnt that rhythmic music you can sort of nod and zone out to is NOT what a driver wants over long winding roads.

    As I mentioned last week, this itinerary was drawn up with ChatGPT and my custom GPT, AI-tinerary, but we had to fact-check everything and plot the route on a map before making bookings. It’s held up well so far, with a couple of impromptu detours and chance discoveries along the way. For one, we did not realize that while passing through Napier for one night that we’d be there for the Art Deco-obsessed city’s annual Art Deco Festival, the first one they’ve been able to hold since 2020. Vintage cars were out in force, there was a Warbirds air show, and a free concert on the beach. It was packed, every restaurant was booked out. We ended up eating dinner out of a food truck by the sea. I asked ChatGPT “what’s happening in Napier tonight?” and it confidently replied, “I couldn’t find any events tonight.” At the risk of sounding like a broken record, these tools truly are starting points and aids right now, and you must resist the idea that they are final answers.

    I’ll post the final version of our itinerary next week when we’re done, in case it helps anyone looking to do the same.

    All photos were taken by either a Ricoh GR III or iPhone 15 Pro Max. The extra 120mm equivalent reach of the iPhone came in very handy, but there’s no beating the image quality of the GR when it comes to landscapes. The light was so good that some photos taken with the Standard color profile, straight to JPEG, were surprisingly “finished” out of the camera. This year’s iPhone still wants to make everything bright and sharp, which fails to capture atmosphere and preserve highlights. I edited photos daily as quickly and lazily as possible, using RNI Films for most of it — at some point they added the ability to save edits on top of original files (non-destructively), which is a key consideration I look for in photo apps. I’ve also started using RAW Power again late in the trip, which is making me want to go back and redo some edits. Maybe on the flight home.

  • Week 46.23

    Week 46.23

    Album of the week: Daft Punk released a “drumless” edition of Random Access Memories and the simple act of removing elements adds an unexpected amount of value. The album strikes a delicate balance between novelty and nostalgia. By removing the drum tracks, it reveals intricate instrumental interplays once masked by robust beats, offering new perspective on familiar melodies. Within minutes, you’ll be surprised at how different this feels. I don’t know how many other albums have been rereleased like this, but it’s a great idea — one made less cynical by the streaming model, as Michael observed in a chat. In the old days, this would just look like trying to sell you a CD you already bought.

    Speaking of cynical purchases avoided, I saw and held the Leica Sofort 2 in person this weekend while attending a talk and exhibition at their annual Celebration of Photography event. The glossy front plastic was not as fingerprint prone as I’d feared, and overall build quality felt a touch better than on the Fujifilm Instax mini Evo: the rocker button on the back panel had more click resistance, the “film advance” lever that prints photos was sturdier and more satisfying to activate, and the flimsy USB port cover on the bottom was slightly firmer and seemed to stay in place. For me, those were the top 3 basic problems that needed to be addressed. The software menus were simply reskinned and not redesigned, as expected. All in all, Leica did the minimum they had to do to make the Fujifilm product a little more premium, but without improvements to image quality, it’s still a very odd product to bear a red dot. I did not feel the urge to replace my mini Evo on the spot.

    Shot on iPhone, edited with looks by ✨PixelGenius

    With Leica’s latest attempt at opening my wallet rejected, my week was free to absorb excesses of a different kind when I met up with Jianjia for a farewell lunch. She decided we would eat Mala at some place called YGF. It turns out that she schedules every meet-up she can there, because she’s addicted to their high sodium spice blend. When I pointed out how salty it was (after she had drunk all her soup, and for the record I couldn’t finish my massive bowl), she was like “huh, maybe that’s why I like it so much. I never had much salt in my food growing up”.

    We are all the products of our childhoods, each messed up in our own special ways, which is something I was discussing with a colleague in a work-related conversation one day when I thought, “ooh, I should make a GPT therapist!” Which I called Doctor Talkabout, and tried to bias it towards exploring barriers to happiness that originated in childhood. On the whole, the unlicensed doctor is now quite good at discussing all manner of problems, and I hope it gives better perspectives than vanilla ChatGPT. And just in case psychology and psychoanalysis are a little too… “real” for you? I also made a GPT therapist based on astrology, inspired by Co—Star. I honestly get a kick out of both, and discussing my problems with them has been more effective at managing my feelings than just going in circles on my own.

    The number of GPTs I’ve made this past week is now in the double digits (including one for work and a private one for editing text), and so I’ve had to make a category page to see them all on this site. Please check them out.

    And yes, some shit is afoot at OpenAI, after CEO Sam Altman was ousted early Saturday morning. Too early to say why, but ChatGPT has noticeably struggled to perform quickly of late, and they’ve both turned off new signups for ChatGPT Plus AND reduced the rate for paying members from 50 to 40 messages every three hours. I have a feeling they might renege on their commitment to open a GPT App Store and share revenue with creators. Time will tell. I wasn’t going to quit my day job for this anyway. And as of Sunday afternoon, he’s supposedly been asked to come back and the board of directors will resign? Pure insanity.

    I watched the first episode of Netflix’s acclaimed Blue Eye Samurai Western anime series, and it felt like something an AI wrote. I don’t get the rave reviews just yet; two people described it to me using Kill Bill as a reference point, and you’ll see why in the super derivative first episode. It even uses the same Tomoyasu Hotei song, Battle Without Honor or Humanity, in a cliche sword-forging and training montage sequence. I mean, Kill Bill itself was a pastiche of samurai movie tropes, but this warms them over without any shame. It also has a dash of Afro Samurai to it, however both of these are examples of how to do homage without feeling like copies. Netflix shows are like cloud kitchen-brand versions of fast food items that were inspired by restaurant dishes.

    Somehow the show has some talent signed up to it: George Takei, Ming Na-Wen, and Kenneth Branagh provide voices. Its writer and co-creator, Michael Green, was involved in Blade Runner 2049 (but also Branagh’s trilogy of Hercule Poirot films which I do not love). But I’ll give it a second chance anyway; there may be other themes at play here beyond the Othered protagonist seeking revenge. But having seen this, I feel like I have a pretty good idea of what AI-generated mass entertainment would look like, and I’m not down for it anymore. I’d like for AGI to come and take away all the other jobs in the world, leaving us humans free to come up with new and more creative ways to show sword fights.

    So imagine my surprise when I started up Pluto (also on Netflix) after two episodes of Blue Eye Samurai, and found it the total opposite in terms of quality. You don’t know where the story is going even if some ideas, like androids that grapple with unexplained dreams from a past life, are familiar and were explored before in other works. It takes its time with characterizations, and aims for a timeless beauty that goes beyond slow-motion action scenes. Polygon has a nice piece about it, but don’t read anything before you’ve seen the first episode, just trust me on that.

  • Week 41.23

    Week 41.23

    Trying to keep things short again.

    • First, a correction to last week: I believed that the Leica Sofort 2 will offer little functional advantages over the Fujifilm Instax mini Evo camera that it’s based on. But I missed that the Sofort 2’s design favors a landscape orientation; its camera strap connection points and tripod mount are placed with that in mind, whereas the mini Evo seems intended to be used in portrait. This is another point of annoyance because the Fujifilm’s design visually indicates it should be used in landscape. Well, it also visually indicates its a vintage analog camera, but we’ll ignore that.
    • Cameras are for capturing memories anyhow, so on Friday night when we had a team barbecue for the first time in years, I brought my Instax mini Evo out to get some lo-fi, low-res, flash-enabled snaps. A camera never gets as much use as it does in the days just before its replacement is due to arrive — if that isn’t a camera addict’s maxim, it ought to be. But I wonder if Leica is ready for the backlash when the photos from this low-grade 5mp sensor start being associated with their premium brand. It’ll be the worst digital camera they’ve ever made. At least with the fully analog Sofort 1, the results were just little Instax prints. But now some really questionable digital files are gonna come from a Leica camera and start circulating.
    These were the only ones without faces in them
    • Anyway, in a big coincidence, the last time I remember having a work barbecue was when Oya left in 2019 to return home, and I met her this week for the first time since as she passed through town for a day. A bunch of us who were around back then met up for Mexican food, margaritas, and refried memories.
    • I finally got access to ChatGPT’s new features (these couple of weeks felt like forever): image uploads for multimodal chats, a voice-driven mode, and DALL•E 3. I’ve yet to make proper use of the first feature, apart from a few tests. I gave it a photo I took at Toa Payoh Hub (what can you infer about my location from this photo? And it correctly guessed Singapore from some visible shop names); a receipt (split this bill, and would I be an asshole if I asked for this money back as a billionaire?); and a photo of a dying plant at home (how do I nurse this withered thing back to life?).
    • I wish the voice mode could listen out for your interruptions, which would make it much more conversational. Right now you have to tap the screen to stop it talking first. The synthesized voices are really good, and enhance the illusion of talking to a trustworthy intelligence. Using Siri Shortcuts, you can now just start talking to ChatGPT on your phone at any time, but I still hope Apple finds a way to design a more responsible, private version of this with a future Siri.
    • The ability to interface with an image generator with natural language is a big deal — in theory, ChatGPT can break down your detailed, context-laden instructions into the right prompts for DALL•E to work with — and affirms my belief that “prompt engineering” will be designed out of relevance for the majority of users. It can’t do photorealistic images as well as Midjourney, but it may be close for illustrations.

    I made a new playlist on Apple Music, mostly made up of recent releases I’ve been enjoying, with a few oldies thrown in there: BLixTape #2

    iOS 17 introduces crossfading, and I think it works great for mixtapes, making the intentional juxtapositions even clearer and jam-mier. Crossfading is when one song fades out just as the next one fades in. It’s like having a budget DJ. (Edit: AI suggested I explain it for those who might be unfamiliar, but Kim says this is mansplaining. I guess this is an explainer for the explainer.)

    I played with this cover art idea for awhile in Midjourney over the past few weeks, but wasn’t super happy with any of it. I gave the same brief to ChatGPT + DALL•E 3 and decided to use its version. It came up with a more interesting composition than all the other centered, literally middle-of-the-road shots, and it was able to follow my instructions that the headphones should be Beats Studios.

    Some unused Midjourney versions
  • Week 40.23

    Week 40.23

    So-forting what?

    Remember the Leica Sofort (German for “instantly”) camera? It came out of nowhere years ago, an unacknowledged collaboration with Fujifilm that took their popular Instax Mini 90 model and rehoused it in a sleeker Leica-designed body (offered at a much higher price, nearly double if I recall right). Reviewers tried to discern a difference in the photos, but they were essentially identical cameras on the inside. For some reason, everyone danced around the similarities and at best said the Sofort was “inspired” by the Mini 90, as if it was a new Instax camera by Leica that somehow came out looking mighty similar, rather than a simple body swap at the same Fuji factory.

    This week, Leica announced the Sofort 2, which is now a redesigned Instax mini Evo (a camera I bought myself for Christmas in 2021). Where the original Sofort was a fully analog Instax camera, the Sofort 2 is one of Fuji’s hybrids: a digital camera fused with one of their Instax printers, so you can take tons of photos and then decide which to print.

    By the way I also mentioned this on Threads. You should follow me there if you’ve quit Twitter.

    In my opinion, the mini Evo is the least ugly Instax camera Fuji has made, which is one of the reasons I was excited to get one when they came out. Oh, I noticed that Jurin from XG uses one, and some of their IG posts look like mini Evo shots. But the Sofort 2 is beautiful, streamlining the body to its essential elements and removing nearly all traces of fake plastic leather and silver-effect plastic.

    Leica’s ability to wrap other companies’ cameras in minimalist industrial designs and sell them for more money is unmatched. I bought their D-Lux 7 precisely because I wanted Panasonic’s LX100M2 but could not get behind its rugged hiking shoe looks.

    Where the mini Evo is a cute plastic facsimile of a Fujifilm X100 camera, and wearing one around on a shoulder strap makes you look like a kid who’s been placated with their very own toy iPhone, the Sofort 2 looks like a camera in its own right (far as I can tell from the images). And as little as I have used my mini Evo over the past two years, it will be very hard to convince myself not to “upgrade” to this version for Christmas. And to be clear, there are ZERO functional improvements from the Fuji version, apart from not looking like a toy.

    Fujifilm makes their Instax cameras kid-friendly. They’re colorful, bulbous, fun, and recall the freewheeling sensibilities of product design before the 2008 financial crisis, when phones could look like tubes of lipstick and translucent plastics were everywhere (they’re coming back). The Leica partnership seemingly exists to provide the market with what the Japanese might innocently call “adult versions”. Why Fujifilm leaves money on the table by not doing this themselves is mind-boggling. Are they really incapable of producing understated designs? I don’t care about the Leica logo; it’s a joke on a product like this, I just want a clean-looking rounded rectangle.

    Generational shifts in photography

    And apropos of all this, I heard that Sean was getting into film photography and about to use an Olympus XA2 I once gave to Cien. Which got me talking to my Pi AI (we’ll come back to this) about old becoming new again in photography. Part of it was trying to convince myself that a Sofort 2 would be worth buying as an adult-friendly retro toy camera — a loving term for cameras with garbage image quality. I’ve owned many of the sort, like the Digital Harinezumi series, and they’re always plastic and cheap, or simply dusted-off vintage digital cameras. But this is a new! luxury! toy camera!

    So Pi sorta made the “observation” that using an analog camera is an attempt to engage with photography more deliberately. Which I already knew? Because of course using a dedicated camera instead of a smartphone today is deliberate; a “slow photography” thing, a “real photographer” flex. Of course instant film is an extension of this.

    But I’d not really appreciated it from the perspective of Gen Z people who grew up without them. Like why ordinary kids not into capital-P Photography would be interested in Instax/film cameras and old digital cameras beyond signaling coolness. Obviously we Xennials and Millennials grew up with photographic scarcity and have fewer photos of our younger days, but these kids grew up in an age of surplus, literally taking photos for granted. Phone cameras everywhere mean cheap and infinite memories. So naturally tools that force moments to be more precious, that force viewers to see events through wonky lenses, would hit different.

    I noticed afterwards that Leica’s press release for the Sofort 2 sums this up with a simple statement: “Back then, the instantly printed photo symbolized acceleration, whereas, in today’s fast-paced world, it represents a moment of caution and relief.”

    Next day update: I neglected to mention here that the mini Evo and Sofort 2 cameras are actually perfect bridges between these two approaches to photography. They are digital cameras that let you shoot in surplus, and print only the photos worth keeping in scarcity. Also, having two offerings serves buyers across the spectrum from fun/affordable to serious/expensive, which tends to be a generational divide. The hybrid instant camera is a tool that unifies photographers with different values (so long as they’re okay with 5-megapixel shots), and serves as a symbol of ‘making this moment count’.

    The Pi personal AI assistant

    Okay, so what’s Pi? It’s billed as a personal AI, a ChatGPT for your daily life. But isn’t ChatGPT already for daily life, as well as work life, I hear you ask? Yeah I know, which is why I’m giving this a go. The main difference is that instead of multiple chat threads for different topics, with Pi you just have one main chat. It tries to learn more about you and draws on past context to inform its responses. It’s built on a proprietary foundation model, so perhaps they have a way to get around the short-term memory and context collapse that I’ve seen with other generative AI text systems — so far it’s doing quite well after a few days!

    It’s free, and their privacy policy claims they’ll never share or sell your information, but yeah sure what else would they say? I’ve found it quite pleasant, and its responses are tuned to be shorter and less formal than ChatGPT’s defaults. It does feel like talking to a friendly personal assistant.

    So far I’ve had discussions with it about movies (we talked about Interstellar and why some Nolan films don’t work as well as others), python programming, economics, frameworks for building good arguments, as well as its own purpose and unique value proposition.

    I just asked it to brainstorm what a Sofort 3 could bring to the table. It suggested more AI features (lol) and making it more user friendly. I said I’d go the other way and make it more unapologetically professional, with manual controls and higher quality. It was able to say that it sounded almost like an instant film version of a Leica M, and when I asked it to price such a product, it said $800 USD or higher. That’s pretty insightful!

    Something about its simulated personality and the UX of having a single chat thread (where I don’t have to keep introducing my needs and context) makes this very pleasant to use, so much so that I might end up using it over ChatGPT for some queries.

    ===

    Media activity

    • I had Saturday all to myself so it was a movie day. I saw The Equalizer 3, which was much slower and less action-packed than you’d expect. But Denzel is still badass and he gets to have a nice Italian holiday. Just expect a chiller installment going in. I think this is the last one for Robert McCall.
    • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was nowhere as bad as I was led to believe. I’d say it’s actually very successful in closing out Harrison Ford’s role and setting up a possible future heir. The last one was roundly panned and tried to introduce the idea that he had a son, played by an awful human being, which failed so badly they wrote him out in the most delicious way possible in this film. I really hope Phoebe Waller-Bridge gets her spinoff out of this, but apparently she’s developing a Tomb Raider TV series for Amazon Prime? What a shame to work on the pretender when the original tomb raiding franchise is right there!
    • I forced myself to finish season 1 of Invasion on Apple TV+, just because season 2 looked good in the trailers and has a higher Rotten Tomatoes score. Season 1 is an awful plodding mess, which given Simon Kinberg’s involvement should not surprise anyone. If you’re interested in S2 and haven’t started on S1, I’d recommend you just go straight to it and try to fill in the blanks.
    • The Below Deck marathon continues. We finished seasons 5 and 6, started over with season 1 — it was disappointing in terms of production quality and crew likeability — and are now on the second.
    • Apple Arcade’s new James Bond game is quite entertaining. Cypher 007 is an isometric stealth-action game from the makers of Space Marshalls, and should scratch the itch for anyone who loves the franchise and/or Metal Gear games.
    • So much new music came out and I haven’t had a chance to hear it all yet. After hearing about how Sufjan Stevens’ Javelin is dedicated to his partner who died this April, I’ve played it through several times. I think it’ll be one I come back to over the years.
    • There’s also a new Drake album, For All The Dogs, which may not have the same longevity.
    • I enjoyed my playthrough of HOW DID WE GET HERE? by a 22-year-old Canadian pop artist named “young friend” while writing this post. Admittedly, I wasn’t listening to the words at all, but it was very pleasant and I’ll have to get back to it.
    • A new Omar Apollo EP, Live For Me, which I’ve heard one song off and am really excited for.
    • Caroline Polachek’s second album, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, has been getting great reviews too, so I’ll get around to it next week hopefully.
    • Also, a new Jorja Smith! A new Static Selektah!
  • Week 38.23

    Week 38.23

    After 71.5 hours of dungeon crawling, coffee brewing, curry cooking, high schooling, part-time jobbing, and maid cafe patronizing, I finally finished the incredible game that is Persona 5 Royal. If you count the 30 or so hours I put into the original non-Royal version on my PS4 back in 2016, this has been a long time in the making. There’s a remake of Persona 3 coming next year, so I’m looking forward to that.

    For the uninitiated, Persona games are a spinoff series from another series of games called Shin Megami Tensei, which all involve harnessing the same stable of supernatural beings and doing turn-based battles. It’s Pokémon with demons. The SMT games are grittier and flirt with horror themes, but the Persona ones (at least the ones I’ve seen) incorporate more slice-of-life activities and are generally lighter.

    What’s next? Not sure. For now I’m gonna pass a little time finishing the final episode in Ace Attorney Chronicles which I paused over a year ago. I still don’t feel up to Tears of the Kingdom.

    On the TV front, we finished season 1 of Poker Face and it’s a show I’d recommend to almost anybody. Brilliant writing within a formula that is equally happy to revel in, but also subvert itself from time to time. The twists, the characters, the plays on genre, they’re straight out of an Ace Attorney game (minus the goofiness).

    Netflix also released season 3 of Kengan Ashura, a hyper-violent manga to anime adaptation that I do not recommend to anyone, except I watched the first two seasons ages ago and feel invested in finishing it. Truly, the Venn diagram of people who make this and make Mortal Kombat games is just a circle of sickos. The people who enjoy this are probably in the same circle.

    So I’ve partially fast-forwarded myself through it up to episode 9 now. Hilariously, the main character has been in a coma since the end of episode 1, and while the fight scenes (it’s centered around a Bloodsport-style martial arts tournament) are rendered in a 3D engine that simulates an anime look, all other scenes are drawn in traditional 2D, and boy does their lack of budget show! Some scenes (mostly flashbacks, to be fair) are literally sketches passed off as a stylistic choice.

    ===

    I got my new iPhone, and rejoining the Plus/Max club hasn’t been as bad as I feared. Granted, this is my first large iPhone with flat sides, a design I highly prefer to the rounded sides we endured for many years between the iPhone 6 and 11 series. Flat sides are simpler easier to hold, especially between fingertips when taking a photo in landscape orientation.

    So now with the reduced weight, flat sides, and thinner bezels, I think the Max form factor is finally becoming something I can love. The benefits of the larger screen are undeniable and without a case on the whole thing feels amazing. It’s more of a joy to use for every task: watching videos, writing text and reading pages, editing photos, gaming, you name it. The increased battery life is also a great comfort, especially after the disappointment of the 14 Pro in that area. After a year of regular use, that one is down to 85% battery health.

    There have been complaints about the build quality of the early iPhones 15, with reports of wonky antenna lines, discolored titanium frames straight out of the box, and so on. I did notice the same odd rectangular ghost lines at certain points on the sides of my Natural Titanium Pro Max, but they rubbed away with no issues. I commented a single word, Stains;Gate, on a Threads post from 9to5mac about it but sadly no one appreciated the anime reference.

    Where I have more concern is the fit and finish where the back glass meets the metal frame. New this year are rounded edges, not angular, not chamfered, but with a curve in the metal and maybe even a little in the glass. Some areas on mine are quite well rounded and comfortable to touch, but unfortunately the lower left and right sides where my hand makes contact have a slightly sharper feel to them. It’s clearly a minor defect, with a gap between the glass and titanium that’s probably measured in micrometers, but I can feel it, and that’s that.

    If I were a YouTuber I might make a video where I try to grate cheese with the edge or something. I’ll put up with it for now and see if it “settles in” after awhile, and try an AppleCare+ replacement if I can’t stand it.

    It’s now emerging that the 15 Pro Max’s titanium frame is susceptible to overflexing when pressure is applied, causing the back glass panel to break with nothing more than force from one’s bare hands. You will recall the iPhone 6 Plus’s “Bendgate” issue, where YouTubers were able to bend and break the devices quite easily. Apple reinforced the following year’s iPhone 6S, I think with steel inserts, but doing that with the 16 Pro Max would defeat the purpose of this entire switch to titanium. In the video above, the smaller 15 Pro survives the same bend test. It’s just a problem with the larger models.

    Anecdotally, there’s always some risk involved in buying the first Apple products out of the factory gate; I’ve experienced many odd defects over the years from underpowered speakers in the first-gen iPad Pro (was blown away by the actual volume when I got a new unit after a display fault)to battery and sound issues with AirPods Pro (even acknowledged with a replacement program). Usually waiting a couple of weeks will ensure you get perfect devices. But I haven’t got the patience for that!

    But the cameras! They are indeed an improvement. More natural processing, less sharpening, and the 24mp files have more resolved detail. I’m enjoying the 5x reach, which as one reviewer pointed out, is a more meaningful role for an extra lens than 3x, given that the main camera is already capable of providing a good 2x image (at 12mp), which is close enough to 3x. Portrait Mode does extremely good segmentation now, and I haven’t taken any photos yet where the edges on people or objects were not perfectly recognized.

    A pair of 5x photos, processed in Hipstamatic
    120mm (5x) through a window — sorry, stranger
    28mm low-light shot (not Night Mode)
    28mm close up
    268mm (10x digital zoom)

  • Week 37.23

    Week 37.23

    First things first. As you know, we’re big curry rice fiends over here, and I recently found out that Maji Curry (Kanda Curry Grand Prix winner 2018/2022) has had a Singapore outpost for the past year and I never heard about it. This curry fiend may need some curry friends; I’m clearly not plugged into the scene.

    I went there this weekend and was not disappointed: their signature Hamburg steak curry with soufflé cheese sauce is a winner. It has the fragrant spices associated with Indian curries, but meets Japanese curry’s lower heat level and sweeter profile halfway. Let’s pray they stick it out and thrive here, unlike Go Go Curry (I’m still holding out hope for their resurrection).

    ===

    I was browsing YouTube one evening when I came across a live premiere of a DJ set by Taku Takahashi, playing “only Utada Hikaru”. Being a fan of his remix of their latest song, I stayed for the whole thing, and it was great! And then the next night, at the same time, they did another one with another DJ! And the next night again! They were all shot at the same event hosted by Amazon Music Japan, but the three-day release schedule was pretty smart.

    I also learnt that Jay-Z pretty much wrote the iconic song Still D.R.E. for Dr. Dre’s 2001 album. When the doctor was stuck with just a beat and no words, he sent it off to Jay who reportedly returned with a demo in under an hour, performing both Dre’s and Snoop’s parts in imitations of their voices. Apparently that was it; the whole song was done.

    This sent me off on repeated plays of Jay’s The Blueprint and The Black Album this week. It’s been years since I played them straight through, and I’m humbled to say it’s given me a newfound appreciation of Jay-Z. There was a period years ago when I harbored an intense dislike of him, probably because of how popular he was whilst being technically a less interesting rapper than many other better ones who deserved success. Also, all the clownish ad-libs and general timbre of his voice were just so annoying.

    But you wrote Still D.R.E.? Okay, RESPECT.

    Vagabon’s new album Sorry I Haven’t Called also came out, and I highly recommend it. Her last album featured the song Every Woman, which was one of my favorites of 2019.

    ===

    There was a big tech event this week, and of course I’m talking about the latest Nintendo Direct! There are so many great titles still on the way, this late in the Switch’s lifecycle. A handful of new and remade Mario/Luigi/Wario/Peach games, a Detective Pikachu sequel, a Spy × Family title (an anime game with a simultaneous Western release!?), and even a new Prince of Persia game. The fact that the slate is still so full going into 2024 makes me confident that the Switch 2 will have backward compatibility with the whole catalog.

    I’m kinda sure I played Another Code a little back in the days of the Nintendo DS, and a great looking remake of it and its Japan-only sequel are coming out soon, under the name Another Code: Recollection. But available immediately after the Direct was Trombone Champ, which I bought immediately. Imagine Guitar Hero, but with a comical sounding instrument — an absolute no-brainer. You can even play with up to three friends in local multiplayer, but Kim has not yet agreed to it.

    Oh, it was also time for the new iPhones, and practically all important points had already leaked: titanium frames for the Pro models, a new folded zoom (rumored to be a periscope lens but instead a tetraprism design) only on the Max models, smaller bezels, USB-C, and the removal of leather products from Apple’s entire supply chain. Apparently they’ll even progressively remove existing leather furnishings from their stores.

    I… am not against leather, though I can understand that it’s a net negative for the world at Apple’s scale. But there’s no great substitute: synthetic leather is awful, and early impressions of Apple’s new recycled fabric, a material they’re calling FineWoven, suggest it’s not as premium feeling as hoped. In any case, it’s a woven textile product sitting in for a smooth, supple skin. Not really comparable.

    If Apple added FineWoven products to the lineup any other year without removing leather at the same time, there would be far less scrutiny. After some consideration, I decided to get a leather case from Nomad for the times I’ll need one (going out for drinks is one recommended occasion). I dislike their ribbed power button design, but couldn’t find any better options. Bellroy makes one, but with a cutout and not a passthrough button for the new Action Button. I’m glad I also snagged a last few Apple leather straps for my watch before this happened.

    Back to the phones, though. The one thing that hadn’t leaked was a big one for me: the new A17 Pro chip has a GPU and Neural Engine powerful enough to do real-time ray tracing and AI-powered upscaling. These will literally allow console-quality games (a term carelessly bandied around in mobile gaming quite frequently, but seemingly for real this time) to be played on iPhones. There was the surprise announcement that Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding Director’s Cut would be ported over this year, along with Resident Evil Village (previously announced for the Mac), the remake of Resident Evil 4, and the next Assassin’s Creed game, Mirage, in 2024. These games suggest the iPhone is basically capable of running PlayStation 4 games, but without active cooling (a fan).

    The possibility of playing these games on the go, along with the 5x telephoto lens exclusivity, pushed me to pre-order a 512GB Pro Max model this year. Ugh. As said in too many words last week, I find carrying such a large phone around too much of an inconvenience, but the bigger screen and longer battery life are justified this year. And thanks to the move to USB-C, I had to order a new Backbone One controller as well. I love my original Lightning connector model; it’s a well-built, great-feeling, very clever gamepad.

    On the camera front, there were mentions of a new improved Photonic Engine in the iPhone 15 Pro, which gives me hope that we’ll get less artificial looking photos this year. I was very pleased by the new feature which lets you choose from 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, and 48mm crop settings when using the main camera sensor. These nods to photographic tradition are befitting of a “Pro” model, and help users learn about different focal lengths. You can even set one of them as your default (this isn’t the Apple we knew), and I think I’ll be choosing 35mm. If only we could set a 3:2 aspect ratio to go with it.

    I’d read online that iOS 17 changes something about how photos are processed on the iPhone 14 Pro, making them less aggressively sharp and HDR-ed, and I was sure I could see an improvement after updating to the RC. I really believed they were looking more natural, especially in the 2x and 3x lengths, but after comparing photos from two iPhones on iOS 16 and 17, I can confirm that it was all in my imagination. So you’ll have to get the new iPhone to “fix” the processing if it bothers you.

    You do gain the ability to save photos in “HEIC Max” quality on iPhone 14 Pros, though. This saves 48mp HEIF files, with all the smart processing, which previously required an app like Halide to do. The ability to change a portrait photo’s subject and focal point after the fact will also be available on older phones with iOS 17, in case you aren’t planning to upgrade this year.

  • [H-AI] A Nostalgic Leap: From Nintendo 3DS to Apple Vision Pro

    The following is a post written by GPT-4 given a detailed brief by yours truly. The [H-AI] tag in the title declares this as human-supervised AI content.

    In the tech world, it’s easy to get caught up in the latest and greatest. But sometimes, it’s worth taking a moment to look back at the innovations that brought us here. Today, I’m talking about the Nintendo 3DS and its 3D camera, a feature that seems to have found a spiritual successor in Apple’s newly announced Vision Pro headset.

    The 3DS, launched in 2011, was a marvel of its time. It brought 3D gaming to the palms of our hands, no goofy glasses required. But the real kicker was its 3D camera. With two outer sensors capturing slightly different angles, it could take 3D photos and videos. It was a novelty, sure, but it was also a glimpse into the future.

    The 3DS’s 3D camera was met with a mix of awe and skepticism. Some saw it as a gimmick, while others reveled in the new dimension it added to their photos and videos. Regardless of the reception, it was a bold move by Nintendo, a testament to their innovative spirit.

    Fast forward to today, and we see Apple taking a page from Nintendo’s book with the Vision Pro. This VR headset lets you relive moments in dramatically higher resolution — a step up from the 3DS, but the core concept remains the same.

    The 3DS may be discontinued, but its legacy lives on. It was a pioneer in 3D technology, a stepping stone to the immersive experiences we see today. As we anticipate the release of the Vision Pro next year, let’s not forget the devices that paved the way.

    So here’s to the Nintendo 3DS, a trailblazer in its own right. And here’s to the Apple Vision Pro, a testament to how far we’ve come. The future of XR technology is bright, and I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s next.

  • Week 12.23

    We spent four days in Tokyo and three in Kobe. Lots of walking and aching old legs. Lots of eating and drinking with mild hangovers. Kobe has been a surprise: a delightful city that feels close to nature despite an industrial background. Friendly, warm, and helpful people. Affordable prices. It feels like a great place to buy property and partially retire in. We had our first proper Kobe beef meal and it didn’t disappoint, and dropped in on a live jazz bar that felt like a small, well cared-for living room. I recorded a couple of songs using Voice Memos on my iPhone and the quality turned out pretty great. The microphones on this thing are perhaps more impressive than the cameras (see upcoming post on Hipstamatic — the iPhone 14 Pro may not compare well enough to a proper camera but it has a place if you use it as your fun camera).

    Anyway I’ll let some photos do the talking. All but two of these are from the Ricoh GR III. One of them is straight from iPhone’s 3x telephoto camera, and the other was edited with Hipstamatic. Can you tell?

    Please rotate your iPhone to landscape because WordPress’s masonry layout somehow doesn’t work on narrow screens!