Wedding Photographer Warwickshire | Boundless Photos Blog » Gear

iPhone Photo or 5D MKII Photo ?

Nick — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 02:01:57 +0000

Everyone knows the camera on the iPhone is pretty poor (least thats what most of the reports will tell you anyway) but for web sized pictures can you tell the difference between a photo taken on the Apple iPhone 3GS and one taken on Canons newest digital full frame SLR the 5D MKII?

This is exactly what I was thinking to myself as I walked back from a shoot this evening and so I took a quick snap with each of them of approximately the same the same scene.

The cameras are a different crop ratio which would be an easy giveaway which was which so I have cropped them to the same ratio and processed them the same, although the exposures are a bit different because it was literally a quick snap as we walking back to the car.

I am sure some people will find it an easy spot but I have left the EXIF info in the pics anyway so you can confirm it once you have decided which is which. Ive also added a quick extra pic from today’s shoot, no processing on this yet just bordered to re size it for the web.

Warwickshire Windmill Photo

Loving the new iPhone

Nick — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 21:30:45 +0000

I didn’t have a previous version so I aren’t comparing the new iPhone 3GS I got yesterday to the previous iPhone’s, I am comparing it to the Blackberries I have used for the last few years (latest one being the Bold) and my prior mobile phones, most of which have been Sony Ericsson handsets.

I really rated the Blackberry Bold, it did pretty much everything I wanted to do in a mobile device and the phone quality was top notch, the screen on it was a fantastic high resolution screen but a little bit n the small side, definitely fnding the larger screen on the iPhone more useful for online stuff.

Ive been an iPhone user for less than 48 hours but here are a few of my initial likes and dislikes.

Likes

Touch Interface – Ive used touch interfaces on other devices previously and not really liked them but on the iPhone it just works so well, its very intuitive and easy to use, overall I am just loving the whole experience, Apple really do know how to design interfaces well!

Pre-Loaded Apps – The apple Apps that come pre-loaded on the iPhone are getting some serious use from me and I am liking what I see on most of them. The mail app was very simple to setup and has worked well so far on 3G and WiFi, Photos is a great way of carrying round a little mobile portfolio of our work. Clock with the time zones is a nice quick way of determining whether I can ring that wedding album supplier half way round the world. Contacts is playing nicely with my Outlook contacts. MMS messaging (once 02 had sorted it) has worked very well. I haven’t had chance to play with the camera yet but expect to see some pics from that in the next few weeks.

iTunes – I hadn’t really used it before the iPhone arrived and it definitely takes a little bit of getting used to but on the whole I think its a great way of updating and backing up the iPhone and I have even bought a few Apps through it already so ease of use definitely helps people part with cash!

Dislikes

O2 Tethering Cost - Tethering is the ability to use the iPhone as a data modem to access the internet on another device, for example a laptop. The iPhone has the ability to share its internet connection (as do many other mobile phones that have web browsing) and occasionally when working remotely on a laptop where WiFi isn’t available this would be very useful. Unfortunately its a lot less useful when O2 demand an extra £15 a month for the ability to do this on top of the minimum £30 per month contract for an iPhone. It’s a price that just doesn’t make any sense at all, its the same price you would pay for a completely seperate mobile browsing package, by default the phone can do this so its just pure greed on 02′s part slapping this premium on.

My Current Fave Apps

I have some friends who have been iPhone users for quite some time now so I canvassed them to find out what the most useful apps were and based on their recommendations and a bit of looking around for myself this is what I have been finding useful.

Google Mobile App for iPhone – (free) If you use a lot of Google apps like I do and use google for search then this is a must have, voice activated searches is very cool and a place to launch all the other Google apps from means I have been using this a lot. Google mail on the Blackberry was good but its even better on the iPhone.

Facebook for iPhone – (free) Much more usable on the iPhone than the Blackberry version I had been using previously.

Tweetie – (paid app) Great little app for Twittering, very full featured and easy to use.

WordPress for iPhone – (free) A must have for anyone who blogs using WordPress.

Shazam - (free) I wasn’t sure I would use this when I downloaded it but we used it on the drive up to the North East today and its great for settling arguments about songs that you hear or just getting a bit more info when you hear something you haven’t heard before. It seems very quick and accurate at determining the song your listening to but also has bolt ons for recording location, twittering it or even viewing a YouTube video of it, it may not be the most productive app but its interesting at least.

Anyway these are just some of my initial thoughts after less than 48 hours of ownership, please feel free to comment on your own experiences and I am particularly interested to hear what apps everyone is finding most useful!

New iPhone announced at WWDC (iPhone 3GS)

Nick — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 19:25:56 +0000

The specs have been leaked all over the internet in the last few months but finally at today’s WWDC (Apples Worldwide Developer Conference) the official announcement was made that there’s an updated version of the iPhone hardware on the way.

Lots of updates to the Mac Book, OSX, Quicktime and just about every other app, service and hardware that apple provides was announced before the iPhone announcement was made so they definitely knew what the majority of people were waiting to hear about. The iPhone presentation was also by far the longest part of the keynote presentation (like longer than the whole of the rest of the keynote speech) but finally after going over all the updates that will come with the updated iPhone OS 3.0 they announced the new hardware.

I started typing this whilst listening to the keynote speech live and I really cant believe how long they spent talking about the iPhone updates before getting onto the new hardware, there’s some really cool things coming with the new OS and new Apps but it was like they wanted to torture the audience for as long as possible before revealing the new iPhone hardware.

June 17th is the date that the new iPhone OS 3.0 software will be available.

Highlights of the updated new iPhone hardware (iPhone 3GS) include Video recording (and video editing on the phone itself), auto focus, 3mp camera, voice control, compass and it comes in 16gb and 32gb flavours.

Available in the USA on the 19th June this year and it wasn’t clear from the feed I was listening to when it would be available in the UK but I think it was about a week later, thats what I am hoping for anyway!

Looks the same as the iPhone 3G, but some nice changes under the bonnet. Its still a long way off being the most technologically advanced handset out there but the OS and the apps are what makes it such a great tool.

New iPhone 3GS

In typical coordinated Apple fashion the Apple website was updated as soon as the announcement at WWDC had been made. > Apple iPhone 3GS on the apple website.

What gear do you use ?

Nick — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:50:00 +0000

Its a question that sometimes comes up with clients that we also get asked by other photographers, What gear do you use? so here’s a blog post on our current gear as of February 2009.

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So this is what we take to every wedding shoot, it looks like a heck of a lot of gear to take a few pictures (and feels like a lot when were carrying it!) but its what we consider to be the minimum to get the job done the way we work in a variety of conditions whilst having backups of key items, we certainly wont use all of it at every wedding but having this stuff in our gear bags or in the car gives us confidence we can cope with everything that comes out way.

There’s a lot of stuff in this picture, but the scary thing is that there’s also a lot of other things that we take with us that isn’t in the picture like rain umbrellas, client paperwork, rugs, food, a multitude of cables and chargers, spare printer paper and cartridges, mouse mats, mice etc. it seems to grow with each wedding we shoot!.

Camera Bodies – 6 of these between us. Our current main body is the Canon 5D MKII but then we also have a couple of 40D’s that are used as backups or to gain some reach due to their crop factor or because they suit certain lenses better than the full frame body.

Compact Flash Cards – 150Gb of Sandisk Ultra III & Ultra IV cards. and this seems to grow all the time, 5D MKII raw files are beautifully detailed but huge in size! so we carry enough memory to ensure we never run out of space to take more pictures even on the longest wedding day.

Sigma EF 8mm fisheye – Jons mega wide angle lens
Canon EF 15mm fisheye – Nicks mega wide angle lens
Canon EF 24-70 f2.8 L – Our standard zoom lens, we have one each of these
Sigma 50mm f1.4 – Nicks low light lens
Canon 50mm f1.4 – Jons low light lens
Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS – Two of these heavyweights, this is our sniping lens and we have one each.

Sigma 50mm Macro – Jons ring shot and detail lens

Canon EF 100mm Macro – Nicks detail lens

Canon 580EX – Two of these
Canon 430EX – Four of these

Batteries for cameras and flashes – Enough rechargable batteries to power a small town so we never run out of power.

ST-E2 – Two of these, great for getting the flash off the camera whilst still having ETTL

Packet Wizards Plus II’s – 6 of these for firing flashes remotely and reliably.

5 in 1 Reflector – Great for directing some natual light or for shade when there just isnt any.

9ft Lightsands+Tilt Swivel heads – 4 of these that we use for speeches and first dance shots.

Manfroto Monopods – Handy for certain shots, 2 of these

Manfroto lightweight monopod – Great as a hand hel lightstand.

Mac Book Pro – 2 of these babies – our tools for the mini album and slideshow that we make whilst wedding guests are eating.

Canon Selphy CP710 Dye Sub Printer – 2 of these awesome little printers, one for making the mini album one for backup.

Other bits and pieces in the pic – Mini softbox, light modifiers, mini albums, think tank CF card wallets, flash gels, towel, lens cloths, expo disk, rocket blowers, remote triggers, and some big bags that it all goes in.

Note for the eagle eyed: theres one flash and camera body missing from the pic because we needed something to take the picture with

Weekend away and a chance to test new gear

Nick — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:20:00 +0000

Just got back from a lovely long weekend away in the Cotswold’s with Kate, her parents, our borther and sister in law and of course not forgetting Toby and Brandy! As well as providing some much needed chill out time it was a great chance to test and play with some new gear that Jon and I have recently invested in for our wedding photography.

We upgraded our main cameras for this year to the awesome new Canon 5D MKII which offers some very significant benefits over what we have been using so far with the main one being fantastic ISO performance which allows us to shoot without flash in very low light conditions.

As well as the new Canon camera bodies we have also invested in some new lenses over the last couple of months, the latest of which to arrive was the Canon 15mm Fisheye lens so that’s what I spent most of this weekend playing with.

Its a specialty lens that gives a 180 degree horizontal perspective on our full frame bodies so not the sort of thing that you would shoot the majority of a wedding with but its great for giving a very different look for a few shots.

A trip to Tewkesbury Abbey provided a great chance to test the fisheye lens so most of the pics below were shot with it but theres also a couple of normal ones in there shot with the 24-70 f2.8 L lens, more pics to follow later this week.

Holiday Property Bond in the Cotswolds

Yaye for more memory \0/

Nick — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:01:00 +0000

When we bought the new Mac Book Pro a few weeks ago we kinda knew more memory would be better for what we do with it but getting it from apple was a silly price so rather than doing that we decided to get some from Crucial instead.

An extra 1gb from apple = £150, extra 1gb from crucial = £30 for the same spec so easy choice there then!

This week after spending a lot of time using it (it was slow at times) I finally got round to ordering more memory and it arrived today, hoorah for a quicker Mac experience!

Apple Mac Powerbook, yup more new kit

Nick — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 00:46:00 +0000

Jon’s been a Mac user for a while now and has been singing their virtues to me constantly so when we wanted to get a laptop for our photograhy business there was no real arguments about what we would get, a Mac Book Pro it was.

Thats the desktop I have been looking at whilst I have been working on it and getting used to it since we got it yesterday, it’s quite different to working on a PC but its very intuitive and user friendly so i’ve not found anything to be too much of a problem, just different and some things like photo and video editing are definitely easier to do on a Mac.

So what will we be doing with our new kit you may ask ? well we will be using it for a quite a few things (including posts to the blog like this one) but mainly for backing up photos whilst on the move and displaying slide shows at weddings, all of which this Mac will do very well.

New Lens = Duck Shots

Nick — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:32:00 +0000

In some of the photography communities on the net it’s customary to take a photo of a duck when you get a new lens, so just before it got dark yesterday evening I had a little wander along the canal near our home to test out the new lens and get the obligatory duck shot.

Very impressed with the focussing speed of this new lens and I am sure it will work very well for weddings just as it did for the camera shy ducks yesterday.

More Shiny New Gear

Nick — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 19:16:00 +0000

It’s not a cheap deal having the right gear to shoot a wedding, sure you could do it with a disposable camera or even splash out on a cheap point and shoot digital camera, you can pick them up for less than £100 these days. Both of these options would give you photos at the end of the day and if you went a step further and gave either of these two cameras to a professional photographer some of the shots would even be quite nice, however if you want to do justice to this very special day your going to have to shell out quite a bit more than £100.

Since the middle of last year we’ve invested over £10,000 in top end photography equipment to enable us to capure wedding days in a way that does them justice. This means having several camera bodies per photographer, a selection of top quality lens that are suitable for low light conditions, multiple external flashes, light stands, reflectors, tons of flash memory and backup devices and thats before we even get to the post prcessing stage. Obviously its also no good just having one of each of these pieces of vital kit as things do occasionally malfunction or just plain stop working so backup equipment has also been a large part of our investment.

The latest addition to the Boundless Photos equipment bag is this lovely 70-200 F2.8 IS L lens from Canon. A nice wide aperture will allow us to get shots in even the darkest of churches, the IS (Image Stabalisation) will keep the images sharp and in focus when shooting hand held and the L signifies it as one of Canons best professional lenses and ensures photos with beautiful vivid colours.

With a focal length of 70-200mm we have plenty of reach to get in close without actually being close to those that were photographing for those candid shots and those times like the ceremony where we want to capture the moments whilst being stood well back.

The other thing thats sneaked into the shot and in total contrast to the expensive lens is my little road runner cuddly toy wearing a red nose because today in the UK is Comic Relief – Red Nose Day. The television tonight has been awash of comedy and heartbreak as they swap between comedy sketches and reports from Africa and the UK showing where sponsorship money that is donated is used and needed for the future.

Its always bitter sweet to watch Comic Relief, the comedy scetches feature some of the most talented comedians we have and these are split up with harrowing reports from Africa and the UK, some of which have been extrememly hard to watch tonight. Lots more info about it at the comic relief link above.

Focus on Imaging

Nick — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 17:49:00 +0000

Catching up after a very hectic weekend.

Kate and I along with Natalie helped move our friend Hannah into the first ever flat she has owned and out of the house she was renting. The flat is just around the corner from us and the house where she was originally wasnt much further away so at least there wasnt much driving involved, just a bit of lifting and carrying, although I suspect Hannah enjoyed driving the van as much as she did moving into her own place

Sunday saw Me, Kate, Jon and Hilary taking a trip around the Focus on Imaging show at the NEC and to say me and Jon were like a couple of kids in a candy store would be a very big understatement!.

As soon as we got there we decided that the best plan of attack was to divide and conquer and that the girls should go off and look at what album suppliers had to offer whilst myself and Jon had a shopping list of equipment we were interested in looking at.

The next hour passed very quickly indeed, we met back up very briefly with the girls to drop some bags off as we were running out of hands to be able to carry stuff and then off we shot to finish off the shopping list.

Somewhere along the line Jon managed to convince me that an Intuo 3 Graphics Tablet was a must have piece of equipment for this year and that I should buy him one (I was holding the company funds).

£310 lighter in the pocket and I was left with that feeling that I am sure every mother and father can relate to as my “son for the day” walked around with his latest toy tucked under his arm and a big grin on his face. He has since assured me that he is sure it will really help with the post wedding workflow and imaging processing tasks we will have this year.

A few hours later and a couple of thousand pounds lighter in the wallet and we left the NEC with some great new equipment for this years assignments and a lot more information on suppliers that we can offer our clients this year, all in all a very useful day out.