Anyway, the recent change in my iPhone camera habits means that I’ve been trying out some different apps to add another dimension to the process. One of the apps I recently bought is the ClassicPAN Vintage Panoramic app (¥115 or $0.99) from misskiwi. It looks like a retro camera within your iPhone, with a shutter button at the top right,  and you swipe the lower portion of the screen (where the retro looking crank handle is) to change the type of film effect – here’s a screen shot (from misskiwi.com):

classicPAN screen shot ©misskiwi.com

The images are stored in a 9:4 format (iPhones regular aspect ratio is 4:3) with the top and bottom cut out to get the effect of a panoramic photo. This aspect ratio gives the effect of a 24×54 mm panoramic 35 mm format and, as I mentioned above, there are a number of film effects to choose from. In fact, there are 11 in total: negative film, positive film, black and white film, sepia film, desaturated film, high-speed black and white film, high quality vivid film, vintage damaged film, overexposured color film, overexposured black and white film, CLS original #1 film. A vignette can also be applied and you have the option to store an original file (with no added effects) in case you want to do your post-processing elsewhere.

The weather was horrible today in Tokyo, but, as I was passing by a just-about-to-bloom cherry tree, I thought it would be a good subject for showing the different film effects. Unfortunately, I had neglected to charge my battery before going out to run some errands, so my battery died as I reached sample #9 (I think it’ll soon be time for a new iPhone because I’m almost at the 2-year mark and it seems I am always needing to charge it). Anyway, below are the samples I took (they are in the same order listed above) – the vignette effect was on for each and they are all SOOC (straight out of the camera, with no additional processing).

Overall, I like the interface and the app seems quite stable (a couple of sudden crashes, but they could be due to other issues with my phone) and it’s definitely a fun, very reasonably priced, app that will add some new creativity to your iPhone photos and make you like your iPhone camera a little bit more.

ClassicPAN iPhone app samples ©tokyololas

Tokyo International Forum interior

Despite the meltdown of the global economy and a general slowing of business everywhere, 2009 has been a busy one for tokyololas so far (which may or may not explain why I have left a photo of a weird looking poodle at the top of this blog FOREVER).

Anyway, the other day, I was having a very brief email exchange about processing black & white digital photos and I was explaining why I really like to use HDR/tonemapping for black and white photos, particularly black and white photos of sky/clouds.

Two caveats up front: I don’t really care whether or not the process is called “HDR” or “Tonemapping”, so I will refer to it as HDR going forward; AND I don’t really care whether or not people like or don’t like “HDR”. I will agree that there is A LOT of very badly done “HDR” floating around the internet, but, beyond that, whether or not one likes the more extreme, cartoonish-looking HDR is a matter of personal preference or if you are not a fan of the Stuck in Customs style, again, that is a matter of personal preference.

I have certainly dabbled in a range of “HDR” styles just to get a feel for the process and see what can/cannot be done; and I have certainly produced a few HDR shots that I now abhor, but I am glad I did do them as a kind of experimentation because I now have a very strong sense of what I like and don’t like. As I said above, it is all a matter of personal taste and even when I find myself not particularly liking someone else’s vision, I do understand the time and effort that went into producing the end result.

These days, I tend to only do HDR for sky shots or architecture, and I MUCH prefer a more “True Tone HDR” style. In other words, I want the HDR element of the processing to be very subtle or even indiscernible. I have also found that a lot of digital black and white photos I see online are quite flat and lack the range of blacks that can be found in a nice black and white film photo.

This observation and dissatisfaction led me to start experimenting with HDR for black and white shooting and processing. I say “shooting” here because I almost always know before I take the shot that I am going for a black and white end product and, of course, if you are going to do decent HDR, you need to decide up front so you can do the multi-exposures (yes, of course, I know it is possible to do HDR from 1 shot, but I never do, so it is always a decision I make at the point of shooting).

This is not really a tutorial, so if you have no idea what any of this means, and, more important, you want to know, you might want to do some additional reading: stuck in customs HDR tutorial, Naturescapes.net HDR Landscapes Tutorial, Wikipedia HDR page, and Photomatix (the software I use to process/tonemap the images).

Personally, I like to keep things simple, so my approach to HDR is simple: no tripod – just a fast lens (I own two tripods, including a very handsome carbon fibre model, but I rarely carry it out and about with me and most often use it on my balcony or out back at night), 3 exposures using the AEB feature of my camera (-2/0/+2), upload to Lightroom, process in Photomatix, final adjustments in Lightroom (usually minor or none), export the final image. The whole thing from selecting AEB to exporting the final image can be done in less than 10 minutes. I know doing more than 3 exposures can yield even better results, but that would then require a tripod 100% of the time and would involve more fiddling with exposures on the spot (fine on a nice summer day, but not something I’d want to spend time doing when it is below zero outside). Two things I have not included above: shoot in RAW (I assume that anyone who owns a half-decent DSLR is shooting RAW – if you’re not, you should be and you’ll need to in order to do HDR), shoot on ISO 100 if possible or 200 if you must (any higher and you’ll most likely end up with noise in your final image).

Now, the results. The first shot below shows the base image (the “correct” exposure of the scene) converted to black and white – pretty flat, no?

Here is the HDR/tonemapped version:

Much better range of light and, what’s incredible, is that you can actually see a patch of what seems to be precipitation under the cloud (which is not at all visible in the base image). Now, if you want to have more fun, you can do other things with the image. For example, here is the actual final image that I ended up posting to Flickr – it was desaturated in Lightroom and there was some adjustment in terms of blue/green tones (again, clicking on the image will give you a better view):

Back to black and white – here are a few other examples of how I use the above process to get a final image I am happy with:

Palais Garnier -Opéra de Paris

Notre Dame de Paris (Notre Dame Cathedral) interior

intense sky over Harumi