Camera Talk

This is a pano-stitch in PS-CS5 of three iPhone images of a mural that has been painted under a pedestrian walkway at my local shopping centre. The artists are all members of a local youth art group that works with youths with social problems. The wildlife depicted is all local to the area.
The youth in the image is totally absorbed in his smart-phone while being oblivious of the natural wonders around him.


In posting this image taken with my iPhone I have joined the dark side. I don't usually use my iPhone for taking photos, but as they say, the best camera is the one that you have with you!

I like this photo. It's something that you can do much easier digitally than with film. Have you tried the iPhone's panorama function?

My results with a camera's panorama function have varied from good to mediocre.

Nope, Mike - I didn't even know the thing has a pano function. I even have difficulty holding it right way up! I just clicked off three individual shots as parallel to the wall as I could. PS5 did the rest. It is set to default, and I see from the exif data that it used an ISO of 40 and 1/35th @ f2.2. I don't think that I would have chosen those settings if I had used my Nikon. More like ISO 400 and f5.6 and rely on the VR.

That's interesting about the exposure data. You're right - I think most of us would have been looking at a higher speed film and smaller aperture.

On a slightly related note, I noticed that Apple's latest ads are making a big deal of its portrait mode (larger aperture) to throw the background out of focus.

Nice shot but a sad commentary about the world we live in. I have a PANO program and I was thinking of using a 1/2 frame camera to try and do a 360.

I'm too cheap to get a good phone, along with their resulting high usage bills, so I rarely use it to take photos. But if I did, it would be things like your panorama, Graham. It came out real nice, and it was good you thought about keeping the phone aligned with the wall, but maybe next time go for a minimum of four images to do the stitch. One of my standards is whatever is in the middle of the image cannot go off the screen when the next image is framed. And that's with using something that has a 3:2 ratio, unlike your phone which is 16:9 I think.

PF

My 'phone and it's running cost is a gift from my daughter - as is my Best Beloved's 'phone. My daughter got fed up with us old fogies not being able to receive and reply to her visual communications and e-mail attachments unless we were sitting at a PC.

The light on this mural is very directional, from the one end of the subway. The difference in brightness left to right on each image is about three stops. I had to correct each image in PS using a graduated filter before I loaded them up for stitching. Four images may have made this easier, but what the heck, I got what I got. I used the 'phone camera in default 3:2 ratio.

LarryD wrote:Nice shot but a sad commentary about the world we live in. I have a PANO program and I was thinking of using a 1/2 frame camera to try and do a 360.

Now there's an idea! High-five, Larry.