[ Lost in the Landscape ]

cellphone camera test

After hav­ing lived with­out a cell­phone for the last two cen­turies I finally took the leap. Not only did I get a cell­phone, I got a smart phone. The iPhones have been all the rage for a while, but I ended up select­ing an HTC MyTouch ser­viced by T-Mobile.

As some­one who’s a bit of a Lud­dite and who’s loudly protested cell­phones and cell­phone cul­ture, I’m almost ashamed to admit own­ing the device. Still, some­thing about the com­bi­na­tion of a device that is part-phone, part-camera, part-wireless router, part-web browser, part-music player, part-camcorder, part-GPS unit, part-nanny, part-godknowswhatelse seemed compelling.

Last week a good friend came to visit for a few days. A tourist trip up to the top of Mount Soledad, the high point of coastal San Diego, seemed like a good idea. Thurs­day was a break between win­ter storms, which meant that the vis­i­bil­ity could be pretty stunning.

Yes indeed. The views were ter­rific. Also, a lot of native plants sur­round­ing the lit­tle pad of green grass and park­ing at the top of the moun­tain were break­ing out into bloom.

Did some­one say “photo-op?”

Since I didn’t have my real cam­era this seemed like a good test for the cam­era fea­ture on the new hand­held device. (Really, can you call it a phone anymore?)

Here’s a short stack of snap­shots I took up there. And yes, I con­sider them snap­shots, only snapshots.

I’m used to cam­eras with lots of con­trols. For con­trols, this model has a mod­er­ate zoom option and the abil­ity to turn the flash on or off or on auto­matic. That’s it for options. So, it does make for a simple-to-use cam­era, but it’s sim­ple to the point of being sim­plis­tic.

Achiev­ing good focus or get­ting an expo­sure that doesn’t over­ex­pose some­thing in the frame can be a chal­lenge. These are lim­i­ta­tions for lots of point and shoot cam­eras, so I don’t know that it’s any worse than some of them. Lens flare when you shoot into the sun can be a prob­lem, but that hap­pens with even the best of cameras.

The phone design­ers prob­a­bly real­ized that the cam­era would be liable to shake as you took a snap­shot. To com­pen­sate they applied a fairly extreme level of in-camera sharp­en­ing. For some images it’s barely notice­able, in oth­ers it’s so obvi­ous it hurts.

So as not to seem like I’m a total Mr. Neg­a­tive, there were a few things I did like. The wide 9:16 aspect ratio of the image–similar to the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of televisions–is kin­duv cool and cin­e­matic. The 2:3 aspect ratio of old-school 35mm cam­eras is harder to work with and often feels unnatural.

Col­ors looked pretty true to life.

And in the end there’s the much bet­ter chance that you’ll have the cell­phone cam­era handy when you’ve left the ded­i­cated cam­era at home. You may never miss another photo op again.

So…has life changed with a cell­phone? I can’t say that it has that much. It was handy to have when I was try­ing to nav­i­gate Philadel­phia a cou­ple weeks ago. It’s handy to keep in touch with peo­ple when you’re away from the land­line. And I guess I feel just a lit­tle bit more hip. Like, now, when peo­ple talk about angry birds, I real­ize chances are that they’re most likely talk­ing about the app and not what hap­pens when you dis­turb a nest.

February 26 2011 | Categories: photography • places | Tags: Angry Birds • cameras • cellphone cameras • cellphones • Mount Soledad • native plants • snapshots • viewpoints | 12 Comments »

on the road–part 2

Late on the night of Day 2 I roll into Idaho’s Craters of the Moon National Mon­u­ment. Like Yel­low­stone it show­cases some strik­ing vol­canic fea­ture, in this case recent erup­tions along the local rift zone in the Earth’s crust. Here are a cou­ple shots from Day 3, images of an intense wild­flower bloom and of resid­ual ice in Indian Tun­nel, a lava tube you can explore.

Then it was on to Yel­low­stone. Here are some of the pics from there, in no real order.

Upper Falls of the Yel­low­stone River:

Tourists at Artist’s Point over­look­ing the Lower Falls of the Yel­low­stone River. The artist in ques­tion is Thomas Moran, who used this van­tage point for his famous image of the Grand Canyon of the Yel­low­stone River.

Spring thaw begin­ning on Yel­low­stone Lake:

Clouds and ice, Yel­low­stone Lake:

Sun­set Lake, Black Sand Basin, Yel­low­stone:

A cou­ple shots from Mid­way Geyser Basin, from the brink or Excel­sior Geyser:

The Jeep didn’t care for the cold, wet weather, and took its own vaca­tion by the side of Yel­low­stone Lake.

View­point at Ledge Geyser, Black Sand Basin, Yel­low­stone, with some of the only sun­shine all trip:

The worst of the trip’s bison jams, this one when a herd of about five dozen was mov­ing from their break­fast to lunch graz­ing loca­tions:

Algae in the geyser runoff at Nor­ris Geyser Basin:

What? No pic­tures of Old Faith­ful? Sorry. There’s a cou­ple hun­dred more of these tourist pic­tures but I’ll spare you. Once I start print­ing up some of my more “seri­ous” pho­to­graphic work and have some­thing to show I’ll post a few more images.

June 08 2008 | Categories: landscape • photography • places | Tags: geysers • hot springs • tourists • Valley of the Moon National Monument • viewpoints • Yellowstone National Park | 2 Comments »