imsolidstate: photography

I haven’t had a chance to experiment with HDR photography yet, but I was browsing the android market and ran across the Pro HDR Camera app. I wasn’t expecting it to work very well, but I went ahead and downloaded it. Turns out it does work and it’s not a fake HDR effect you add to a photo. It takes three exposure bracketed photos and then merges them into one. You have a collection of sliders for manually adjusting warmth, contrast, levels, etc. You have to hold really still to get a sharp photo but it even handles differences between the pictures appropriately. For example I took some pictures of the beach, expecting the waves to be blurry from the three different exposures, but it used just one of the exposures for the waves so they are clear. I haven’t used it enough yet to know which exposure it uses if the subject moves; I intend to find out if it is just the middle exposure or if it possibly uses the exposure with the best contrast.

The only problem I’ve run into so far is if only one of the three exposures is different it tends to merge all three and you get ghosting. This happens most often with people. It seems that if all of the exposures are different then this won’t happen. I’ve inluded a picture showing this, and in this case I think it’s actually a cool effect. It’s usually annoying though as it looks like one of those 3D scenes without glasses.

I am impressed and do recommend this app. It has limitations (blurry photos if you don’t hold really still), but it makes your cell phone camera much more useful and improves low-light photos. If you like taking creative pictures, this is probably the best $1.99 you’ll spend for your phone.

These pictures are all at the default levels, no tweaking.

HDR

The downside of being the photographer is that you’re never in the shot.  In an attempt to change this I fixed up a rig for my Sony point-and-shoot to take video of myself.  I had to modify the camera a bit to accept my cheapo fisheye lens to get sufficient field of view.

Here’s some video from the setup: riding my longboard at CSUP.

The whole perspective is sort of weird so I probably will abandon this idea.

Recently I purchased an add-on fisheye lens for my cell phone camera from photojojo.com. It was cheap, so I wasn’t expecting much but it turns out to be pretty fun. It’s advertised as 180°, but I got less than that with my phone (EVO 4G). It’s also pretty fuzzy around the edges. It’s not bad though, since this is your cell phone after all. However, this is more of a wide angle with some fisheye effect.

You affix the lens by first sticking a steel ring to your lens bezel. The fisheye lens has a magnetic base, so it sticks to the ring. It falls off pretty easily, so you have to be careful but it’s a pretty good idea nonetheless. The sticky ring hasn’t fallen off my phone yet. It comes with lens caps, and the back cap is also a lanyard so you can take it with you. Not bad for $25.

Fisheye

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