Category: iPhone

Rasty Feline – Come here – I want to see you.

Back in 1876 I would imagine that Mr. Bell had no idea how his invention might take unify the world.

I appreciate that telephones and long distance dialing are nothing new, and yet I can still find ways to be amazed.

Since my job is global, I’m often up early in the morning to take conference calls. No matter what time of the dark night I rise, The Feline is always certain that it’s time to be fed.

It doesn’t matter if it’s actually her feeding time. She’s awake. I’m awake. Food. Now.

I usually ignore her until the clock spins around to the right feeding time, but this does not sit well with The Feline. Which means she rather vocally lets me (and The Good Man. And the neighbors) know just what’s on her mind.

I usually keep my phone on mute and I close the door to my home office to keep her out, but that does not deter the persistent one. She’ll get her snout into the gap under the door and let the vocalizations rip.

Through the magic of telephonic technology, my crabby Feline has been heard around the world. London, Singapore, Sydney, Mumbai, São Paulo, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Argentina, Columbia, Sweden, France, Ireland, and more have all heard her pleas.

Two weeks ago, I was on a call with at least six vice presidents and executive vice presidents of my company. I fed the Feline early to pipe her down. I was on mute. I said very little. I made sure she was far away from this call.

Little did I know…

The second I went off mute to give my input to the executive team, The Feline had something to say.

Yes, executives of a multinational company had to hear my damn cat hollering.

Today was a first for The Feline. This morning she was heard in Kenya. Yup, all the way to Nairobi. May all those nice people in central Africa know: “I will not be ignored!!”

*siiiiiigh*

By the way…if it’s seven in the morning and you are stumbling around trying to dial Kenya with a country code of 254 and you forget to dial the 011 first…well, you talk to a really nice lady in Waco, Texas (area code 254) who wants to know why in the heck you are calling her.




Who me?



Photo by Karen Fayeth and taken with the Camera+ app on an iPhone4. Photo subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right column of this page.


iPhone Telephoto Lens – Another Unsolicited Review

Yesterday I chatted about the faboo macro/wide glass lens kit I purchased from the good people at Photojojo.

While I sort of dig that little macro lens, I’m absolutely stunningly in love with the item I want to talk about today.

It’s an 8x telephoto lens for the iPhone.

If being able to get clear close up shots on the iPhone is a pet peeve of mine, then the lack of a real zoom puts me right over the edge.

The iPhone camera purports to have a zoom feature, but it’s really just a crop and zoom on the image, not an actual lens feature. So when the zoom is used on the iPhone camera, what you get is a crappy, noisy photo. This makes me cranky.

When I saw a random Tweet about this telephoto lens for the iPhone, I knew I had to have it.

It’s an 8x fixed length zoom. When using the lens you get 8x and that’s it. The lens comes with a focus ring, but that’s about it as far as bells and whistles are concerned.

Here’s the box the whole kit arrives in. Clearly they are striving for that Apple look and feel:




Here’s the kit that comes in the box. You get the lens, a case that the lens screws into for a perfect mounting and fit, a spring loaded tripod mounting device, and a small tripod (you’ll need the tripod, it’s really hard to hold this thing still as the lens throws off the balance):




Here’s a closer shot of the lens itself. Those cute little focal length numbers on there are just for show and not useful in any way.




And here’s a view of the lens itself. Pretty sweet:




Here’s a good shot of how the kit looks when it is all put together. I was having trouble getting a decent photo to show the whole assembled kit, so I found one from a review on the ePHOTOzine site:



Photo credit: ePHOTOzine


This isn’t a high end lens for high end photographers, but it’s sure a heck of a lot of fun. I really get a kick out of playing around just to see what I can get. I really think that the realm of iPhoneography is growing fast. I’ve seen some amazing work already. Crazy how fast that phone in your pocket became more than just a phone.

Here are some sample shots I took a few weeks ago. These shots were taken from the balcony of a seventh floor room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. I love the depth of field I was able to achieve using this fun little plastic lens. There is no way the iPhone itself would have taken these kind of photos.

The first two I took using the Hipstamatic app. The third I used the Camera+ app to take the photos.










So upside of this little toy lens…it’s fun, it works as described, and at $35 from the Photojojo store, it doesn’t break the bank.

The downside, on some photos you can see the edges of the lens in the photo, but I was able to either crop or Photoshop that out in most cases (in the third sample photo above, I used the clone and stamp tool to remove, easy peasy).

Like the iPhone camera alone, the lens needs lots of light to help it along.

The kit can be a little cumbersome to assemble, as the case I normally have on the phone has to come off to accommodate the case that the lens threads into. That case isn’t really an everyday case, so that swapping around that can be kind of bothersome.

This lens won’t replace the zoom feature on any point and shoot with an 8x optical zoom, but it’s not supposed to. This little fun plastic lens is meant to be another tool to explore the bounds of the iPhone camera to see what you can create.

And for me, I’m rather head over heels in love with this little ingenious telephoto lens.




The first lens I bought arrived with some pieces of black plastic rolling around inside. I contacted Photojojo and they apologized profusely and sent a new one to me immediately. The didn’t require me to send back the old one either. Excellent customer service!


The good people at Photojojo simply impressed me so much with their products and customer service that I chose to write this review. They didn’t ask me to or pay me for my opinions. Just passing along a good thing.


Except as noted, all photos by Karen Fayeth and subject to the Creative Commons license in the right hand column of this page.


New Lenses – An Unsolicited Review

In the magical world of Twitter, after seeing a couple interesting retweets, I came across a site called Life in LoFi: iPhoneography.

Life in LoFi is a site dedicated to the emerging art of photography taken solely with the iPhone camera (or iPad or iPod). Lately I have been really into shooting with my iPhone, so I was happy to stumble across these good folks.

The Life in LoFi people are worth a follow if you are into iPhoneography. I’ve made good use of their tweets about photography apps that are either on sale or free. In the past two months I have picked up scores of new apps that I’d never have found on my own, and most of them were heavily discounted or free. There’s some amazing and powerful photography apps out there these days.

And then one day, the Life in LoFi people turned me on to a site called Photojojo. I’m probably massively behind the times in this discovery, but so be it.

Photojojo is dedicated to tips and tricks, and some of the best and most intriguing products for digital photography. Well, this site is right up my alley.

I sashayed over to the Photojojo online store and explored their offerings. My first purchase was a really fantastically cool item that I hope to review tomorrow. I had a little mechanical glitch with the product on that first order, and the Photojojo took care of me so well (customer service that goes above and beyond, truly) that I chose to go back to the online store to buy more product to support such a wonderful store.

Finally we get to the meaty part of this post. One of the items I bought from the Photojojo team was a real, honest to goodness glass lens for my iPhone. It’s a combo macro and wide angle lens.

Here’s what the kit looks like out of the box:





The macro lens is the smaller piece and is used alone. The two lens pieces screw together to become one solid lens for the wide angle shots.





Here’s the tricky part…this lens attaches to the iPhone by way of magnets. See that metal circle to the right in the below photo (center in above photo)? That has reusable stickum on it. You stick that ring around the iPhone camera lens (if you have a case on your phone, that has to come off). Then the lens sticks with a strong magnet to the metal ring.

I’ll be honest…it’s not a very elegant solution. It works, but it’s less than perfect.





Here are some photo examples to get a good idea of what the lenses can do.

This is a normal photo taken with the QuickPix app with no lens other than the one built into the phone.





This is the same photo at the same distance with the wide angle lens attached. It has a bit of a fisheye look to it, and you can see the sides of the lens in the corners, but that’s fairly easily cropped off. I did no touchup other than shrinking the size and a little boost on light balance in iPhoto.





Same photo with the macro lens. I got as close as I could and while keeping the object in focus.




The macro photo is not bad. It’s WAY better than anything the iPhone camera can do on its own. For example, I didn’t know my keyboard key had scratches in it until I took this photo. I’d never have captured that with the regular iPhone camera.

All of these photos are a bit noisy as 1) the iPhone camera just comes with a lot of noise and 2) I was not in the best lighting situation for these photos. I find with the iPhone camera, light is everything in order to make a decent photo.

One of my biggest complaints about the iPhone camera is the inability to get close up shots that are in focus. This little stick on lens really fits the macro bill. I’m not completely in love with the form factor of the sticky ring and magnet, but I’m able to make it work. I’ve played around with it some and find that overall, I’m quite happy.

This real glass wide/macro lens cost me the meager sum of $20 plus shipping from the Photojojo store. A bargain, in my opinion.

Tomorrow, I’ll review my other purchase from Photojojo. It’s another lens, but while the macro/wide angle lens simply makes happy, the lens I’ll chat about tomorrow knocks my socks off.

Stay tuned photo friends! I’m whipping out my book of superlatives!




The good people at Photojojo simply impressed me so much with their products and customer service that I chose to write this review. They didn’t ask me to or pay me for my opinions. Just passing along a good thing.


All photos by Karen Fayeth, taken with the QuickPix app, and subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right column.


Love Your Librarian

There was this lady named Erna Fergusson who opened up the world for me.

Erna was a New Mexican, one of our best. She was born and grew up in Glorieta and later spent time in Washington DC when her father was a Congressman. Erna was a worldly woman dedicated to capturing in writing much of the history and tradition of the indigenous people of both New Mexico and Latin America. She was a teacher and later helped found the Albuquerque Historical Society.

In 1966, the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System opened up a library branch bearing Erna’s name.

A few years later, here’s where I come in. My maternal grandmother, herself a schoolteacher, taught me how to read at a pretty young age. I took to reading like the proverbial duck to water.

My mom, also an avid reader, brought me to the library named for Erna Fergusson and showed me how to check out books. The world was suddenly my oyster! The scent of library glue, the perfect little rubber stamps and the shelves and shelves of books…well I was hooked. Obsessed, really.

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for both libraries and librarians.

Where I live now, I have access to one of the largest library systems around, and I’m in utter literary bliss. I’m constantly amazed by the obscure and not-so-obscure items in find in the collection.

A couple weeks ago right here on this blog, I professed my love (again) for another of my favorite New Mexicans, Max Evans.That same day, I checked into my library’s catalog to see if they had any of Max’s books that I hadn’t read.

Sure enough, they had a copy of One-Eyed Sky, a collection of three Max Evans stories. Well, I ordered it up to be sent to me via interlibrary loan. It took a couple days, and the same day I checked it out, with much anticipation, I opened the cover and was greeted by a sight that made me nostalgic:



It may be a little hard to see, but I added a red arrow that points to a rubber stamped date of Nov 30 ’64.

All of the stamps prior to that don’t have the year included, but one can assume 1964 and earlier. The book has a copyright date of 1963, but I figured I’d get a later printing of the book from the library. Nope. This is a first edition and it’s still in my library and still in good shape.

Behind the paper due date page was this:



Then I just went all squishy inside. I always did love that pocket they used to glue inside the front of books along with the card for the librarian to stamp that lets you know the day the book is due back. Can’t you just imagine the librarian typing up the title on both pocket and card, filing it neatly in alphabetical order while adding Max’s stories to the library collection? Then the series of librarians who dutifully stamped that card while checking it out to eager readers (like me!) over the past forty-eight years.

Well, it all made me kind of misty eyed. There’s ol’ Max, our Max, a fixture in the Bay Area library all these years. I read that book cover to cover, devouring every word and got to the last page feeling nothing but gratitude.

Just makes me want to say thanks to that one librarian, and all the rest as well, for giving me the world.




Photos by Karen Fayeth, taken with the Camera+ app on an iPhone4.


Off To A Slow Start

Here we are at Monday again and I’m making a rather slow moving entrée back into the world after a rock-star fun sort of weekend.

I imbibed just about one too many San Francisco Cable Car drinks at the Fairmont hotel and felt very retro with martini glass in hand. A Cable Car is the sort of beverage that tastes so good and then drops you on your arse.

Meaning, I loved every bit of that ride.

Since I’ve most certainly streamlined a few brain cells right on out of the ol’ noggin, I’ll use my friends at Unconscious Mutterings as a place to start this blogging week off right.

Without further ado, this week’s list of free association words:

________________________


  1. Trumpet ::

    2. That reminds me of that old joke blues musicians tell….

    “What’s the range on a trumpet?”
    “Oh, about two hundred yards.
    “Two hundred yards? What are you talking about?!”
    “You know, when I throw it over the piano, past the accordion, through the banjo…”

  2. Love ::

    3. What I felt for the world after I’d drained my second Cable Car beverage.

  3. Routine ::

    4. It was nice to break up my dull work-a-day routine (that has me worn down to a nub) for a weekend of jolly debauchery.

    It was much needed.

  4. Infringe ::

    5. I may have infringed on The Good Man’s personal space when sleeping off both a wine tasting and a Fairmont cocktail party. I do tend to snore…and spread out, whilst in my cups.

    Thankfully he was doing much the same. It was all good.

  5. Misgivings ::

    6. Ah misgivings. What I had the next morning upon remembering that my middle aged self can’t rebound like I used to. The sun screamed in the windows, the reflux shouted in my esophagus, and I found a bruise on my arm that I can’t recall how I obtained.

    So I was a bit low the next day. At breakfast, with my hair falling down in my eyes, as Roger Miller would say, I was unsure I was gonna make it through the day. Two eggs over easy with sausage and a pot of coffee and suddenly the day started looking a lot better.

    Then I took a nap.

  6. Establish ::

    7. And so, upon leaving the Fairmont, I had to establish just what a classy broad I am by setting my brand new glass “environmentally friendly” water bottle on the floor while I fiddled with my bag. I accidentally nudged the bottle, knocking it over. Once it hit the polished marble floor it shattered.

    Reeeeal classy.

  7. Stupefy ::

    8. Like liquefy. Only stupider. Or something.

  8. Constipate ::

    9. Not even going to touch this one with a ten foot pole.

  9. Conjure ::

    10. And so after the most fun I’ve had in a good long while, this morning I had to conjure up the ability to go back to work. It was all gray cubicle walls and “did you get that cost savings report done yet?”

    I sat at my nondescript desk with no Cable Car in hand and sighed the sigh of the responsible grownup I am for forty (plus) hours a week, planning my next adventure.

  10. Miscellaneous ::

    11. And thus ends the latest of my miscellaneous posts about miscellany.



(Isn’t that lovely? I yearn like a lovesick schoolgirl just looking at it.)





I wasn’t the only one having way too much fun at the Fairmont…this greeted me in the restroom off the lobby. Hell even I wasn’t having this much fun….





Photos by Karen Fayeth, taken with iPhone4 and the Hipstamatic app.