Posted by Kate Silvia on February 8, 2011 at 8:24 AM
Hello,
Just got my new iPhone4 and am completely new to the iPhone/iPad genre...so I was wondering what are your favorite apps that you've downloaded? One's specific to nature photographers.... portfolio apps, navigational, hiking, tide charts, sunrise sunset, mapping, etc...
I'd love to see what people are fond of before I download a bunch of stuff I'll never use!
Thanks for the input!
Kate
Posted by Wick Smith on February 8, 2011 at 9:18 AM
Focalware 2.0 is a great app for predicting sunrise & set, & moonrise & set with compass bearings & elevation at any given time of the day/night.
Tide Graph 2.4 from Brainware is a fabulous tide chart with very visual graphs of where you are for a falling or rising tide - you can select the location.
Starmap is a great app for showing you what's in the night sky (stars & planets) - if you are into that type of photography.
RadarScope is a great weather radar app (it's $9.99) that shows precipitation in any area, and pulls from several radar stations. Good to know when it's time to head for the car.
DoF Calc is a good one if you are into depth of field calculators. Gives you a good idea at any focal length & aperature setting, what your hyperfocal distance, near limit and far limit are.
Posted by John Mumaw on February 8, 2011 at 12:58 PM
A must have for any photographer looking for exact sunrise/set and moonrise/set times and locations during any particular day is the Photographer's Ephemeris.
Posted by Paul DeCesare on February 8, 2011 at 2:39 PM
Hi Kate,
I agree with Wick, DoF Calc is the best one so far.
Forget Apple's attempt at HDR, look for Pro HDR. It works great; it quickly analyzes the scene and takes two images then marries them together right on the spot. Then you have sliders to do quick adjustments. I always increase the Contrast slider which gets rid of that silver-washed yucky HDR look and makes the photo look real (that comment ought to generate a few darts my way, lol).
And don't forget about Photoshop Express! You can crop, straighten, rotate, adjust exposure and saturation and color balance, all the main adjustments. You can convert to B&W, apply soft focus or sharpening, even add a border or some built-in effects. Once done and saved, you can directly upload to TwitPic or Facebook if that's your fancy. Adobe did a good job on this one, and the best part is the price: FREE
GorillaCam is VERY useful, it gives you a self-timer, anti-shake and even time-lapse ability. You can add a thirds grid to your screen, a bubble level, and the ability to touch the screen anywhere to trigger the shot. Camera+ does this too, that's a popular app.
There are two "fun" apps called Photo FX and Plastic Bullet. The latter is made by Red Giant Software, the people that make all of the effects for video editing. They did an app for iPhone that's looney, you just load in a pic (or take one), and it randomly generates four effects and applies it to the image, and gives you a preview of all four versons. If you like any of them, you need to save it to your photo library, because you'll never see it exactly the same way again. It can turn an ordinary dull pic into this wild image, you just have to see it.
OK, time to put in a plug for a fellow NPN member, Bret Edge. He has put out an app called iFotoGuide which allows you to then purchase different modules. I have the Arches National Park and the Grand Canyon "books", and if you are going to shoot in these places, Bret's guides are indispensible. He provides locations and park info and when to expect crowds and sunrise/sunset times, plus galleries as examples and even discounts to motels, etc. These are targetted apps of course, but if you are going to be in these places, it's like Amex, don't leave home without it.
PhotoAssist is a helpful utility especially if you shoot different types of things (landscape trips, events, location portraits). You enter your gear inventory, then from it you create different lists of the gear you need for a particular type of shoot. This is especially helpful if you sometimes need to bring gear related to shooting HDDSLR video. Got a gig? Pop up your list, gather that gear, and you know you're covered. Not for everyone, but can be useful.
PerfectPhoto is a new one I just found, it does what Photoshop Express does plus adds even more features like noise reduction and red-eye removal, plus it will upload to Flicker as well as t and F. I haven't "wrung it out" thoroughly yet, maybe it's one you can try and see what it's like.
Another new discovery is a fun app called InstraGram which I believe does crazy things to your images also, and can upload them all over the place, including Mars. I have it but haven't usede it yet, but I'm seeing references to it pop up all over the place. Probably not a purist landscaper's app, lol. Some of the apps I mentioned are specific to using the iPhone camera which is FINALLY decent quality-wise (I know, it ain't no 5D Mark II, lol), but as photographers we'll end up shooting with whatever we have at the moment, so if you do that you might as well make it look as good as possible! Speaking of, if you flip on the 720p HD video cam in that phone, Apple's iMovie is a good onboard editor, definitely worth five bucks.
Well, looking back over this list I can see that I am more entrenched in this stuff than I ought to be! I didn't think my list would be this long. I have problems.
"My name is Paul, and I am an appoholic"
Posted by Paul DeCesare on February 8, 2011 at 2:59 PM
A must have for any photographer looking for exact sunrise/set and moonrise/set times and locations during any particular day is the Photographer's Ephemeris.
John, that is one seriously good app, glad you posted it! I have several apps with built-in sunrise/sunset info, but nothing like that PE app, they did a great job on it. When I read " see how the light will fall on the land, be it day or night, for any location on earth. ", I was sold.
Posted by Scott Fricke on February 8, 2011 at 3:15 PM
I have an app that is essentially the Canon 5DII owners manual which has came in handy a few times.
I like the DOF apps as well.
I have a couple GPS apps that work pretty well, mostly as a emergency backup (I set the trailhead as a "home") just in case I can't find my way back (haven't had to rely on it yet, but it can't hurt. They are hard to use as a primary route finding device as it eats through the battery pretty fast.
Posted by Bret Edge on February 9, 2011 at 4:56 AM
Hey Kate:
Congrats on your new iPhone! I've had mine for almost 2 years and it's an indispensable tool for running my business and photographing on location.
I wrote a blog post last year about my favorite iPhone apps for nature photographers. I'm planning to write another one soon as I've added a few great apps that see regular use these days. I'll probably post it next week.
Paul: Thanks so much for mentioning iFotoGuide! I'm glad you find the apps useful. It's always nice to hear from people who are using our apps in the field. We just began work on iFotoGuide: Yellowstone, which should be available in iTunes in early summer. Until then, there are apps for Arches, Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Parks. Check out the iFotoGuide website to learn all about our apps.
Posted by Kate Silvia on February 14, 2011 at 11:09 AM
Thanks so much everybody...looks like I'm going to have a lot of fun with this thing! I've got the Photographer's Ephemeris on my computer but did not realize there was an app for it too. Looking forward to checking all of these out!
Discussion
7 repliesJust got my new iPhone4 and am completely new to the iPhone/iPad genre...so I was wondering what are your favorite apps that you've downloaded? One's specific to nature photographers.... portfolio apps, navigational, hiking, tide charts, sunrise sunset, mapping, etc...
I'd love to see what people are fond of before I download a bunch of stuff I'll never use!
Thanks for the input!
Kate
Tide Graph 2.4 from Brainware is a fabulous tide chart with very visual graphs of where you are for a falling or rising tide - you can select the location.
Starmap is a great app for showing you what's in the night sky (stars & planets) - if you are into that type of photography.
RadarScope is a great weather radar app (it's $9.99) that shows precipitation in any area, and pulls from several radar stations. Good to know when it's time to head for the car.
DoF Calc is a good one if you are into depth of field calculators. Gives you a good idea at any focal length & aperature setting, what your hyperfocal distance, near limit and far limit are.
I agree with Wick, DoF Calc is the best one so far.
Forget Apple's attempt at HDR, look for Pro HDR. It works great; it quickly analyzes the scene and takes two images then marries them together right on the spot. Then you have sliders to do quick adjustments. I always increase the Contrast slider which gets rid of that silver-washed yucky HDR look and makes the photo look real (that comment ought to generate a few darts my way, lol).
And don't forget about Photoshop Express! You can crop, straighten, rotate, adjust exposure and saturation and color balance, all the main adjustments. You can convert to B&W, apply soft focus or sharpening, even add a border or some built-in effects. Once done and saved, you can directly upload to TwitPic or Facebook if that's your fancy. Adobe did a good job on this one, and the best part is the price: FREE
GorillaCam is VERY useful, it gives you a self-timer, anti-shake and even time-lapse ability. You can add a thirds grid to your screen, a bubble level, and the ability to touch the screen anywhere to trigger the shot. Camera+ does this too, that's a popular app.
There are two "fun" apps called Photo FX and Plastic Bullet. The latter is made by Red Giant Software, the people that make all of the effects for video editing. They did an app for iPhone that's looney, you just load in a pic (or take one), and it randomly generates four effects and applies it to the image, and gives you a preview of all four versons. If you like any of them, you need to save it to your photo library, because you'll never see it exactly the same way again. It can turn an ordinary dull pic into this wild image, you just have to see it.
OK, time to put in a plug for a fellow NPN member, Bret Edge. He has put out an app called iFotoGuide which allows you to then purchase different modules. I have the Arches National Park and the Grand Canyon "books", and if you are going to shoot in these places, Bret's guides are indispensible. He provides locations and park info and when to expect crowds and sunrise/sunset times, plus galleries as examples and even discounts to motels, etc. These are targetted apps of course, but if you are going to be in these places, it's like Amex, don't leave home without it.
PhotoAssist is a helpful utility especially if you shoot different types of things (landscape trips, events, location portraits). You enter your gear inventory, then from it you create different lists of the gear you need for a particular type of shoot. This is especially helpful if you sometimes need to bring gear related to shooting HDDSLR video. Got a gig? Pop up your list, gather that gear, and you know you're covered. Not for everyone, but can be useful.
PerfectPhoto is a new one I just found, it does what Photoshop Express does plus adds even more features like noise reduction and red-eye removal, plus it will upload to Flicker as well as t and F. I haven't "wrung it out" thoroughly yet, maybe it's one you can try and see what it's like.
Another new discovery is a fun app called InstraGram which I believe does crazy things to your images also, and can upload them all over the place, including Mars. I have it but haven't usede it yet, but I'm seeing references to it pop up all over the place. Probably not a purist landscaper's app, lol. Some of the apps I mentioned are specific to using the iPhone camera which is FINALLY decent quality-wise (I know, it ain't no 5D Mark II, lol), but as photographers we'll end up shooting with whatever we have at the moment, so if you do that you might as well make it look as good as possible! Speaking of, if you flip on the 720p HD video cam in that phone, Apple's iMovie is a good onboard editor, definitely worth five bucks.
Well, looking back over this list I can see that I am more entrenched in this stuff than I ought to be! I didn't think my list would be this long. I have problems.
"My name is Paul, and I am an appoholic"
John, that is one seriously good app, glad you posted it! I have several apps with built-in sunrise/sunset info, but nothing like that PE app, they did a great job on it. When I read " see how the light will fall on the land, be it day or night, for any location on earth. ", I was sold.
I like the DOF apps as well.
I have a couple GPS apps that work pretty well, mostly as a emergency backup (I set the trailhead as a "home") just in case I can't find my way back (haven't had to rely on it yet, but it can't hurt. They are hard to use as a primary route finding device as it eats through the battery pretty fast.
Congrats on your new iPhone! I've had mine for almost 2 years and it's an indispensable tool for running my business and photographing on location.
I wrote a blog post last year about my favorite iPhone apps for nature photographers. I'm planning to write another one soon as I've added a few great apps that see regular use these days. I'll probably post it next week.
Paul: Thanks so much for mentioning iFotoGuide! I'm glad you find the apps useful. It's always nice to hear from people who are using our apps in the field. We just began work on iFotoGuide: Yellowstone, which should be available in iTunes in early summer. Until then, there are apps for Arches, Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Parks. Check out the iFotoGuide website to learn all about our apps.