RSS
 

Posts Tagged ‘Allison’s’

Gear of the Year 2019 – Allison’s choice: iPhone 11

11 Dec
Photo: Dan Bracaglia

In my defense, it was the beginning of a night of drinking when I dropped my phone in the toilet, not the end of the night. The humor isn’t lost on me: it was the same day we published my defense of small phones, specifically praising my iPhone SE for its ability to slip into my back pocket. That, unfortunately, was also its undoing.

I needed another phone quickly and ended up buying a Pixel 3a. Here were the primary factors that drove me to this decision:

  • The camera is very good
  • It’s only $ 400
  • It was in stock at Best Buy for same-day pickup, which meant minimal interaction with salespeople

Just like that, I became an Android user after almost a decade (!?) of owning Apple phones. But after using the iPhone 11, I’m not only comfortable declaring it my Gear of the Year – I’m also thinking of switching back. Here’s why.

Girls just wanna take wide-angle portraits

I have a pretty firm understanding of focal length and how it impacts your distance to a subject. I can even kind of explain equivalence. But for some reason I can never remember just how far the Pixel 3a crops in for portrait mode.

I find myself frequently sitting across the table from someone I want to photograph, pulling my phone up to take a picture and then realizing I’m way too close. I can either take an uncomfortably close photo of that person’s face, or stand up and move backward to get the framing I wanted in the first place. The iPhone 11 lets me take that across-the-table portrait without leaving my seat.

The ultra-wide lens is a draw for me too. I haven’t used the phone quite enough to decide whether its appeal would wear off, or if it would remain a feature I’d keep turning to. For now anyway, I’m into it.

No more crooked horizons

Some people can’t grasp the concept of a passing lane on the highway (looking at you, Washington drivers), just as some of us are prone to crooked horizons. It’s our lot in life, apparently. Thankfully, there are effective coping strategies. The one I like is a ‘spray and pray’ approach: I frame up my shot and take a series of photos while tilting the camera from one side to the other. There’s usually a frame in there that’s just about level. It also means that I end up with lots of what you see below in my photo archive.

Lots of the same photo slightly tilted one way and the other.

The iPhone 11’s ‘Photos Capture Outside of the Frame’ feature makes this unnecessary. It uses the ultra-wide lens to capture extra image data outside the frame, saving it alongside your original image. If you edit one of these images in the native camera app, the phone will automatically fix crooked horizons and fill in the edges of the image with that extra information: preserving your original framing.

Having that ability would save me quite a bit of time and digital storage space. Until then I’ll just be that weird lady in the park taking 200 photos of the sunset, hoping one of them isn’t crooked.

The Pixel 3a keyboard makes me ??

I’m not sure if Apple’s keyboard is better or I’m just too used to it, but I have a really hard time typing out messages with the Pixel 3a keyboard. I thought it might the bigger size of the phone compared to my last one, but switching to the similar-sized iPhone 11 for a while proved that theory false: I immediately noticed I was making fewer typos.

Even after months of use the Pixel 3a keyboard remains a challenge to me

Whatever the reason, I get along better with iPhone keyboards. Even after months of use the Pixel 3a keyboard remains a challenge to me, and I do not particularly like feeling challenged when I’m trying to type out a text.

We’ll meet again

Even if I do jump ship, Google knows it’s not losing me as a customer, not really. If I do get an iPhone 11, the first app I’ll download is Google Photos. When I arrive back at home that day, I’ll tell Google to play my favorite radio station, and start a timer when I put my frozen pizza in the oven. As I use Chrome to find Christmas presents for family, research the symptoms of whatever ailment I think I might have, plan my wedding and pay my bills, Google will be right there with me, watching.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Gear of the Year 2019 – Allison’s choice: iPhone 11

Posted in Uncategorized

 

Gear of the Year 2018 – Allison’s choice: Google Photos

28 Dec

At some point in elementary school my sister was required to study San Francisco, which – if you’ve only ever lived in the Midwest – is a far-off, exotic city. She took an interest in the place, and over the dinner table she’d rattle off facts about the city, like how many hills there are (seven) and how many mosquitos there are (none). In contrast to our part of the country, an extremely flat, mosquito-riddled hellscape, San Fransisco seemed like almost a mythical place.

Jumping ahead a few years, my sister was on the verge of turning thirty, and we decided to celebrate with a trip to the destination of her choice. Naturally, San Francisco was at the top of the list. At last, she’d finally get to experience the seven mosquito-free hills for herself.

In four days we covered most of the standard stuff – the bridge, the prison, the endless souvenir gift shop that is the Fisherman’s Wharf. We drank Irish coffees at the cafe that claims to have invented them (but probably didn’t), ate avocado toast at the place that claims to have invented it (and probably did), and took a lot of selfies in front of iconic things.

Our technique on this kind of shot needs work, but you get the idea.

During the course of the trip, we documented our adventure the way most older millennials do: on our phones. When we returned to our respective homes, she requested that I add my photos to a shared Google Photos album so she could show our mother over dinner. I already backup my iPhone photos to the Google Photos app, so that was easy enough to do.

I also wanted to show the Alcatraz photos to my boyfriend (disused prisons are his thing) but flipping through them on my phone clearly wasn’t going to do them justice. Then I remembered the Chromecast plugged into the back of our TV, and within a few minutes I had a good old fashioned “How I Spent my Summer Vacation at a Former Federal Penitentiary” slideshow going.

To commemorate the whole trip, it occurred to me that a photo book might make a nice birthday present for my kid sister. And at this point, the whole thing starts to sound like a commercial for Google Photos: I selected images, added a title and text, paid for and shipped the whole thing from my phone while commuting to work on the bus. I didn’t even need to get out my wallet, because Google remembers my credit card number.

Here’s the thing: having the device I use to capture the images integrated into an ecosystem designed for sharing actually is really useful. My photos from that trip didn’t die on a hard drive – they came to life. And sure, my iPhone SE takes some pretty lousy photos in low light. But you know what? They’re fine. Nobody I showed them to complained about detail retention. And I wasn’t looking to blow them up and put them on my wall, I just wanted to remember a trip that was about hanging out with my sister.

There’s still room for improvement – the Assistant feature continues to be a mixed bag of sometimes nice, sometimes ridiculous AI-generated albums, videos and “stylized” photos. At least it does a good job of auto-suggesting items to archive, like screengrabs and pictures of packaged dinner re-heating instructions. But really, it’s fine because it’s not a core feature – anything useful the Assistant does is basically a bonus.

An automatically generated “stylized” photo courtesy of Google Photos Assistant. Just… no.

I think what impresses me most is that I didn’t at any point decide “Alright, I’m going to go all in on the Google ecosystem.” It just happened organically. I didn’t think I was the kind of person who would want to play a summer vacation slideshow on her TV – until I was. When the technology is seamless and available at your fingertips, it turns out you’re more likely to use it. And if that means more people doing more to share their photos, then that’s enough for me to call Google Photos my gear of the year.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Gear of the Year 2018 – Allison’s choice: Google Photos

Posted in Uncategorized

 

Gear of the Year 2017 – Allison’s choice: Google’s HDR+ mode

16 Nov

I was told. And I believed. But I didn’t quite understand how good Google’s Auto HDR+ mode is. After shooting with the Pixel 2 in some very challenging lighting conditions, I’m a believer.

Google’s HDR+ mode is really, really good. And I’m prepared to defend it as my Gear of the Year.

Like I said, I was told. Our own Lars Rehm was impressed with Auto HDR+ in his Google Pixel XL review of last year. In his words: “the Pixel XL is capable of capturing decent smartphone image quality in its standard mode but the device really comes into its own when HDR+ is activated… The Pixel camera is capable of capturing usable images in light conditions that not too long ago some DSLRs would have struggled with.”

So heading out with the Pixel 2 in hand, I knew that was a strong suit of the camera. I was looking forward to testing it on some challenging scenes. Things didn’t look too promising though as the day started off pretty miserably.

The afternoon forecast looked better, but any Seattlite can tell you there are no guarantees in October. I figured I had a day of dull, flat lighting ahead of me that I’d have to get creative with. I was happily proved wrong.

The clouds started to thin out mid-afternoon. On a long walk from the bus toward Gas Works Park, I came across this row of colorful townhouses. The sun was behind them, and I snapped a photo that looked like a total loss as I composed it on the screen – the houses too dark and lost in the shadows. I didn’t want to blow out the sky to get those details in the houses, so I just took what I figured was a dud of a photo and moved on. So what I saw on my computer screen later was a total surprise to me: a balanced, if somewhat dark exposure, capturing the houses and the sky behind them.

Am I going to print this one, frame it and put it on the wall? No. But I’m impressed that it’s a usable photo, and it took no knowledge of exposure or post-processing to get it.

Gas Works used to be a ‘gasification’ plant owned by the Seattle Gas Light company and was converted into a park in the mid-70’s. Some of the industrial structures remain, monuments to a distant past surrounded now by green parkland and frequented by young families with dogs and weed-vaping tech bros alike. On a sunny afternoon in October it was, both literally and figuratively, lit.

I was convinced my photos were not turning out, but I kept taking them anyway. It’ll just be a deep shadows, blue sky kind of look, I thought. Little did I know that the Pixel 2 was outsmarting me every step of the way.

Back at my desk with the final photos in front of me, I was genuinely impressed by the Pixel 2. Did it do anything that I couldn’t with a Raw file and about 30 seconds of post processing? Heck no. But the point is that this is the new normal for a lot of people who take pictures and have no interest in pulling shadows in Photoshop. They will point their cameras at high contrast scenes like these and come away with the photos they saw in their heads. If you ask me, it’s just one more reason why smartphones will topple the mighty entry-level DSLR.

Apple’s catching on too. HDR Auto is enabled by default in new iPhones and veteran photographer/iPhone user Jeff Carlson is also impressed by how the 8 Plus handles high contrast scenes.

While smartphone manufacturers have been increasingly implementing HDR as an always-on-by-default feature, they’ve also been making these modes smarter and the effect more aggressive. What previously took technical know-how, dedicated software, and multiple exposures is now happening with one click of a virtual shutter button, and it’s going to keep getting better.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Gear of the Year 2017 – Allison’s choice: Google’s HDR+ mode

Posted in Uncategorized

 

Gear of the year: Allison’s choice – Fujifilm Instax mini 90

28 Dec

Let’s get a few things out of the way first: yes, the Fujifilm Instax mini 90 is a three-year-old camera. No, it is not a digital camera. Yes, it was my favorite camera of the year. Now let’s proceed.

I bought the Instax mini 90 in March, but I spent almost two years up until then talking myself out of buying one. It was hard to justify the expense to myself. I have access to many nice digital cameras, and I always have a phone on hand, why buy a little plastic film camera that costs about a dollar per exposure? I put it to the back of my mind, but a little pang of jealousy struck every time I saw someone else carrying one. 

The mini 90 isn’t my first instant camera. I bought a Polaroid at Best Buy during college, which must have been during the very last days that anyone could buy a Polaroid at Best Buy. It was sort of cumbersome and it definitely wasn’t cool-looking, but there was something about it that got everyone excited about when I brought it out. I took plenty of snapshots of friends, but eventually ran out of film and didn’t buy more. Now it sits in a drawer at my parents’ house.

One of many ridiculous baseball game instant photos taken this year.

It was spring when I finally realized I should just buy the mini 90. After that, it was with me for pretty much every milestone event of the year. It was there when my sister visited and we went to one of the first baseball games of the season. I brought it to North Carolina where my boyfriend and I caught up with friends and met their babies. It came along to a tennis tournament with my family, when friends visited and to more baseball games than I want to admit to attending.

I can easily retrace my year in instant photos because they’re arranged on the wall by my desk. For every photo that made the wall, though, there were a lot of terrible photos – overexposed, underexposed, blurry, group selfies with somebody cut right out of the frame. But I guess I like the trial and error part of the process too. You work within the constraints of the system, learn what works and what doesn’t and gradually get better results. Even a bad instant photo is one that I feel like I actually made, and I learned something from the process. And when they come out looking just right, well that feels pretty good.

This goofy shot is probably my favorite photo of 2016 and I had a horrendous head cold when it was taken.

Obviously, one of the main joys of instant photography is that you get something you can hold at the end of the process. I don’t print many photos lately, so having it built into the process by the nature of the thing is kind of a treat in itself.

And I think that’s one of my favorite things about an instant photo – you can physically give the photo to someone else. You don’t get to text someone a copy, or tag them on Facebook, or email it to them later. I mean, you can snap a picture of it with your phone and do all that, but handing someone a photo that doesn’t exist anywhere else is pretty special. I gave away a lot of photos this year, and by that measure, it was a pretty good year indeed.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Gear of the year: Allison’s choice – Fujifilm Instax mini 90

Posted in Uncategorized

 

Gear of the Year Part 7: Allison’s choice – Olympus Tough TG-4

29 Dec

Over the summer I took part in a great American tradition called ‘tubing’ with some friends. Don’t be fooled by the semi-rugged sounding name of this activity. It’s basically an opportunity to sit outside surrounded by nature and friends, consuming alcoholic beverages (in a responsible manner) while floating lazily down a river. In short, it’s everything summer should be.

In our pre-float preparations my companions were busy stuffing their smartphones into complicated plastic pouches to be hung around their necks, or into ziplock bags, which seemed risky. I left my phone on dry land and headed into the water with the Olympus Tough TG-4, no waterproof pouch required.

A great American tradition. ISO 100, f/8.0 1/400sec @ 25mm equiv. processed to taste in ACR.

What I love:

  • Waterproof, crushproof, dustproof and freezeproof
  • Raw shooting for better image fine-tuning
  • Compact enough to carry in my bag without noticing
  • Decent wide to moderate zoom

There’s something incredibly liberating, even rebellious-feeling, about dunking a piece of technology underwater. The TG-4 was a great little sidekick on the water. Its operation is simple enough that I could pass it around among my friends, some of whom wanted to take underwater selfies. To each her own. Shooting Raw, I knew I would have some decent flexibility with my images later. It was pure fun, and I got some nice mementos from the trip out of it.

Tough cams can go places that would be too risky for mere smartphones. ISO 100, f/8.0, 1/500sec @ 25mm equiv.

Later in the year, the TG-4 accompanied me on another trip. Florida is a strange place. Like the Pacific Northwest, it seems to rain pretty much every day, but unlike my home of over two years the rain is heavy, sudden, and often happens at the same time as sunshine. It generally stops raining after twenty minutes, at which point the sun comes out and transforms the place back into the wild swamp it once was.

Florida is also, of course, the theme park capital of the world, and that’s what took me there in late November. The point of the trip was to spend time with my boyfriend and his family drinking butter beer (responsibly) at Universal’s ‘Wizarding World of Harry Potter.’ Naturally, I’d want photos, but I didn’t want to have to worry about a camera getting wet or smashed in a storage locker.

This dragon breathes fire every so often, but apparently had the day off when this photo was taken. ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/2000sec @ 25mm equiv.

The TG-4’s modest zoom range was still enough to help achieve framing that I couldn’t quite get with my smartphone. Raw capture came in handy again, with lots of high contrast scenes that could be rescued in post-processing. And what good is it taking a vacation to a fictional English village if you can’t share photos with all of your friends instantly? Wi-Fi was key in making sure I shared important moments with all of my BFFs just moments after I’d captured them.

To be totally honest the TG-4 isn’t that special outside of its rugged properties. Its sensor is small, controls are limited, zoom range is minimal and its metering keeps you guessing. But bringing it on a raft or to a theme park and knowing that I won’t have to coddle it is worth a lot to me. I can take pictures, or throw it in my bag and just enjoy my butter beer and hardly know the difference.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
Comments Off on Gear of the Year Part 7: Allison’s choice – Olympus Tough TG-4

Posted in Uncategorized