Long exposure iPhone images with Spectre

When I wus lad (he said, using his best cockney accent) there was a hair cream advert on TV that used the catch-phrase "I never thought I'd see the day..."

Fast forward forty years, and this phrase is playing over in my head as I sit to write this post.

I've written previously, probably many times in this very blog, about my dismissal of the iPhone (and mobile phones in general) as a 'serious' image capturing device. Nevermind that the weight of popular opinion would suggest otherwise. Flickr's 2017 data has the iPhone as the most used camera with 54% (over half) of the top 100 cameras used by photographers. Canon is next with 23%, and Nikon is 3rd with 18%.

Now granted, Flickr probably isn't the powerhouse photography app it used to be, and probably only a tiny fraction (if any) of those statistics relate to professional photographers. But still, it's a very impressive win for the iPhone in the 'every-day' photography category - which we all know makes up the bulk of today's plethora of image taking.

Does that mean, therefore, that my opinion of using an iPhone/mobile phone for photography has changed? Well yeah, it kinda does. And actually, it changed a couple of years ago when my daughter got her new iPhone 7Plus. The dual 12MP rear cameras (one 28mm wide and one 56mm telephoto) are capable of taking stunning photos. So much so, that the iPhone 7 was the 'camera' Emily used to create her Yr13 Photography portfolio.

I have an iPhone 6, with a 8MP rear facing single camera (about 30mm wide), so it's not as good (not surprisingly). In good light it's not terrible, but it's also no Canon 5D Mk4 (although neither is the iPhone 7 to be fair). Yet if we look at mobile phone companies like Huawei, who are partnering with Leica to produce a 40MP camera on their phones, then it's quite obvious that it's only going to get better and better. Will the camera phone seriously challenge the DSLR eventually? Probably.

Spectre iPhone app - an AI powered 'long exposure' app

Where am I going with all this? (Yes, for heaven's sake, get to the point man)! All that is to say that 'yes', I am using my iPhone more for taking photos (and certainly for capturing video). And a perfect case-in-point was just the other night when I went to my local camera club's monthly meeting. I was there to push (err, I mean discuss) my 'advanced' photography workshop running this weekend (as I write this). But it just so happened that this coincided with a hands-on practical session photographing dancers.

I didn't have my camera with me (big shot advanced photography teacher who doesn't bring a camera to a photography club gathering), but I did have my iPhone (of course). The lighting in the hall where the meeting was being held was tricky (some spotlighting, some dark shadows, some bright colours), so I decided to shoot long exposures on my iPhone using a recently acquired app - Spectre. Yeah, I know, sounds very cool - right? Very James Bond. And it is very cool - for an iPhone camera app.

Dancers. iPhone 6 with Spectre app. 3 second long exposure.

The app is actually designed to help you create long exposure shots of waterfalls and such so you can achieve that silky smooth smokey water effect or long light trail images. You can choose between 3, 5 and 9 second exposures, and can even get away with the 3 second exposures hand-held if there's enough light around. Pretty impressive in theory, but I'd never actually used it in practice.

At the Bar. iPhone 6 with Spectre app. 3 second long exposure

Because there definitely wasn't enough light around, I knew I was going to get a lot of blurring in the final images. So I chose a 3 second long exposure time and tried to use the blurring of the dancer's movements in my favour. Using the app was as simple as choosing the 3 seconds on the dial, pushing the shutter button, and watching while the image blur built up on the screen. Very cool.

If there was too much subject and camera movement, the final result was almost unrecognisable. But if I timed it so that there was a short period of static pose before movement, then the resulting image seemed to make more sense.

Twirling Dervishes. iPhone 6 with Spectre app. 3 second long exposure

I'm a huge fan of ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) photography, so this was right up my alley. I wasn't worrying about taking sharp, clear images - in fact just the opposite. If there was a lot of movement happening in front of me, then I just held the camera reasonably steady and captured the movement of the dancers. If the scene was more static, then I moved the phone itself to create the motion blur.

Ethereal Dancers. iPhone 6 with Spectre app. 3 second long exposure

I love this last image, especially converted to black and white. It has a beautifully spooky yet graceful quality to it. Could I have taken the same shot with my DLSR? Yes, of course I could. You might even argue that it would have been even better, since I would have had even more control over shutter speeds (you're limited to just the 3, 5 and 9 with Spectre). And yet, looking around the room at the other images taken that evening - all on DSLR's - there weren't any that looked quite like the ones I'd managed to capture on my iPhone using Spectre. There were some great images, don't get me wrong. But mostly they had gone for telephoto, close-cropped, sharp results. Everything I couldn't do on the iPhone 6, even if I'd wanted to.

Using Spectre on the iPhone was also just a whole heap of fun! Far too often we, as 'serious' photographers, disregard the fun factor. I know I do. The simplicity of whipping out your phone, clicking on an app, and creating beautiful images in seconds - with the minimal of fuss and gear - is also quite liberating and can't be stressed enough. It was actually being limited by the gear that I was using that forced me to think differently, and thereby craft images that I might not otherwise have considered taking.

So maybe it isn't the iPhone that's going to revolutionise photography or our images going forward? Maybe it's using the tools we have at our disposal and then thinking creatively, outside the box, to craft images that stand out from the crowd, no matter what we're using to create them with? Just a thought...

Traveling to Christchurch - Landscapes on the Road

My wife and I have been traveling to Christchurch regularly over the last two months (overnight trips every fortnight) for medical appointments, and have been enjoying playing 'tourist'. We both spent our 20s and early 30s living in Christchurch, so know it very well. But having lived on the West Coast for the last 18 years, we've been 'rediscovering' areas that we havn't been to in a good long while.

I don't 'do' selfies, but when in Rome (as they say), if you're going to play tourist you may as well act like them. So with iPhone in hand, we posed for a very rare selfie in the recently re-opened Christchurch Arts Centre (closed after the Christhchurch earthquakes). The front-facing camera on the iPhone 6 isn't the greatest camera in the world, but you get the idea, and it's only for posting on the web anyway. Fortunately, I've also been bringing my Canon 50D with me as well.

It's mid-winter here in New Zealand (as I write this), and on our last trip 'over the hill' (as we locals call it) - the Southern Alps were spectacular. Dusted with a layering of snow and lit by beautiful winter light.

Southern Alps towards Arthur's Pass. Canon 50D with Sigma 17-50mm f2.8. F8 @ 1/400th, ISO 200

This is a scene I have driven past many times and always wanted to stop and photograph. Often it hasn't been practical to do so (kids in the car, time constraints, horrible conditions), but on this trip the photography planets aligned and I had the time, conditions and obliging travel companion (thanks honey). What has always caught my eye in this scene are the braided rivers leading towards the mountains. Add with a dusting of snow, crisp light and blue skies, you have the right recipe for my kind of photo!

The Great Alpine Highway. Canon 50D with Sigma 17-50mm f2.8. F8 @ 1/320th, ISO 200. Cokin Polariser

Sometimes leading lines and perspective works in your favour. In the above image, the road, fence posts, icy puddles, car and power lines all lead your eye towards the hero of the image - those beautiful snow covered hills. This is a shot I've stopped and taken before, but never in quite these conditions. I find the clarity of the light quite intoxicating.

A light dusting. Canon 50D with Sigma 17-50mm

This is from the same spot, but an entirely different angle. In this image I was attracted to the clumps of snow in the grass that lead the eye up towards the hill and sky. Similar in effect to the image with the braided river and Southern Alps above.

I'm a bit of a fare-weather photographer if I'm being honest. I love blue skies with white clouds, crisp, clear days and deep greens and blues. Some photographers look for the dark, stormy and moody, preferring to go out when it's wet and wild. There was a popular catchphrase among Youtube photographers in the UK recently that said "Embrace the Grey". One photographer I follow even grumpily announces on his videos that he 'hates blue skies'. Not me. I love them.

Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of drama in some of my images - of course I do. But I prefer a clear day to a rainy one. In fact if it's wet and rainy (which it often is here on the West Coast), then I don't go out at all. And yes, that does mean that there are many weekends that I don't go out and shoot. So be it.

Mid-Winter at Castle Hill Sheep Station. Canon 50D with Sigma 17-50mm f2.8. F8 @ 1/100th, ISO 200. Cokin Polariser

Castle Hill is one of those well-photographed locations. Hundreds of people from all over the world visit it every day (probably thousands in Summer) - especially since it appeared in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies (minus the sheep).

This is about as picture perfect as it gets and I'm delighted to now have the shot. Picture perfect images, or 'chocolate box' photography as it is often derogatorily referred to, has gotten a bad rap for many years. Probably still does to be fair. For decades in the artworld, 'beauty' was a taboo word. "Embrace the beauty" I say. I'm lucky enough to live in a jaw-droppingly beautiful part of the world, and be damned if I'm not going to try my best to capture and honour that in my photography. Chocolate box be damned!

Gondola ride, Avon River. Canon 50D with Sigma 17-50mm f2.8

And it doesn't get more Chocolate boxy than a Gondola ride on the Avon River at the Christchurch Botanic Gardens! Maybe it's a bit late in the season for the complete chocolate box package - some more autumnal leaves on the trees would be nice. But I've got some autumn colours there, and the light is gorgeous.

My wife and I spent a lovely morning wandering around the gardens. Me snapping away at random gondola riders, and she patiently stopping every five minutes for me to take said snaps. She got her payback later in the morning when we discovered the Botanic Gardens gift shop which is a new addition we hadn't visited before. A pleasant hour was spent looking around the gift shop, oohing and ahhing at the wonderful products they have on display there. Many of the gifts are garden themed (a lot of William Morris products), but all were rather beautiful (there's that word again). Well worth a look if you are ever in Christchurch and visiting the Gardens.

Homeward Bound. Canon 50D with Sigma 17-50mm f2.8. F11 @ 1/250th, ISO 200

I've called the last image Homeward Bound for fairly obvious reasons really. This was taken on our trip home, the next day, with conditions almost as good as the previous days trip up. Almost, but not quite. I still like the image, and I'm glad I stopped to take it, but I don't think it will win any awards.

But then again, photography's not always about the awards, is it? At least it shouldn't be. More often than not it's more about capturing memories. Memories of a trip away with my wonderful wife, on a beautiful mid-winters weekend. Of picture-perfect scenery, gorgeous light, crisp air and blue skies. My kind of photography heaven.

Iboolo 8-in-1 Mobile Phone lens kit review

Since deciding to vlog more often with my iPhone 6, I've been considering the limitation of using just the wide(ish) lens. I don't want to use the digital zoom function on the camera - it just turns the footage to mush - so telephoto shooting is out. And the only way to get a 'wider' angle, especially when using the front-facing selfie camera, is to physically move the phone further away. This creates problems, not only in terms of using something like a selfie stick (perish the thought), but also for audio quality. The further away the camera is from the subject talking (i.e me), the harder it has to work, and the more the gain needs to be ramped up. Not ideal.

There are two solutions to this problem. First - get a new phone 😁 Something like the iPhone X with its dual camera setup - one wide angle and one telephoto - both image stabilised. Nice. Unfortunately, a new iPhone X isn't in my future (present or distant). I'd like to stay married. And at currently $1,500.00NZ it's more than I'm ever going to be able to justify spending on a phone. I am thinking of upgrading my iPhone 6 to a 6s Plus (hi honey) for better video quality (noteably 1080p for the front-facing camera). But that's also in the future. And it still won't fix the wide angle or telephoto shooting issues.

Enter solution number two; lens accessories for the iPhone. This is by far the cheaper, and probably easier solution to the problem of getting different focal lengths on any mobile phone - and it might just mean I stay married for a bit longer 😜 But are they any good? Great question... read on to find out how 'good' the cheaper lens accessory kits are.

First, we need a 'control' image for our little experiment - a shot taken with just the iPhone 6 main rear-facing 8MP camera - 'naked' (ooh-err) as it were - sans lens adapters. And here it is...

iPhone 6 8MP rear-facing main camera

Not bad - and gives a field of view (fov) roughly equivalent to 35mm on a full frame digital camera. Wide, but not excessively so. What if we want to go wider?

iPhone 6 with the Iboolo wide angle (0.63x) lens attachment

That's much better. We're now looking at a fov of roughly 28mm, which is certainly better wide-angle coverage, and should make vlogging much easier by including a little more 'breathing space' around the frame. What about image quality though? When you attach any extra glass over a lens you run the risk of softening the image and adding unwanted fringing.

Well, actually, it's not too bad. Centrally, it's about the same as the unadorned lens, and would certainly hold-up for video footage. It's the edges of the frame where things start to look a little soft and distorted, but not alarmingly so. I would happily use the lens for vlogging. Might keep my DSLR setup for my important landscape images though 😉 Can we go even wider still?

iPhone 6 with the Iboolo super wide angle (0.36x) lens attachment

Sure can, and it is certainly much wider. I'd say about 18 to 20mm in standard DSLR terms. However, going 'super' wide is pushing the limits of the lenses capability somewhat, especially at the edges.

Top right corner with the 'super' wide. Nothing but mush!

As can be seen opposite, the corners and edge of the frame basically turn to mush, and for print images are pretty much unuseable. Still, for video work it probably isn't a deal-breaker, as long as the main subject is kept fairly central in the frame. In fact the blurry and smudgy edges could be seen as 'artsy' and something that was done in post-production to produce a vintage lens type effect. Or am I making a silk purse out of a sows ear?

Just looking at the two wide-angle options, I think I would be more inclined to use the standard wide adapter on a daily basis, and keep the 'super' wide for those time when I simply have to go wider and damn the consequences. Also, it's worth noting that placing the lens attachment as centrally as possible over the phones lens is absolutely critical if you want to avoid edge distortion. I placed the clip onto the phone without any lenses attached first, so I could align the hole centrally. Then I screwed the attachment lens in place when I was happy that the holder was positioned perfectly.

iPhone 6 with Iboolo x2 Telephoto lens attachment

Ok, so that's the wide angle side of things. What about telephoto? The 8in1 kit I purchased has one telephoto lens in it - a x2 - which I guess means an equivalent 60 to 70mm reach in traditional film terms? As with the standard wide attachment, the telephoto holds up well centrally, but has a little edge distortion. Once again, probably a pass for video footage, but not stellar for actual photography. I compared this image with simply cropping tighter on the original file sans lens attachment, and the original file was actually crisper. Especially around the edges of the frame.

iPhone 6 with Iboolo Polariser lens

One of the lenses that I might end up using most often is the polariser. It made quite a difference to the colours when I attached the polariser and twirled it around, without compromising on the quality of the phones in-built lens. Everything is nice and sharp, but the image exhibits a bit more 'pop' than without the polariser. Not surprising really, since that's exactly what a polariser does! Unfortunately, you can't stack the lenses, so it's the polairser or the wide angle - it can't be both.

Attached to the standard wide angle (screwed in below it) is the Macro lens. The image opposite is the standard close-focusing you can get from the iPhone 6, which isn't bad, but it isn't great either.

Using the macro lens attachment (by unscrewing the standard wide angle lens that's on top of it) means you can get closer - a lot closer - for some rather impressive macro images. In fact, you can get so close, that I thought the front element of the lens was in danger of touching the plant I was photographing! When I first put the macro lens on the phone I thought it was broken - the image was all blurry, fuzzy, and out of focus.

iPhone 6 with Iboolo Macro attachment

Then I realised that I wasn't placing the lens close enough to the subject! Once I figured this out, and started placing the lens directly on top of the subject, the macro image jumped into focus. I love the image of the flower stamen above - an impressive, and clear result with some lovely background blur.

So that's five lenses down - three to go. The final three are what I would categorise as 'novelty' lenses. To be used sparingly (if at all). The first of these is the Fisheye lens.

iPhone 6 with Iboolo Fisheye lens

Fisheye lenses are fun, no doubt. But lets face it, they are also limited fun. Too much fisheye is like too much Wasabi paste. A little goes a long way. So although kinda fun, the fisheye accessory lens has limited use. But uses it does have. Unlike the next novelty lens which, having used once, I don't think I'll ever use again...

iPhone 6 with Iboolo Kaleidoscope lens attachment

That's just strange. Seriously. It's not even so bad as to be kinda good. It's just bad. So scratch the Kaleidoscope attachment off the list of useable attachment lenses.

And the last one is also really only a novelty attachment. It's a Starburst filter effect - again not something I think Ill ever use. Haven't even bothered trying it out yet to be honest.

So of the set of eight, I'm probably going to use two of them quite a bit (the wide and polariser), two occasionally (the super wide and macro), one every so often (the x2 telephoto), and three probably never (guess which three 😉).

Quality-wise, the wide and polariser are the best of the bunch, producing the cleanest and sharpest images. The super-wide is pushing it for quality, although it will still probably be ok for video footage, and the x2 telephoto is ok, but probably no better than digital cropping of the original file.

Was it worth the $30.00NZ I paid for the kit? Absolutely it was. They may not be the best quality attachment lenses ever made, but it's given me a taste of phone attachments, so I know what I'm looking for if I want to spend a little more for a better product later on. You can get some more impressive (read more expensive) wide angle attachments made specifically for the iPhone, and that might be where I'm headed in the future. But for the time being, the 8in1 lens kit from Iboolo will do the job nicely.