the iPhone and True HDR

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Geek that I am, I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that just a scant six months after I bought my iPod Touch, I have succumbed to the call of the iPhone.

Now before you judge me too harshly, let me give you a few of my reasons.

Number one, I HATED my old phone, an LG something or other that was on Verizon. The worst part of it was that when you had to press a number to make a selection, instead of making a selection, it would open some obscure menu on the phone.

This meant I was always having to mess with it if I made any kind of call that required pressing numbers. And don't most of them these days?

And it was too small.

And I couldn't add ringtones to it.

And the camera was stinky.

And, well, all right, I WANTED an iPhone.

So when we were in Santa Fe, stocking the Hunny Bunny up with boots and hats and Levis, I got a new phone.

For anyone who cares, the phone number is the same.

Boy, is this thing slick.

There are thousands (maybe millions) of aps, some quite useful, some just a hoot. It has a built in GPS, which actually works pretty well. And a built in compass that gives me longitude and latitude (great for setting up the satellite TV). And it syncs perfectly with my Mac, calendars, contacts, my 1Password program, my DVD tracking program, and even my recipe collection.

Did I mention that it goes on the internet?

I LOVE this thing.

And I have to admit, that for someone like me, the camera isn’t half bad. Weighing in at 3 megapixels, I won't be blowing these images up and printing them, but they're really not bad. The best thing about the camera is all the little helper aps you can get to enhance it's capabilities. There's even a free Photoshop application for manipulating your pictures right in the iPhone.

My favorite iPhone ap right now is called TrueHDR.

HDR or high dynamic range imaging is a process where you take two or more pictures of the same image at different exposures. Then you combine them together for a much more vibrant picture.

Lately, I've been exploring HDR, playing with images from my regular camera in Photoshop, but TrueHDR (which costs just $1.99 from the iTunes Store) allows you to take HDR photos in no time, right in your iPhone.

The picture below was taken from inside Cholula Red. I took one picture where I focused on the image of Pedernal out the window (which caused the inside of the rig to appear totally black). Then I took the second photo, focusing on the inside of the rig (in which the window was completely blown out and white). Then I pressed merge and here's the result.

As always, you can click on the image to see it at a higher resolution. Now I realize that this photo won't be winning any prizes (especially for composition, I could have cleaned off the couch before taking the shot . . .)

But I have to admit I'm intrigued. Occasionally, I'll be posting pictures here that I've taken with my iPhone. I'm just looking at it as an opportunity to try another kind of photography.

Here's one more shot that I took from inside the dining hall here at Ghost Ranch. Again, this would be a difficult shot except for the iPhone and this slick little ap.

The geek in me is quite happy!