I recently decided to get some small canvas prints done to sell at my local tourism office. Artscow.com had a special offer for 8″ x 10″ stretched canvas prints at $US9.99 delivered to my door. I live in Australia so this sounded like a good deal. Printing on canvas is a good option when you want your photographs displayed proudly without the hassle of getting them framed.

They arrived after about 2 weeks and seemed of reasonable quality. Unfortunately when I went to deliver them, it was raining slightly. Although the prints were inside a plastic bag, in the process of unpacking them a few small drops of water got onto one of the prints. To my horror, as I brushed the droplets off gently, the ink just lifted off. Needless to say the prints weren’t required by my cusomer until a solution can be found to make them more water resistant.

After some testing, it appears all canvas prints aren’t created equal.

Here is a video showing how easy the Artscow prints are to damage with even a small amount of moisture.

Here is another night photo I made (yes ‘made’ is how professional photographers like to say ‘took’, so I’ve read). This was also shot with the Nikon D40 with 18-55mm kit lens. The setting this time were ISO 200, 18mm, F4.5 @ 30 seconds.

Adjustments I made in Aperture 3.0 were straightening, crop, definition, vibrancy and shadows.

Here is the photo as shot from the camera.

I’ve been sidetracked with other projects for a long time as you can see from this blog. It’s a shame because the site gets thousands of visitors a month without any attention. What I’d like to do is put photos I’ve taken here to get feedback and hopefully improve my photography. Even better, please send in photos you have taken with a short explaination of how you went about it. Your photo will be displayed on the fron page and hopefully get some creative feedback.

I’d like to also include screencast videos showing what adjustments are made on the computer once the picture is taken. I think that would be invaluable in learning what can be done and how to improve the process.

Let’s start with one I took recently.

This was shot after midnight on my trusty old Nikon D40 with 18-55mm kit lens. This camera is usually aways with me as I just keep it in the car for such occasions. The settings used are ISO 250, 18mm, f5, @ 30 secs. I had to use a tripod obviously but it’s only a light one which is always in the car also.

In Aperture 3.0 I straightened the horizon, added some definition and vibrancey and pulled up the shadows. I also sharpened up the clouds on the horizon using the brush tool.

Let me know what you think, it’s hard to put this stuff out there for criticism but in order to get better it must be done.

Feel free to send your pics with a description of how you created the image to admin@cybercam.com.

Google has recently released their Nexus One smartphone. It boasts may features similar to the iPhone 3GS so I thought it fitting to compare video recording capabilities. Let me know what you think?

First iPhone 3GS

Then Google Nexus One

After receiving my iPhone 3GS I was interested in how it compared with my iPhone 3G. One of the areas I was curious about was video recording. As you may be aware, the iPhone 3G is not shipped with this ability but you can install a program called Cycorder which is available to jailbroken iPhones.

The other option is to install an application from the App Store like Qik or Ustream Broadcaster but they don’t perform as well as Cycorder.

Here are two videos I shot at the same time with both iPhones side by side.

Let me know what you think?

First iPhone 3G

Then iPhone 3GS

After having my iPhone for over a month now I started to miss a few things my old Nokia N82 could do. Although the iPhone is revolutionary and I would never go back, there are some things Apple don’t provide. But, there is a solution…

I knew that what I needed could be done in software alone, for example, the ability to record video from the built in camera. I had heard about jailbreaking but thought it would be a messy hack that would just give me headaches. After looking into it further and hearing others people’s experiences, it seemed quiet straight forward with minimal side effects. I liked the fact that the process is completely reversible too.

Jailbreaking is a way to allow the iPhone to run much more software than Apple normally allow through the Appstore.

So, some of the programs I wanted to run are:

• Cycorder – allows you to use your iPhone as a video camera.
• Backgrounder – allows your iPhone to mutitask, for example you could have an instant messaging client run in the background while viewing your calender, then switch back again without having to interrupt your conversation.
• iPhonemodem – allows you to share your Iphone’s internet connection with your laptop.

These programs and many more are available under the ‘Cydia’ app once you have jailbroken your iPhone. Installing them is very similar to installing from the standard Appstore.

This post at ReadWriteWeb gives some other good reasons to Jailbreak your iPhone.

Jailbreaking is not the same as Unlocking. Unlocking removes the limitation some iPhones have of been ‘locked’ to one carrier.

If your iPhone is carrier locked, it is a better idea to use a program called PwnageTool intead of QuickPwn. The reason for this is because, if you wanted to ‘unlock’ you iPhone at a later time, you need to install a program called Yellowsn0w which relies on PwnageTool preserving the Baseband (the part of the phone that controls the radio). Yellowsn0w unlocks your iPhone and allows you to use it on different networks.

Here is the link to download PwnageTool 2.2.5 for Mac.

At the time of writing, Yellowsn0w will not work on Apple’s firmware 2.2.1 so do not upgrade to this version if you want the option to unlock at a later stage.

Visit the developer’s website for a lot more detail on jailbreaking your iPhone.

If during the process you get an error telling you that you can’t go into DFU mode, use a USB hub between your iPhone and computer or see this information on Fixing DFU mode on 10.5.6.

My iPhone is already unlocked by the carrier so I upgraded the firmware from 2.2 to 2.2.1 via iTunes, then ran QuickPwn.

Here are the download links for QuickPwn 2.2.5 for Windows and QuickPwn 2.2.5 for Mac.

You also need to donwload this iPhone 3G 2.2.1 firmware and put it in the same folder as QuickPwn.

The update is pretty straightforward and leads you step by step through the process.

Here is a very good and detailed tutorial on How to Jailbreak Your iPhone With QuickPwn (Mac).

Good luck with the upgrade and I hope you get much more out of this brilliant little device.

In a previous post we discussed how to get the High Quality or HD video options in your YouTube videos. Videos played in these modes looks a lot better than the standard low resolution mode. Normally you need to view these modes directly on the YouTube site. The reason for this is, by default, YouTube’s embed code limits you to the normal quality mode. This might load faster but looks unsightly after seeing the other versions.

There is a way to embed High Quality and HD modes in your site but it takes a little cutting and pasting of the standard embed code supplied by YouTube.

I won’t go into it here because Julie Perry over at youtubesecretweapon.com has put together a short tutorial that explains it quiet well.

Here is the video she put together but you can find her full article at youtubesecretweapon.com.

I recently bought a new Nikon D90 DSLR after hearing all the excitement over the new breed of hybrid digital cameras. They have HD video as well as stills capabilities and can take advantage of the great DSLR lenses out there. The main advantage is the ability to get shallow depth of field which has normally been the domain of very expensive video cameras not within reach of the average videographer.

The Nikon D90 is the first of this type of camera and was closely followed by the great Canon 5D Mark II. You can find many examples of the great videos produced by these relatively inexpensive cameras.

So now we have the ability to create masterpieces and watch them on our computers and HD TVs, but what about internet distribution? How do we best share our creations?

Obviously YouTube is the most popular video hosting site on the internet so we will probably want to start there.

After doing some searching, I couldn’t come up with conclusive answers regarding the best format for uploading to YouTube to get great looking results. Most suggestions were just to upload the best quality file that you can. Although this would work, why spend hours uploading huge files if we can save time by uploading smaller files with similar results.

My test started with uploading the file my camera produced without any conversion, straight to YouTube. The Nikon D90 produces an AVI file at 1280X720 resolution 24 frames/sec and about 22000 kbits/sec. To my surprise once uploaded to YouTube, I could play it in “normal quality” or “high quality” only. Where was the crisp HD version I was hoping for?

Obviously this needed some further investigation as the original file from my camera definitely had enough detail to be HD worthy. So I opened the clip up in Quicktime Pro and saved it as a H.264 MP4 file in the original 1280X720 resolution and at 24 frames/sec. I started at 500kbits/sec which rendered a very poor quality result on my screen even before uploading, and went up to 20,000 kbits/sec which is about the same bandwidth as the original AVI file.

Here is where I set the export options in Quicktime Pro.

The idea was to load all these up to YouTube and discover what is needed to enable High Quality mode then what to enable HD. After that I wanted to see if there was a noticeable improvement all the way up to 20,000 kbits/sec. There is no point uploading these massive files if a file half the size would produce similar results, right?

So here are the results and a few observations.

Note the embedded videos below are in normal quality. You need to click through to YouTube (double click) to see the High Quality or HD option. Although you can embed the High Quality versions in a web page. you would not be shown the version you were watching that way.

This is the original AVI file, uploaded without alteration. You will notice YouTube only gives us the option to play this in High Quality mode even though the original file is good enough to be played in HD

After converting the video to H.264 MP4 at 500 kbits/sec you can see the quality is very poor even played in normal mode, you do however have the option to play in High Quality mode which would be pointless. Some testing a while ago showed that video uploaded at a minimum of 480X360 resolution will get the High Quality option.

At 800 kbits/sec the High Quality mode is still the only option but now we can see an improvement between normal and High Quality.

At 1000 kbits/sec we now get HD! The quality is a lot nicer than the normal mode and the player is a lot bigger, now showing us the original 1280X720 resolution. it seems 1280X720 at 1000 kbits/sec is the absolute minimum to enable HD mode. I did try an upload at 900 kbits/sec but was only presented with the inferior High Quality mode in the smaller player.

2000 kbits/sec

5000 kbits/sec

10000 kbits/sec

and finally 20000 kbits/sec

So in summary, for HD we want 1280X720 at 1000 kbits/sec minimum but do you see improvements right up to 20,000kbits/sec?

Let me know your thoughts…