The Software

I’ve been using the app both with and without my POPA, and it’s become one of my favourite iPhone photography apps. What I love most about the app is its speed.
Since upgrading to iOS5 the camera on my iPhone 4 has become so slow and hesitant it’s almost unusable. The Apple camera app hunts for focus before allowing you to take your photograph, or rather missing your photograph in many cases, whereas the POPA app takes the shot as soon as you press the shutter button. This means you get the odd blurry shot as you can press the button before the camera has focused, but more importantly it means you get the shot of the moment you wanted.

The classic camera aesthetic of the POPA are carried into the app with some lovely design touches. I love that the app says it’s ‘developing’ your photos when moving to a full screen view, and the sharing dial looks and sounds like a control dial from an old SLR – lovely.

The POPA app stores your photos on its own film roll from where you can save to the iPhone film roll, send images to other photo apps or share you shots via social networks. When you select multiple images they are highlighted as if circled by a white chinagraph pencil as if you are your very own Magnum film editor.

When moving through your images in full screen I found it odd that when deleting an image your are dropped back to the latest image in the film roll rather than moving to the next image in full screen view. If you have a lot of images in your film roll it can be a bit of pain to find yourself back at the other end of the roll.

I had some issues saving multiple images to the iPhone film roll; Beep are aware of this issue and will be fixing in an update soon.

Whilst the app has a few niggles it’s great to see how quickly Beep are rolling out updates with both bug fixes and new features. The latest update will allow saving directly to the iPhone film roll, and Beep recently shared a sneak peek of some filters and effects that are coming to the app soon – I can’t wait to play with them

The app is great app for taking fuss free images quickly with or without a POPA.

The Hardware

POPA has attracted a lot of attention since its launch on Kickstarter, where it was fully funded very quickly, and quite rightly as it is a lovely piece of design and engineering.

The POPA’s body is cast from metal and covered with a real leather grip just like my first film SLRs. The shape of the POPA is perfect and when attached to your iPhone forms a great hand grip with the big red shutter button on top which is in just the right place for your finger.

To attach the POPA to your iPhone you need to rotate the inset base to open a door exposing the iPhone connector. This is the only part of the POPA design I’m not keen on. Having large fingers I find it difficult to get a grip on the base which is also rather stiff to rotate. If I was being very fussy, and I am it’s my nature, I feel the plastic used for the door does not match the quality of the other materials used in the construction of POPA.

Once the door is open the POPA simply pushes onto the base of your iPhone. There is some resistance when pushing the POPA on but it’s this resistance that then keeps it securely attached to your iPhone. I was a little worried about having my fragile iPhone hanging from the POPA, but it is incredibly secure once attached – I have no concerns about carrying my iPhone by the POPA alone.

The POPA is such a nicely made object I often find myself just playing with it when it’s not attached to my iPhone. Chatting with Brendan Dawes of Beep about the POPA he said:

“I always wanted to make POPA a thing by itself – not something that looked like it was missing another bit, or was even an accessory to something else.”

I think he succeeded.

The Whole

The app really comes into its own when connected to the POPA; where the app will work without the button the button will not work without the app.

Connecting your POPA automatically opens the app, and you are ready to shoot straight away.

I once had an issue with the app not recognising my POPA and not firing when the shutter button was pressed, but restarting my iPhone solved it, and I know that Beep are working to fix this.

The attention to detail and quality of POPA extends to its packaging which is a delight and the inclusion of a drawstring pouch for your POPA and a real leather wrist strap that attaches to the tripod bush on the bottom of the POPA.

The app is a great iPhone photography app, and the POPA is a lovely piece of design and engineering which combined transform your iPhone into an easy to hold and easy to use camera. POPA brings back the speed to iPhone photography and adds a new level of comfort and utility with the addition of a handgrip and big red shutter button. If you like photography and use an iPhone then a POPA will enhance both.

I’m delighted to say that my friend Brendan Dawes has offered me a POPA to use for my Photo 366 shots. POPA is the big red button for your iPhone that Brendan’s company Beep Industries designed, and started to produce last year.

I’ve been using the POPA app for a while, and was planning on buying a POPA soon, so I’m obviously very keen to get my hands on my own POPA. I highly recommend the app; it makes iPhone photography fast and fun again, and has some beautiful design touches and moments of UI delight.

I’m hoping my POPA will arrive today. As soon as I’ve had a chance to play with it I’ll share a review here.

Only after I’d setup a Tumblr site I’d intended to use to collect these photos did it dawn on me that 2012 is a leap year, and therefore has 366 days. So I will after all be taking a photograph a day, every day, for a year. Duh.

With my iPhone I always have a surprisingly good camera in my pocket, and I often share photos through Instagram, Twitter and Flickr. So I thought it would be good to have a focus for this photography, if you’ll excuse the pun. Having to take a photograph I’l be happy to put my name to will I hope make me look harder for better photographs.

I think my Photo 366 project will be a challenge to keep fresh with interesting photographs. I commute to London at least four days a week, well I say London but my employers recently moved to Angel; a Northern suburb of London, and possibly the most uninteresting, and un-photogenic area of London I’ve visited. So finding subjects worthy of photographing and not resorting to repeated pictures of the London skyline will be a challenge.

In addition to my iPhone I have a nice Nikon point and shoot which I might start carrying with me to allow for more control than the iPhone allows. I’m also hoping to buy another ‘real’ camera this year which will add another element to my challenge.

But to start a journey you must take a single step, and here is my first step – today’s photograph:

You can see my Photo 366 photographs on their own site 366.davidhughes.org or collected in my Flickr set.

I was talking to my friend Christian about my post The Story Behind The Picture when he reminded of his favourite photo from our trip to India.

We were staying in McLeod Ganj in Himanchal Pradesh, and decided to have a look around the nearby town of Dharamsala. We thought a bus might be more interesting than a taxi so headed to the bus stand. This was my first ride on an Indian bus, and I was looking forward to the amazing views on the road down the valley.

Chris bought a paper near the bus stand, and started to read it as we waited to leave, and this page caught my eye – I think it was the use of the word ‘charred‘ that was particularly diverting.

Of course our bus journey was quite uneventful, and we had a very pleasant morning looking around Dharamsala followed by lunch at The Dhauladhar hotel overlooking the Kangra Valley.

I’d describe this mix as darkly ambient, but with a lighter feeling towards the end like the sun rising after the night. This feeling inspired my latest ‘homebrew’ cover art which you can download from Flickr.

There is one striking omission for me; that of my favourite author William Gibson who wrote the cyberpunk classic Neuromancer on an manual typer writer of 1930s vintage. Of this typewriter William Gibson said:

Neuromancer was written on a “clockwork typewriter,” the very one you may recall glimpsing in Julie Deane’s office in Chiba City.

This machine, a Hermes 2000 manual portable, dates from somewhere in the 1930′s. It’s a very tough and elegant piece of work. Cased, it weighs slightly less than the Macintosh SE/30 I now write on, and is finished in a curious green- and-black “crackle” paint-job, perhaps meant to suggest the covers of an accountant’s ledger.

Its keys are green as well, of celluloid, and the letters and symbols on them are canary yellow. (I once happened to brush the shift-key with the tip of a lit cigarette, dramatically confirming the extreme flammability of this early plastic.)

It amuses me that such a prescient story was written on a typewriter so old it could not be repaired when it broke a short time after Neuromancer was published.

It amuses me even more that I wrote this post using an app that in essence recreates a typewriter on shiny new technology.

I didn’t realise quite so much went into making them however.

there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented

I am an unabashed fan of Apple, and therefore Steve Jobs as they were for many of us inseperable, but I was surprised how I felt on hearing the news; the best way I can describe it is as a feeling of hollowness.

I didn’t know him, I never met him or even saw him present, but I feel I understand him. Every time I use a piece of Apple hardware or software I can see, and understand, his values and passion.

Two of my favourite Steve Jobs philosophies are that Apple products should be “insanely great” and “it just works”.

I’m reminded of these philosophies when I watch my six year old son creating music in Garage Band, export that music to iTunes and then sync it to his iPod. I like to think that Steve Jobs would be as proud and delighted as I am to see him beaming away as he listen to “his music”.

This is Steve Jobs legacy: insanely great products that are a joy to use and bring delight their users.

Made for just £100, oddly compelling, and probably NSFW.

You see a mousetrap, I see free cheese and a fucking challenge.