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 fascinated by this wonderfully worn iPhone, simply because it is so very different to my iPhone and other assorted gadgets. I upgrade often, and I’m an inveterate case buyer, so my gadgets seldom look used.

This iPhone has character, and its own unique identity; like a beautifully worn piece of furniture where every scratch, nick and mark tells a story, and I love it.

Via Object Oriented

I was surprised just how good the video from the iPhone is, but also surprised at what a palaver it is to get the movie off of the iPhone and onto the iPad for editing.

Getting data on and off the iOS devices is fast becoming a real chink in Apple’s armour I believe, but I digress.

Ladies and Gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure, I present my first iMovie:

For months now I’ve been searching for a new theme for my blog. I wanted something simple yet stylish, with great typography, that used textures and colour well, and I quite fancied a retro Americana feel. Above all I really wanted it to be a responsive design.

I’d just about given up looking, and was moaning about it on Twitter, which prompted my friend Prisca Schmarsow to generously offer to work with me to create a bespoke theme for my blog. As we talked through some ideas I stumbled across the Liquorice WordPress theme; a theme which, whilst not perfect, seemed to tick many of the new theme boxes. I decided to see what I could do with Liquorice.

An evening hacking Liquorice around had it pretty much where I wanted it.

It’s a shame that Prisca and I won’t get to work together on a blog theme as we shared some nice ideas I feel, but I hope that when time allows maybe we will.

Within a few days my new theme had been commented on by a good friend who thought it was “more me”, and by my wife who, seeing it over my shoulder, spontaneously said how much she liked it without being asked by her needy husband.

But there was one vital ingredient missing: it wasn’t responsive.

Many of you are probably wondering what all this responsive malarkey is all about, and I can’t blame you as it represents the latest in web design thinking. In simple terms a responsive website is one that responds to the size of screen upon which it is being viewed; changing layout and dimensions to best suit that screen. Responsive design is supported by all modern desktop and smartphone browsers which makes it possible to easily create versions of a site tailored to the smaller screens of iPhones and iPads for example.

Responsive design is new to me, and I thought it was going to be a complicated exercise to retro-fit it to my new blog design. Luckily Liquorice is well coded, and even more luckily a good friend of mine Richard Wiggins of Pixel Creation offered to make my site responsive, and at the same time help me learn how a responsive design is created.

It was a fascinating, illuminating, and fun session; I was surprised by just how little code was required to transform this site. Richard did a superb job.

I’ve known and worked with Richard for over 10 years. He worked at the agency I employed to create the Psion Dacom website whilst I was New Media Manager there. He then left to create his own web design studio Pixel Creation. Richard is a very talented designer and one that is quickly able to transform what I’m thinking of into pixels. I’ve worked with some of the biggest agencies in the world and I choose to work with Richard whenever I can. I can’t recommend him highly enough.

See It In Action…

If you’re reading this on an iPad rotate it to see the site respond to the portrait and landscape views.

If you are on a desktop or laptop make the browser window smaller to see the site respond.

If you are reading this in IE8 or lower I’m sorry. I decided against the hacks required to make it work perfectly in your browsers although it works well in IE8. I highly recommend you move to a modern browser such as Google Chrome or Safari.

Lastly if you are reading this in a RSS reader get your arse over here now to see my new blog design.

He’s immersed in his iPhone as I was in mine. I wonder where he’s going.

Should I be bothered that I recognise him? Wonder if he recognises me.

Minsk was not what I expected; it felt more like old Europe than old Russia or at least what I imagine old Russia to be like. I’m due to return in April but frankly the fights back were so bad I’m unlikely to; check out the last photo – my knees still hurt.

Now I will admit to being out of touch with all mobile phones except those from sunny Cupertino so I was gobsmacked to find that the Satio includes a 12 megapixel digital camera. 12 megapixels in a phone – that’s incredible.

However as we all know there is so much more to digital camera quality than mere megapixels, but Sony Ericsson have always had great cameras so I’m really looking forward to trying out the phone and its camera.

I have an iPhone 3G which has a 2 megapixel camera, and takes average photographs as demonstrated on my trip to New York. However I was rummaging around on Flicker the other day and came across this photograph:

I accept that it isn’t perhaps the greatest photograph ever, or even that I have taken, but for a cameraphone shot I was struck by its sharpness, colour and quality of light. Then I realised that it was taken almost five years ago by a 2 megapixel cameraphone: my Sony Ericsson K750i.

So was this:

And this:

I don’t believe that the iPhone would have taken any of these photographs anywhere near as well; so much for progress.

I’d forgotten about my K750i until I saw these photos, and I’ll admit to having become more than a little nostalgic for it. It was a lovely, compact, solid little phone with, as we can see, a great camera.

It is of course woefully ill equipped compared today’s ‘smartphones’, but it did what it was designed to do very well, very well indeed. It made phone calls, and took great photographs both of which the iPhone struggles with.

I’ll admit when I saw the Buy button on this page I was rather tempted, and then quickly disappointed when I found that it wasn’t still in the Sony Ericsson store. I guess the spiritual successor is the C902, and I will admit the idea of a good quality camera in my pocket again is very tempting.

And then when you see a K750i running Google Mail I begin to wonder if I really need need an iPhone.

Here are some more photographs taken with my K750i; this one is a particular favourite.

Start using Instapaper today; you’ll thank me tomorrow.