I had a succession of 35mm cameras after the Praktica: a cheap and cheerful Chinon bought in Dixons, a Canon AE1P (I loved that camera, I sold it to insure a motorbike – silly boy), and a Nikon model with some of the most unintuitive controls I’ve ever used.

My last 35mm camera was a Canon EOS 5 with a gorgeous, but heavy, 28-135mm IS lens. This is the camera I took to India.

Then came digital photography and a family; a marriage made in heaven you would think, but with the kit you end up carrying with kids, and not forgetting the kids themselves, lugging a extra item quickly loses its appeal. I did have a Nikon D40 for a while, but it was replaced by good quality ‘point ‘n shoot’ cameras. Which in turn have ended up being left at home, and my iPhone has become my principle camera.

How did it come to this?

Earlier this year I started to get the photographic itch again; I started my ill fated Photo 366 project, and started to look at ‘proper’ cameras again.

What I want is a digital equivalent of the simpler 35mm cameras I used to own, with classic camera design, controls and simplicity. Even the cheapest digital SLRs are massively over featured, with more bells and whistles than I want or need.

Then I discovered a range of cameras that seem to match my requirements made by the legendary manufacturer Leica. Leica have an unmatched reputation for design and quality, and sadly this comes with an eye watering price tag. So near and yet so far.

For a flavour of the attention to detail and quality that goes into the creation of a Leica:

For now this is the closest I’ll get to a Leica without selling my children. Oh now there’s a thought…

In my defence it was my twelfth wedding anniversary, and I was obviously enjoying myself far too much to remember.

Photo 366 was fun while it lasted. The 126 photographs I did remember to take can be seen on my Flickr account.

Maybe I’ll try again next year, or starting on my birthday…

POPA is now just £24.99 which is an absolute steal. I’m not sure how long the sale will last so I’d grab your POPA now. Read my review of POPA here.

I’m in no way affiliated with Beep Industries etc. etc.

After 100 days of my Photo 366 project I thought I’d pause and review how it’s going.

When I started the project I said:

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.

So has Photo 366 seen me out and about looking for interesting photographic subjects? If I’m honest not really.

The area I work in is still as uninteresting, and un-photogenic as it was when I started, and I haven’t felt inspired to explore it any further. But my project has made me look around me more, and notice things I might not have noticed before.

Many of the photos are of railway stations or from trains; two places in which I spend too much of my working days.

Beer, coffee and food all feature prominently, but given my well known love for them it’s perhaps not a huge surprise.

The surface of my desk at home also makes several appearances, as the days I work from home have been some of the more challenging ones; hence a number of shots of ‘something on my desk‘.

I’ll admit there have been a few days where I’ve almost forgotten to take a photograph, which accounts for a some of the less imaginative shots.

So after 100 days am I still enjoying Photo 366? Yes I am.

Whilst I want to make more effort to get out and look for more interesting shots, I’m also enjoying recording my day to day. I particularly like recording events from specific days in a photograph such as, for example, my 100th photograph Orbital live at Cambridge Corn Exchange:

Coincidentally I deleted my Instagram account on day 100, the day that Facebook acquired them, which I hope from a photographic standpoint will see me taking photographs that rely less on 70s effects and more on subject and composition.

I’m looking forward to the next 100 days.

By using a blog as the core of the project I’d made it a chore, and removed the potential for spontaneity from it.

So as of today my Photo 366 Flickr set will the be the repository for my Photo 366 images.

I hope to be able to use the magic of IFTT to send photos to Flick and share the photos from there, but currently it seems to not be working. Bloody internets!

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 (now closed) 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 collected in their Flickr set.

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.