Entries Tagged as 'HTC – Incredible S'

Now I don’t want to tell the eftpos people how to suck eggs…. but

Now, I know I am not an ad executive type.  My clothes aren’t classy enough, and I don’t drive a Porsche.  Yet as a member of the great unwashed I still have a few ideas about how an ad should work.

Firstly that ad should sell something, say a product or a service, then it should make me want to get that service as soon as possible.  Certainly before I change my mind.
Hmm... Yes I'd like an icecream

Why yes, I’d love an ice-cream.  And what I can use EFTPOS for it. Why all of a sudden EFTPOS felt the need for expensive TV ads and this huge placement in Flinders St Station I will never know.  Perhaps NFC is coming soon, who knows, but I digress from my need for an ice-cream.

Low and behold, just below that giant ice-cream, the one that I can purchase on EFTPOS is an ice-cream shop.

Perfect….. well it would be….

hmmm... no eftpos

 

See that little yellow sign.  Small problem with that sign… yes, they don’t have EFTPOS.

Seriously who placed those ads in that location.  Why didn’t they either A: not put the ice-cream banner next to the ice-cream shop, or B: give the shop EFTPOS for the duration of the campaign.

Even better, they could have let two other shops, the two out of five there that actually have EFTPOS have a limit below $5 per transaction.  Why, because then I could have brought the cup of coffee that is in one of the other banners that is less than $5.  The one the ad says I can buy on EFTPOS, the one I can’t.

But then, what do I know.

P.S Dear staff at Flinders St Station, why do you get so upset with people taking photos all the time.

Missing from the Exif: Over the Rainbow – Federation Square

We all know that a huge percentage of photos are right time right place.  For me this was even more so yesterday heading home from work.

HTC - Incredible S versionThose that know me know I carry my DSLR camera with me nearly everywhere.  Yesterday proves why.  The best photo is always the one you get with the camera you have.  To that end it is preferable that you have a better camera. So walking through town on my way home mother nature kindly put on a very nice rainbow. ( This shot for example is from my phone)

I had no more than 10min to spend getting shots by which time the rainbow had gone.

I used a Nikon D7000 with the kit 18-105mm lens.  When I could see where the rainbow was facing, I quickly walked up to Fed Square so I had the foreground element I was after.  Rainbows are all very nice, but framing a foreground adds an extra dimension to the shot.  I didn’t have my 11-16mm Tokina on me, so decided to go for the stitch later panorama series of photos.

When shooting panoramas it really helps to move the camera off Auto Mode as well.  This way your shot has even lighting across the whole image.  If you shoot them in auto, you will end with dark and light banding as each shot has a different exposure.  You can if you have time shoot in manual to pull up the dark parts of the shot if you want, but I was racing the setting sun with this one.

This shot had a bit of post processing as well.  Given I was racing time to get all the frames for the panorama as well. In Lightroom all that I did was just apply the lens correction to all of the shots.  This takes out the barrel distortion and vignetting as well making stitching much easier.  Then I exported all the full size images as JPG’s to Microsoft ICE.  I did try Photoshop, but ICE did a much better job of stitching.

Then came the fun part.  Images never look the same on a monitor as they do on the back of the camera.  In this case all of the Fed Square was to dark.  The sky was balanced how I wanted it, but not the people.

In Photoshop I created a Curves adjustment layer, then created a mask for the bottom half of the image. Then I adjusted the curves to help pull out the rich golden tones that I hadn’t pulled up in the raw shots.

Stage 2

All up, about 30 min of processing work for this shot…

I’m a really pleased with the final image and hope you are as well….

Over the rainbow - Federation Square

 

(P.S Now you can buy it as a large photographic print as well as in a mounted print…. )

 

HTC Incredible S – Camera Comparison

( due to my blog being nuked when my host went down… click here for my ASUS EEPC Slate Review )

 

One thing comparing the Incredible S to the Desire that has been dramatically improved is the camera.  Not just the bump from 5 to 8megapixels, but the processing software seems to have been given some real attention.  The Desire’s camera was “flat” in the shots it took and for me wasn’t worth using.

The Incredible S however is a very rich, vibrant.  It isn’t a DSLR ( which I carry with me nearly everywhere), but it is a great point and shoot camera for a wide variety of shooting environments.

The camera does low light very well, and limits ISO Noise very very well. One issue with lowlight though is that it pushes more red into images than is necessary.  Whilst the lighting at the nightclub where I took the photos of the Cat Empire, was heavily skewed red, this red dominance also came out in the sunset shot that I took at the river, there at least I had the Nikon D7K to get a much more realistic colour balance out of the shot. Which also is a case of apples and oranges, one is phone, one is prosumer DSLR :-)

The flash on the camera is up to the task, but you will notice that the band shots don’t have the flash on, because I wanted photos of the band, not the back of people’s heads.  You might want to remember that next time you’re at a concert. The great thing is that the Incredible also remembers the last state the flash was on as well, even when you exit the app.  A nice touch, that means you can take photos quickly without having to reset the camera every time.

For reasons that are not knee bone is connected to the leg bone type of logic, if you are using the phone is being used as a WIFI hot spot ( which is great if you don’t have the USB cable with you, or you wish to share it with a few friends ), you can’t use the flash.  I’m sure there is a good technical reason for this, but I can’t think what it was.

I’d much rather that the effects vs the settings could have been switched.  Then I am a lot more of purist when it comes to photography anyway.  The face detection works really well, even if the subject is in the background of the image, and the cameras inherent depth of field gets everything in focus. White Balance etc all seem to work just fine but nested as they are, tweaking one item, such as white balance, involved more clicks as sub items take over the menu structure.

The geotagging feature is great to leave on, but is one that I would have given higher priority to in the menus.  I would love to be able to one click turn it off and on for photos as I went.  Photos from home for example would not be tagged or from a friends place, but out in public tag away is the way I like to shoot.  The GPS seems to get a fix very quickly, often one or two shots in a new location and they are tagged. A cursory look at images I have uploaded to flickr shows the location very accurately as well.

Sure, the camera has nice little effects, to be honest the only one I would consider using is the depth of field filter.  Even then unless it was something I couldn’t get a feel for a particular shot that I was after.  As a rule, and this applies to all photos that you take with your phone etc, don’t and I mean DON’T apply camera filters.  Why, because in 12 months time, or even the day after you won’t have the unedited version.  The photos off the Incredible should print really well, and unless you have the “clean” version you are going to regret not having it sooner rather than later.

But, words are words, images are images…  I let them do the talking… ( ok, with just a touch of voice over…. )

(All images link to full size flickr version )

Dull Sunset Comparison

I am not a camera phone horder... just doing a review...

(Plus the Nikon D7000 that took the shot)

Nikon D7000

cloudy_sunset-nikon-d7k

Nokia N8

cloudy_sunset-nokia-n8

HTC Incredible S

cloudy_sunset-htc-incredible

Nokia N95-8gb

cloudy_sunset-nokia-n85-8gb

Nokia X-6

cloudy_sunset-nokia-x6

HTC Desire

cloudy_sunset-htc-desire

JVC GC – FM1

cloudy_sunset-jvc-gc-fm1

 

 

Xres Yres ISO Exposure Focal Length Aperture Width Height JPG Size Altitude Lat Long
Model – NIKON D7000 300 300 280 1/125s 18.00 mm F 5.60 4855 3216 6.4MB NO GPS
Model – N8-00 300 300 105 1/191.4s 5.90 mm F 2.80 4000 3000 1.4MB NO FIX
Model – HTC Incredible S 72 72 100 No Data 4.57 mm No Data 3184 1904 1MB 0 m S 37  53  35.05 E 144  59  17.76
Model – N95 8GB 300 300 100 1/500s 5.60 mm F 2.80 2592 1944 .77mb NO FIX
Model – X6-00 300 300 100 1/250s 5.20 mm F 2.80 2592 1944 .68mb 30.50 m S37  53  56.12 E144  59  5.34
Model – HTC Desire 72 72 55 No Data 4.31 mm No Data 2592 1552 .59mb NO FIX
Model – GC-FM1 72 72 100 1/109.9s 3.91 mm F 2.82 3264 2448 2.1mb NO GPS

 

Notes:

The order is how I judge the devices.

Unsurprisingly the DSLR wins :-) , Next is the amazing Nokia N8, which is simply amazing as a camera on a phone. But given the hardware the Incredible S was against, it did do very well.

DPI, the higher the number the better the print.  72DPI is great for onscreen, 300DPI is better for printing, this is reflected broadly in filesize.

The D7000 shot was taken in RAW and exported via Lightroom 3. I do have the Solmeta GPS for the D7000, but it wasn’t plugged in J, the other phones that didn’t get a GPS fix had not been used in sometime and were not already on, when I did the test.

Both the Desire and the Incredible S are lacking much in the way of EXIF data, so a full comparison of EXIF Data is not possible.  Either this is an ongoing firmware issue, or shows the limitations of the HTC Camera System.

Final point, remember that the Nokia N95-8gb is from 2007, so it is the oldest of all off the above devices by a number of years. Still the camera in that phone still stands up.

And here are some more shots from the Incredible S

Good light

macro-goodlight

Very dark room

macro-lowlight-incredibles

The Macro as I said is fantastic.  Add the touch the screen to move the focus point and you can get some great close up photos.  The text in these images is nice and crisp.

This is a pretty sunset….

HTC Incredible Sunset

Sunset - HTC Incredible S

Nikon D7000 Sunset

nikon-d7k-sunset

As you can see from above, the HTC made the sky a lot pinker than it was.  Whilst most people wouldn’t care.. I do.

And now some night shots..

First from the HTC Desire

band_shot-htc-desire

Now two from the Incredible S ( at both ends of the zoom).

band-shot-htc-incredible-1

band-shot-htc-incredible-2

And thanks for getting to the end of this rather long post…. The camera as I said is a great point and shoot, and is a good phone camera.

Android Weather Apps on my Incredible S

Not a bad sunset ( HTC Incredible S photo )(another cross post from the HTC Diaries )

Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you.

No, not the Crowded House song, but a few apps for your HTC Incredible Sin Australia. Whilst, you can just use the weather widget clock, which is handy if you work in a dark basement to tell if it is cloudy or even day or night time, a few more details can come in handy.

I use a combination of two dedicated apps.

Firstly is the very good ( adware supported ) app from Weatherzone. This app, will not only give you a number of widgets that you can add to one of your 6 home screens, it will on opening give you a lot more information than just the temp.

With detailed weather warnings, the current temp, feels like temp, chance of rain on a given day it will really help to ensure you don’t get caught out. On the details section you’ll also see the rainfall for the day, current humidity etc. As this app can pull your location, either via mobile tower or GPS, you’ll get the current weather for your location, or you can just fix the location if you want.

Whilst the Weatherzone app does have a radar viewer, I find the dedicated app Aussie Weather Radar is much cleaner and more detailed. Not only, will it give you all the zoom levels for the radar for your current location, you can zoom out to state level or see the radar traces for all of the BOM’s radars around Australia.

Once you get used to using the radar app, you can time when to leave work, or to pick up the kids from the park with an incoming storm for example.

Now, if only there was a remember my umbrella app, I’d be home and dry.

(P.S, if I am missing a must have weather app for Australia, please let me know )