Tag: iPhone

Posted on

Story and picture

It wasn’t that long ago you needed to carry a camera if you wanted pictures. Of course, this was not always conducive to the spontaneous capture of life’s simple events … all possible with phone and app.

This blog has always been an excuse to post pictures the way we want them to be seen. To that end, we’ve pushed the limits of our iPhone cameras.

Simple lenses offer a fraction of the image detail,  but it does get a boost from some very clever software and offers some pretty good pictures.

 

We enjoy exploring remote landscapes, so naturally wildlife photography is one of our interests.  iPhones, unfortunately, are not great tools for this type of image taking.

We’re not advocating abandonment of smart phones, it’s just time to up our game a bit.

This week we spent nearly every day working with a Sony mirrorless system and super telephoto lens. There were some successes and plenty of learning opportunities.

Kudos to Jack for getting this beautiful shot of an American White Pelican!

We made good use of the rental. By the end of the week we had completed 9 separate shoots and taken nearly 10,000 images. It was a great experience … and we are hooked!

 

 

Posted on

A Bug Hunt

With any hobby there are varying levels of involvement. We tend to be involved. So when it comes to fly fishing, aquatic entomology is part of the process.

Streams are much more alive with insect activity subsurface than you might expect. The best way to know what fish are eating is to sieve up some information … literally.

Three types of insects make up a majority of food sources, caddis, mayfly and stoneflys. The best imitation for an aquatic invertebrate is part latin name and part fisher folklore. Mostly you’re looking at size and color. Information obtained from the sample tray is taken to the tying bench and applied to a standard pattern.

It’s not clear if all this leads to more fish. The immersive nature is part of the fun. Plus you get to see lots of interesting creatures. Lately we’ve been pointing the macro lens at the collection tray and the videos are otherworldly, but a bug hunt is also part of the fun.

 

Posted on

A closer view, literally

I think the saying goes, “the best camera is the one you have in your hand.” For must of us, it’s now our phone. Paired up with the Internet, smart phones have forever changed picture sharing.

Over the 30 years we’ve been in the media, field production tools have evolved … a lot. Nothing compares to the shift that took place in just the last five years.

For blog images and YouTube videos we use a combination of DSLR and iPhone. This month the phones got updated and that gave us a much better camera. To this we’ve also added lenses specifically designed for smart phones.

Moment is a Seattle based company that started as app developers and their focus on mobile production tools brought about the development of a set of lenses. Three different focal lengths, wide angle, telephoto and macro.

It’s the macro lens that has really captured our attention. The shift in subject scale is a dramatic change to prospective. We are starting to look for photo ops a bit differently.

JQ started with plants and flower images and I put it to use on some aquatic insects. You’ll never look at a river quite the same after watching a caddis nymph harass a mayfly.