One of my favorite things to do when in Jakarta, eating the street food. Forget about hygiene. Just close your eyes, pray and eat.  Just before I took this shot, the guy in blue on the left, who was selling varieties of cold desserts, just dropped a block of ice when I was placing my order. He left it on the road for about 30 sec because he was serving someone else. He then picked it up and walked to the back of that yellow banner. I thought he was going to throw away that block of ice, but he just quickly rinsed it with water. I just smiled, because the next order he was going to make was mine. 

The above panorama was shot in Serpong using the AutoStitch app on my iPhone 4s.Happy Chinese New Year! Keep shooting guys!

Shot with Leica M9 and Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f/1.2 ASPH V2. Shot at f/1.2, 1/45 sec at ISO 160.

Shot with Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f1.2 ASPH Version 2 with Leica M9. Shot at its largest aperture of f/1.2 and slow enough shutter speed, 1/15 sec at ISO 200, to blur the people walking in front of him. Shot last night in Chinatown.

Here is another one, a father and a son watching the musician.

I think I have fallen in love with Panorama Photography using my iPhone 4s. I shot this series in Chinatown this evening. I brought my mum who has been recovering well to see the vibrant Chinatown  before she leaves this coming Friday.

With lots of people moving, it becomes very tricky for the app to stitch. The same person may appear twice since he/she moves and may appear in the next image, hence confusing the app. But, that’s okay. It’s just a camera phone. I have the excuse. 

But hey, it’s still very nice to look at. Agree?

The place seemed to know I would take the photograph using my iPhone camera, made by Apple. See the sign on the right hand side. 

Enjoy the rest of the photos below. Have a great week ahead, everyone.

iPhone Panorama again and of the same scene again, Singapore Marina Bay but with a bonus of puffy clouds this time. These two images are pretty much straight out of the iPhone 4s. I did apply a bit of sharpening since the sharpness of an image would reduce when you resize it.

I have a feeling I will continue to shoot this scene as I will still be there for some time. But I will shoot again when the sky and lighting are different.

The first one above was shot through a tinted glass window that made the sky bluer while the one below was shot from the Marina Bay Promenade on the street level. That tinted glass window gives an effect like the polarizer filter does.

I am currently testing the Voigtlander Nokton 35mm f/1.2 ASPH Version 2 on Leica M9. The images here were shot in RAW and then converted and resized to JPEG for web viewing. No other post-processing done. All were shot at its largest aperture of f/1.2 and closest focusing distance of 0.7m or close to that and under tungsten light. I will do some more test today or tomorrow. Have a great weekend everyone.

You can really take amazing iPhone photos using that little device that was Designed by Apple in California and Assembled in China. Sorry, I know I have been talking about it for some days, but I am still amazed with how all these technologies have changed our life or changed the way we do things.

The above is a panorama, 4 images stitched into 1, using the AutoStitch app. Shot from 48th floor through the glass window. You can see a bit of reflection on the glass but I am fine with that. I can’t ask for the window to be opened, anyway. 

The original was in color and I converted it to black and white in Adobe Lightroom. I think I should coin a new word: iphonorama.

Here are my favourite and best iPhone photography / best instagram images .. so far.

Camera phone still cannot beat its big brothers, like the DSLR or even some of the compacts. Maybe it never will, but who knows, technology will only get better. But for now, the convenience of having a good little camera in my pocket all the time is wonderful since I cannot always be carrying the DSLR or the M9 or even the smaller Micro Four-Thirds camera, like the Olympus E-P3 or Panasonic GF-1.

Oh, by the way, thank you to those who have been asking about my mum. Thank God that she is now home, recovering well.

The mobile phone technology has advanced so much that the combination of powerful processor and many excellent photography apps has created an opportunity for us to be more creative while on the go. I just wish the iPhone battery technology will also advance so it can last for at least 12 hours of shooting before I come home and charge it. OK, minus the breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee breaks, maybe 8 hours of non stop shooting.

The following two images below touched me a lot. I saw her couple weeks back in Little India when I accompanied my cousin to shoot there. She’s easily 70+ years old and she was pushing a cart full of flattened boxes. She probably collected those unused boxes from somewhere and was going to sell them for some cash. She crossed the road to move to the other side. A car passed by, much faster than her as you can tell from the blurry image of the car. Human vs Machine. To put things in perspective, the things I complain about in my life do not seem bad at all.

Here is another one from that morning shoot in Little India. A man crossing the road on his bike. It’s black and white, but if you can tell from the position, he crossed when the red man was still on. 

The following were taken during my recent trip to Bali in December for a short family vacation. Taken mainly in Kuta. They were processed by the Instagram app and couple other iPhone apps on the iPhone itself. Beautiful Kuta sunset.

I did very little post processing to the image below. Only bumped up the contrast a little bit and cropped to square format. Amazing phone camera.

The famous war photographer, Robert Capa, once said, “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you are not close enough.” When I saw waves crashing onto the rocks along the Kuta beach, I thought it would be cool if I could take some shots. To get the impact, I need to be close. Really close. And my newly bought iPhone 4s (it was less than a week when I brought it to Bali with me) was splashed with the salt water. Yummy. But I managed to quickly clean it up. It’s still functioning until now. Please don’t tell Apple when one day it stops working and I will go to claim the warranty. 

This one was taken in the morning. Beautiful morning. Clear blue sky and the beach chairs were just waiting for tourists to sit on them. And … can you see the moon right in the center of the top part? The full resolution image shows that very  clearly.

And this one was really a lucky shot. I was in the car when I shot this on a rainy day in Kuta. The car window was wet, lots of water droplets. I saw the couple waiting at the shelter from afar and I focused on the water droplets and took the shot when our car passed by them.

I tried to use the iPhone to shoot moving subjects. These beach boys were playing soccer. I was standing on a big rock, which you can tell from the angle of the shots.

And some more moving subjects.  The cousins.

And last one from Kuta, the model in Bali. 

Shooting moving subjects indoor with iPhone is challenging since we can’t really control the shutter speed. Hence, when shooting indoor and the light is not bright enough to give you fast shutter speed to freeze the movement, the subjects will be blurry. But I still love these images of the two little monkeys jumping on the bed. I tried to minimize the blur by “clicking” the shutter button when they were at the peak of their jump.

When shooting portrait with iPhone, try to zoom in in order to minimize the distortion. iPhone has a wide lens and shooting portrait with wide lens won’t be pleasing, especially when you are too close to the subject. So, zoom in.

Few more portrait shots. These were taken at the Universal Studios. I love the setting they have there.

I seem to be addicted to shooting from inside a car on a rainy day. These two shots of cabs were shot when I was in another cab on the highway. The wet car window caused the distortion, which I like.

You should have seen these two in my previous post, but let me post them again here, because they are my favorites too. The panorama, shot with the excellent AutoStitch app.

And last but not least, I love leaf on the ground. You guys have known that from my previous posts. So, this will continue with my iPhone.

So, that’s it for now. See you in the next batch of my favorite images taken with the iPhone. You all keep shooting !!

I was shooting in Little India last week using the iPhone 4s. I downloaded the images and processed them in Adobe Lightroom (except few below that were processed on the iPhone itself), converted them to black and white except the first one above. I am quite happy with the results, especially when shooting inside the temple using only the available light.

Enjoy the images.

The next two below were processed on the iPhone itself.

More panoramic photography using iPhone 4s. The above panorama of Jago Close food centre is not perfect. A lot of distortion, because I sat quite close from those stalls, and some wrong stitching. But, hey, it’s still good to look at, I think.

And the two below were taken at Marina Bay last night. I converted one to B&W.

More to come when I get a chance to shoot more in the coming weeks.