External Camera Shutter Release for iOS

Mike0001 said:
Do you have an α6000 or similar, then? I have the α5100 and α6000 bodies, with a variety of lenses.
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It's totally irrelevant to the discussion in hand, because whether the pixels are real or 'phoney', Sony will use the same 'fiddle factor' for the various aspect ratios. And using those 'fiddled or not' pixel counts, it is fairly obvious that my camera and my phone both have 4:3 sensors. As a matter of fact, although it's not relevant I have a Sony DCS-HX9-V with a claimed pixel count of 18.2M. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge who claim "The camera on Galaxy S7 and S7 edge features a DSLR-grade 12MP Dual Pixel Sensor for crisp, clear and bright pictures under any circumstances." Tell us the pixel count on your super duper camera when using different aspect ratio.
BH, you will never persuade anyone to buy a phone where the image or video is constantly cropped! Fact!
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That is absolute bollox. They already do by their millions if they change aspect ratio from the 'norm'. If the manufacturers don't make it too obvious what's going on (which they wouldn't) the average user would be in total ignorance.
I suspect that the majority of phone users have absolutely no idea of what's going on with their cameras. You can tell that as they are stupid enough to take video in portrait.
Mike0001 said:
The camera pixels are real ones, whereas phone "pixels" are phoney. A phone sensor is so tiny, it can't get anywhere near those resolutions.
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Quite honestly, I don't give a shit and suspect neither do the majority of phone snappers as long as the snap is of acceptable quality for their use. The majority of people have no desire to enlarge their snaps to A0 size or crop out a tiny portion of the overall pic.
Using BH's idea, the horizontal resolution would drop from (say) 4,000 pixels to 3,000, but the 'letterbox effect' that they would have on their display screen would no doubt encourage most of them to rotate the phone to landscape mode, thus reinstating the 4,000 pixel horizontal resolution.
 
The titchy thing at bottom right is as large as phone and tablet sensors get, with one exception afaik. Size really does matter!

Would you be satisfied with 4k tv upscaled from 405 lines? Or even HD upscaled from 405 lines if you had the choice?

Anyway, that 25mm squared sensor is not going to make much difference, 4:3 or square, so I am coming round to BH's view, but still think locking video to landscape is the simplest idea.

PS I seem to recall that 8Mp is needed for an A4 print. Airy disks mean that the quoted Mp resolution of phones is about half the quoted one. A0 isn't even close! Digital zoom equals cropping, so users do actually crop a small area of their phone image, regularly!

PPS Your camera seems to have a phone size sensor, but the optical zoom will more than compensate for that. I also have a pocket sized Lumix superzoom, hardly bigger than a phone really.


Image-Sensor-Sizes.jpg
 
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Mike0001 said:
The titchy thing at bottom right is as large as phone and tablet sensors get, with one exception afaik. Size really does matter!
(image clipped)
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Yeah yeah, I refer you to my previous answer.

This is a 4.3MB JPEG so I had to down-sample it:

IMG_2029.jpg

Here's a full-res section of it:

IMG_2028.JPG

Bearing in mind the section is about a tenth of the overall frame, I'd say that's not too shabby for something I happened to be carrying in my pocket!
 
Black Hole said:
Yeah yeah, I refer you to my previous answer.

This is a 4.3MB JPEG so I had to down-sample it:

View attachment 2695

Here's a full-res section of it:

View attachment 2696

Bearing in mind the section is about a tenth of the overall frame, I'd say that's not too shabby for something I happened to be carrying in my pocket!
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Nice picture, but it's pinhole phone camera, everything in focus. Just think how much better a blurred background would have been.
 
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You're still talking DSLR. I (or we) know DSLRs are better - bigger sensor, fancy lenses.

Pre-digital, I had a Pentax set-up (still got it if anyone wants it). I was into photography as a hobby, and my dad was before me (complete with home B&W darkroom - but I mainly took slides). When you do that kind of photography, you either have to go out alone or with very tolerant friends/family (we used to get quite fed up with dad on holiday with his cine camera). I remember a time I saw a good picture of a church and churchyard with an interesting light and skyscape, and just as I got set up the sun went in so I waited, then when the sun came out again somebody came into shot, then the sun went in again... By the time I got the shot I had some catching up to do.

That picture of Abergavenny market isn't meant to be a serious photograph. It's a memory, taken quickly with my phone because I always have my phone, and wouldn't have been taken at all if I refused to use a phone because it has a tiny sensor and huge depth of field. I have a Fuji HS50-EXR (yes, it's a bridge camera - but a very good bridge camera) at home - and that's where it stays, mostly, only coming out on high days and holidays when I think I might want to do serious photography.

I go to ballroom dancing competitions. I take video with the Fuji, with my phone, with an action camera, and with my iPad. Nobody there is interested in anything I take with anything but the iPad, because they all have iPads and either give another of the party the iPad and ask them to video, or ask me to video and then transfer it by AirDrop (brilliant). I even had a complete stranger, knowing I was associated with the group, hand me their iPhone and ask me to video. There's no getting away from it: the iPad takes brilliant video in all lighting conditions.*

What it all boils down to is: horses for courses. I had a Sony Ericsson W810i and it took reasonable photos but poor video, but quite often it was all I had to hand to take pictures with. I liked it other than that, it did what I needed, but eventually it was too far behind the curve in terms of phone cameras. So now I have a Samsung Galaxy A3 2016. I was able to ditch my separate MiFi and data contract. I can take better photos and video with it. But in other respects it's a pain.

Yes, I know, a DSLR is the only choice for hobby photography. But refuse to use anything else and you'll miss out.

* Nobody at the ballroom comps is interested in the technical quality of the video - all they want is something to show their coach for setting the agenda of the next few lessons.
 
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I think we are on the same page! I too occasionally use my phone to take a picture, it's just the fallacy some accept that phones can do everything a camera can that I object to. As you and I know, they can't.
 
Mike0001 said:
I too occasionally use my phone to take a picture, it's just the fallacy some accept that phones can do everything a camera can that I object to. As you and I know, they can't.
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You mean that's what your argument was all about:frantic: I don't think anyone here suggested that anyway.
 
Black Hole said:
I think you're behind the curve on that one. The camera on my old Sony Ericsson was passable (ten years ago, or however long it was) and crap at video, but if you chose your phone specifically for its photographic capability there are some pretty neat models out there. OK, maybe not quite as good as a dedicated DSLR, but a damn sight less cumbersome and much more likely to be available at the spur of the moment. I recently updated to a smart phone for exactly that reason: to get a better camera in my pocket. I could have done better from the camera point of view, but it was a compromise between camera quality, cost, overall size, and FM radio capability. I went for the 2016 version of the Samsung Galaxy A3.

People should stop focusing (pun intended) on raw specs, and think about what's "good enough for requirements".
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This solves your original problem, doesn't it? It should eliminate shake.

http://opencamera.sourceforge.net

I assume iOS is not so primitive that it has no self timer?
 
That's interesting; I have started thinking of replacing many of the "built in" apps for various functions (hoping to de-painify the general behaviour).
 
Another thing for me to look into:

I have a Bluetooth keyboard which has been sitting around for ages, and I recently decided to try using it with my iPad. It didn't work, but I tracked that down to a duff LiPo battery and it works with the battery removed and an external 5V supply connected.

The Apple Lightning connector won't output power unless whatever is connected validates itself. I'm thinking that if I hook up the shutter release adapter, it might coax 5V out of the iPad to run the keyboard...
 
Bluetooth keyboard are cheap, just get a new one.

A bluetooth mouse would make a remote shutter release if iOS allows you to connect a mouse. Android does.
 
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