Macro Lens for Camera Phones (iPhone, HTC, G1)

I covered a popular story on a $9 solution from Radio Shack to take Macro photos from an iPhone as well as my favorite iPhone 3G case, Clarifi, which also enhances iPhone's Macro photo shots. USBFever.com has a similar solution for all camera phones: their Magnetic/Wide Angle Macro Lens kit ($16.99) can be used to utilizing a 0.67x wide angle lens that can be attached to any camera phone through a built-in magnet. This is perfect if your camera phone has metal around its lens. Otherwise, an included adhesive metal ring can be attached to any camera phone to help secure the Macro Lens.

"Palin" Syrah, a nice full-bodied Wine

In light of the election, I had to take a picture of a bottle of wine I found from my wine guy. Its a 2006 Chilean Syrah by Palin, definitely full-bodied and has a nice finish... :-)

$9 iPhone Macro Lens Produce Stellar Shots

[Update: 11/7/2008: Griffin's Clarifi iPhone 3G case has a built-in lens cover to enhance macro-shots at the distance of 4-6" from an object. I've gotten my hands on them for a good review here.]
[Update: 4/26/2009: USBFever sells a wide-angle/macro lens 0.67x for $16.99 which can be attached to any decent camera phone using magentic, more info...]

My long time friend and former boss Alex shared a set of iPhone photos on flickr using a portable RadioShack $8.99 zoom lens set to create stunning macro shots. With proper lighting, these images look like professional photos taking by equipments that cost 10 times more. I was just blogging about using my iPhone camera as a portable scanner to take macro shots of documents on-the-go as a reference tool, coupled with this solution, I'll be able to take amazing shots too.

Alex has been my mentor in many subjects, amongst them: cigars, wines, single-malt scotch, baseball and obviously, photography. To check out more of his work, check out www.YoAlex.com.

flicker set here.

Leverage Smartphone Cameras for Better Mobile Experience

I have been using my smartphone's camera and photo viewer for a better mobile experience for quite some time. I've taken pictures of wine labels, signages, posters and maps just because, literally, a picture is worth a thousand words and I don't have to remember a specific set of information or writing them down.

With smartphone camera's getting more and more sophisticated (ie. Samsung SCH-V770, Nokia N95, HTC Diamond HD, etc.), one can start to rely on their smartphone cameras for more serious information capturing (scanning) and with data network and mobile email becoming so convenient, you can instantly send that information to anyone you'd like.

Recently, I've used my iPhone camera as a scanner to send a letter to my cousin for him to review, to my surprise, the photo came out clean enough for him to read in its entirety. My favorite is when I took some pictures of a floor plan (whole and in parts) and took it with me to Ikea for furniture shopping. I was able to zoom in/out and pan in all directions to get the room dimension easily. I feel like James Bond.

Update: I just saw a new product coming soon from Griffin that could be interesting. I noticed whenever I took pictures of closeups (Macro, if you will), the camera has a hardtime staying focused, or it will only focus one corner of the entire paper. Griffin's new Clarify case, for iPhone 3G has a built-in zoom lens to help with Macro shots. I will try to test one out to see if this enhances my mobile "scanning" solution.

Camera Phone Shutter Sound

9 out of 10 Camera phones I've owned use a simulated shutter sound to alert the user that a photo has been taken. Usually, this sound clip is loud, obnoxious and distracts the object. Its as if the manufacturers are trying to out do each other, by providing the most atrocious sound clip.

I wish more camera phones would offer a quick option to turn this sound off. Typically from the camera UI/menu, they don't offer this. The only way I've been able to work around this is to set the entire phone profile to silent, thereby mutes all sound make from using this phone. While we are on the topic of camera phone improvement, I wish they can store manual settings as well. For example, I always have to remember to turn flash off before I shoot each time. It kinds a little tiresome after a while.