Commodity lenses for mobile phones

I have a rather nice, if old, Samsung camera. It weighs a kilo and has a long adjustable lense that cannot be changed. It takes quite ok photos, though the macro is hardly macro at all. I don't like to carry the camera along on trips and hikes etc. so lately I've either borrowed my teen's small but excellent Nicon or made do with the iPhone camera.

Some time ago I learned about these extra lenses you can get for your cellphone camera. I even tried a few, that my co-worker had bought and brought to the office to show them to us. A few weeks ago I finally decided, on a whim as usual, to order some lenses from Amazon. I got a 12X Optical Phone Camera Lens with Tripod and a CamKix Universal 3 in 1 Camera Lens Kit. Yes, I got them separately, because at first I only was going to buy the zoom lense, and only later decided on the lense kit.

The main things I have come to understand about the lenses are

• the macro lense rocks
• the 12x zoom lense is no good without the tripod or with a target that moves even a hair
• daylight is a must
• they will never replace the mentioned Samsung/Nicon cameras, because setting them on the phone camera is not exactly easy to do on the fly

This said, I'm not sorry I bought them, especially the macro lense and the 12x zoom, which I believe will prove to be excellent for certain types of photoshoots. The picture quality is rather good for a phone camera + small lense combo. Yet, on a hike or trip, I fear I will still be carrying a separate camera.

In the case of cameras and lenses, I guess pictures tell the story better than a thousand words.

12x zoom lense. Littlest Pet Shop photoshoot. Photoshopped ever so slightly: simply adjusted the levels and curves a bit (winter photography...).

12x zoom lense. Littlest Pet Shop photoshoot. Photoshopped ever so slightly: simply adjusted the levels and curves a bit. Taken without the tripod, actually.

12x zoom lense. Taken with tripod, slightly moving objects.

Macro lense. Thyme leaf (width approx. 5mm). Daylight, but taken inside the house.

Wide angle lense (top) vs. phone cam without any extra lense (bottom). Poor daylight inside the house, levels and curves adjusted slightly in Photoshop.

Fish eye lense. Don't really know what to do with that one...

Keyboard for iPad

Got myself a new toy, the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard cover for iPad. I've got to say that it seems to be the best thing since buying that Camera Kit last spring, which, by the way, has been in use a lot.

Originally I thought I'd probably "need", or have use for, the cover only on trips and e.g. seminars or so. But now that I have the keyboard, I notice that since I'm an active blog-writer etc. the keyboard serves me very well at home too!

Compared to e.g. the generic bluetooth Apple or other keyboards, this cover has some serious advantages over them:

• the stand - most and for all, the iPad stands nicely on the keyboard when typing, so you don't need to be fixing the iPad separately anywhere
• the cover-attachment feature - it just tags along and locks the screen too
• proper keys - well ok, this is actually an advantage over the Surface keyboard
• the inbuilt chargeable battery that lasts for hundreds of hours

I really like this little lightweight addition to my toy collection!

Camera Connection Kit for iPad

I'd say, pretty good of an investment (of about 30 euros).

I was visiting my mother at Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, with my girls for a few days last week. I don't like to take my laptops with me if not necessary, especially when traveling with carry-on luggage only. But my problem with this is, that when traveling, I love to import my photos from my camera(s) to my computer and go through them in the evening. But with my iPad and Galaxy Tab, I couldn't do that. Yet.

So a couple days before leaving I remembered the Camera Connection Kit for iPad and decided I had a valid need to get it. And I did. And I love it! Every evening I imported my photos from my cameras to my iPad, played around with PhotoShop Express and enhancing them on iPhoto (the only thing I don't like about the iPhoto is that it doesn't stream the modified pics straight to PhotoStream - a bit of a pain in the buttocks) etc.

When I came home, all my pics were automatically downloaded to my laptop via iCloud (as soon as I plugged in my iPad to charge - the iCloud PhotoStream seems a bit fuzzy to me).

The funny thing about the Camera Connection Kit was though, that when I first tried it, I needed to reboot my iPad before it started importing photos - kind of, well, let's just say un-apply.

The Pointy Thingy

I got myself a Bamboo pointer pen for the tablets. Mainly with a thought of using it for sketching some work-related designs - which I'm not at all sure I will ever do - but primarily just to have one. It's quite rare for me to but these sort of things for that sort of flimsy reason, but it's been known to happen. At least with the less expensive stuff.

Anyway, my school age daughters, who love their My Horse and Pet Hotel and My Room My Dog and Wher's My Water and whatnot tablet games (where's Angry Birds? you ask. It's there too, but no novelty anymore) and adopted the pen immesiately! Even with their smaller fingers than an adult has, they found the pointing device more accurate and better to use with the games than the finger.

For games, and definately for drawing and sketching plans it sure is. But for flipping through Flipboard or surfing the internet or writing an email or this blog, I wouldn't say so. And what comes to different tablets, it works perfec with the iPad, but the Galaxy Tab screen is just too, I don't know what, but anyway, can't really say it works well enough with that. And it's perfect with the Lumia800 screen too.