Two Affordable AT&T Camera Phones for the Forgetful Photographer

(Heads Up – This is only a review of the camera features in these two phones)

If you are a photographer, graphic designer, or just a visual person who likes to take pictures you might find it annoying when you see the perfect shot but don’t have a camera with you. Though I hate to admit it, I forget my camera more than I should. In the past, if you had a cell phone you could take the shot but with the dissatisfaction that the quality might not be worth capturing what your eye sees.

My favorite thing to do is grab a bunch of books or magazines and sit down at the café in Barnes & Nobles with a cup of coffee to look for inspiring images.

With spy like precision, I will pull out my phone as if checking a text message and snap a picture that I need to remember later. Now in my defense I will buy the book/magazine if it is full of great stuff, but occasionally I grab one with only a couple amazing ideas and the rest as filler. I have found many of my favorite artists this way; snap a picture, look into them later. So here begins my search for a better camera phone at a good price.

There are two fairly cheap phones out by AT&T that actually take great pictures at a higher resolution than even AT&T’s favorite child, the iPhone. These phones give you more editing capabilities than the basic point and click cameras of the past few years.

Though I love the iPhone, this post is for those who don’t want to pay the extra money for a data plan but just need a good, simple phone that takes great pictures.

Sony Ericsson – W760a

$100 – $150 after mail in rebates

This is a 3.2 Mega Pixel camera slider phone. The display screen is 2.2 inches with a very clear picture quality.

• Internal Storage: 11 MB
• Expandable Memory Storage: Holds up to 4GB.
• Shoot Mode – Normal, Panorama (combine multiple pictures to create one very wide image), Frames (frame your subject behind a preset graphic –this is more for goofing around), Burst (4pics at once)
• Night Mode
• Picture Size editing capabilities – You can decrease the quality if needed
• Self Timer
• White Balance Presets – Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent
• Effects- Black & White, Negative, Sepia
• Picture Quality – Fine or Normal
• Add Position – If you have the appropriate data plan, the phone can geo map your location with GPS (imbed your coordinates of where the picture was taken into the picture file).

Note: Though many Sony Ericsson phones in the past had a backwards menu and other problems, the feedback by consumers has been excellent on this model with few returns.

Another great feature of this phone is that you can send pictures directly to your Snapfish account. (www.snapfish.com) For those who don’t know about Snapfish it is a free website by HP where you can upload your digital pictures and order standard sized prints at around 8 cents a piece. Even if you don’t order prints of each picture, this is a great way to store photographs until you are ready.

Samsung Eternity

$100 – $150 after mail in rebates

This is a 3 mega pixel touch screen phone. The display screen is 3.2 inches.

• Expandable Memory Storage: Holds up to 8G
• Resolution – 240 x 400 pixels.
• Colors – 262K
• Shoot Mode – Single, Continuous, Panorama (Takes 6 pictures to create one wide image), Smile Shot (focuses on your subjects smile to create a clear shot), mosaic (creates artistic, tiled pictures from your images with 3 pages of mosaic patterns to choose from), Frames (3 pages of preset graphics).
• Night Mode
• Picture Size editing capabilities – You can decrease the quality if needed (3m,2m,1m,0.3m,w3m,400×240)
• Settings – Black & White, Sepia, Negative, Watercolor (this does not simulate the watercolor medium, but rather a blue tint as if under water)
• Exposure Meter – Normal, Center Weighted, Spot
• Scene – Portrait, Landscape, Night, Sports (action shots), Sunset, Text (Emphasizes Contrast & Sharpness)
• Image Quality – Super Fine, Fine, Normal, Economy
• Timer – 2, 5, 10 seconds
• Brightness – Adjust how bright the image is.
• Can send pics to Snapfish.com!

Note: The Panorama feature is very accurate especially considering it takes 6 pictures. The Eternity displays a box of where you need to move the camera to match up the images. I am showing this as an example because I was careless while shooting it. Considering there are six pictures, I can only find one section that the camera goofed on. Other attempts created a much better picture. Here is an example:

Enjoy,

Josh

Map Your Way Through Your Mind – Tips on Mind Mapping

There is a better way to take notes and organize your chaotic, idea inhabited city of a brain. This process is called Mind Mapping. Throughout my day, I pace around my studio as one idea spawns another, that spawns another and so it continues until I get nothing done or feel overwhelmed with my ambitions.

For the creative type, mind mapping is a useful technique that improves the way you take notes, and supports and enhances your creative problem solving. There are two main ways that I use mind mapping.

1. Brainstorming

Take the name of the subject you are trying to develop ideas for and write it in the center of the page while drawing a circle around this word. For example we will use the word “skateboarding.” Let’s pretend that we are developing a clothing line for a skateboarding company and we need to think about their target customer, what they stand for, and what styles or attitudes are appealing to them. As we come across major subdivisions or subheadings for skateboarding, we will make lines that come out from the word “Skateboarding”. However, I prefer not to only use simple lines to connect these thoughts.

To help me remember my thought process I doodle a staircase from the word “Skateboard” to a subcategory like “Rebellion.” This may only be obvious to myself but it helps remind me of my days getting kicked out of office complexes for doing tricks off the stairs, being chased around by mall cops, and enjoying it. That memory now brings back a series of smaller memories associated with those situations. I will create links of these coming out from my staircase doodle. For example, one link might be the friendships I built. I can either list this or doodle a bunch of kids skating; this memory reminds me of how we used to all dye our hair blue, or red. (That can be another link to Rebellion), and yet another could be the style of music we would listen to or try to figure out on guitars with our free time.

Multiple subcategories can branch out from “Skateboarding” and when I am done I not only have a series of ideas, but I have visual representations of those ideas that help me regain my thought process.

2. Note Taking

We have all been taught in school how to take notes with categories, sub categories, etc. To the type that likes to daydream during business meetings, classes, or conferences, mind mapping essentially creates a crumb trail to help you remember your thought process during your education process, reinforcing the knowledge stays in your head. Think of this like a song you heard for the first time and how now each time you hear that song it reminds you of a specific person, place, or event. If you follow the steps as listed above, even if you are doodling clouds, spirals, or a full cartoon picture of a monster (whatever you’re into) each time you look back at the image it will remind you of what you were learning at the time you drew it. (Warning: Don’t get too into your drawing to the point that you aren’t writing any words down at all. This is a balance of methods to help you retain the most.)

I hope this gives some incite into my creative process.

Feel free to reply to this post on how you use mind mapping and how effective it is. We can all learn from what others are going with the creative process.

Here are a couple of links on mind mapping with more detailed descriptions and diagrams.

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_01.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map

-Josh

How to Convert JVC Everio .MOD Files to Work with Final Cut Pro

I was recently given two JVC HDD EVERIO cameras with my sisters wedding footage on them to create a video.  This was the first time that I had transferred footage from a memory driven HD camera and the idea seemed pretty straight forward.  It wasn’t.

Initially it is pretty easy.  Just plug the camera into your computer and the camera’s hard drive will pop up on your screen.  Find the files that end in .MOD and change their extension to .mpeg.  You will receive a warning asking if you really wish to change the extension.  Continue with changing it to MPEG.

After doing this, you should instantly see the footage in the thumbnail version of the file and can transfer it into Final Cut Pro.

The problem I ran into next was that the footage played perfectly in FCP but there was no audio attached.  I found a great solution through the apple website forums in a free application called MPEG Streamclip by Squared 5.  This application allows you to drag and drop a clip into the drop zone of Streamclip.  Since I was working with HD and wanted to maintain a higher quality, I went to file > Export to MPEG-4 > and then I chose the settings I needed to maintain the widescreen ratio.  Depending on your needs you can export the file to AVI, DV, QUICKTIME, etc.

The file is created and works perfectly in Final Cut.  If using a JVC EVERIO CAMERA and FINAL CUT PRO definitly think about getting STREAMCLIP.  You can find it here: http://www.squared5.com/

Below is a picture of how it looks on your screen.

Hope this helps!

-Josh

Graphic Design Communities / Social Networks

We’ve been looking into more avenues to reach new customers, designers, and creative people around the world, so we thought we’d post a little list of our findings in case you were looking for just such a thing. We’ve found all of these sites to be cool places to meet new clients and share ideas.

http://graphicdesignnetwork.ning.com/ – The Facebook for designers! Post blogs, portfolios and more. The coolest thing about this network is the people you’ll meet by joining. It’s free. Do it.

http://www.coroflot.com/ – Coroflot is a cool place to drum up new business. Post a portfolio as well as browse design job listings.

http://www.flickr.com/ – Flickr is here because not only is it a great place to host a portfolio, but it is also useful for porting content over to, say, a blog on WordPress. Many social sites can now link directly to Flickr which makes it important that you are plugged in.

http://www.behance.net/ – Great place to not only host (yet again) a portfolio, but also find collaborators.

http://www.designrelated.com/ – These guys have all the typical stuff like portfolios, blogs, and jobs, but they also have an “inspiration” section which helps pull us out of the ruts we get into sometimes. Worth checking out.

http://www.myspace.com/ and http://www.facebook.com/ – If you don’t know about these sites yet, you have a lot of catching up to do

It may seem a little redundant to post, post and re-post portfolios to all these different sites, but the idea here is to be in front of as many people as possible, right? So spend the two or three hours it takes to create accounts, upload photos, and cruise around the sites a bit. Your creative process, as well as your client list, will benefit

-Ryan

Ryan’s Thin Crust Pizza Dough

Hi ya’ll – I’ve decided to run a dedicated blog for pizza making instead of trying to post pizza posts on our design blog. The pizza bible (and al forthcoming updates) will from now on be located here: http://insearchoftheperfectpie.wordpress.com/

Rise and Fall (and Rise Again) of JPG Magazine

I recently stumbled upong JPG Magazine and thought it was super awesome. In fact, I liked the concept of a reader-submitted photography magazine so much, that I subscribed. I gave subscriptions as gifts! I felt like the magazine was a great source for not only inspiration but also a great channel for asipring photographers to become published.

It came as quite a surprise, then, when this email came sliding into my box a day or so after Christmas:

Today is a particularly sad day for all of us at JPG and 8020 Media.

We’ve spent the last few months trying to make the business behind JPG sustain itself, and we’ve reached the end of the line. We all deeply believe in everything JPG represents, but we just weren’t able to raise the money needed to keep JPG alive in these extraordinary economic times. We sought out buyers, spoke with numerous potential investors, and pitched several last-ditch creative efforts, all without success. As a result, jpgmag.com will shut down on Monday, January 5, 2009.

The one thing we’ve been the most proud of: your amazing talent. We feel honored and humbled to have been able to share jpgmag.com with such a dynamic, warm, and wonderful community of nearly 200,000 photographers. The photography on the website and in the magazine was adored by many, leaving no doubt that this community created work of the highest caliber. The kindness, generosity, and support shared among members made it a community in the truest sense of the word, and one that we have loved being a part of for these past two years.

We wish we could have found a way to leave the site running for the benefit of the amazing folks who have made JPG what it is, and we have spent sleepless nights trying to figure something out, all to no avail. Some things you may want to do before the site closes:

- Download the PDFs of back issues, outtakes, and photo challenge selections. We’ll always have the memories! www.jpgmag.com/downloads/archives.html
- Make note of your favorite photographers. You may want to flip through your favorites list and jot down names and URLs of some of the people you’d like to stay in touch with. You may even want to cut and paste your contacts page into a personal record.
- Catch up with your fellow members. Our roots are in this humble flickr forum and we recommend going back to find fellow members, discuss the situation, or participate in another great photo community. www.flickr.com/groups/jpgmag/
- Keep in touch. This has always been much more than just a job to each of us, and we’ll miss you guys! We’ll be checking the account jpgletters@gmail.com in our free time going forward. We can’t promise to reply to every email (since we’ll be busy tuning up our resumes) but we’d love to hear from you.
- Stay posted. Although the magazine is ceasing publication, we’ll be updating you on what’s happening with your subscription early next week.

We’re soggy-eyed messes, but it is what it is. At that, JPGers, we bid you goodbye, and good luck in 2009 and the future.

Laura Brunow Miner

Sad! Infuriating! Doesn’t it always go that way? As soon as you find it, it’s gone. Well not this time! Check out this email that was just sent out tonight:

We couldn’t ask for a better community. In the week or so since our last email,
the outpour of support has exceeded our wildest expectations. Your
efforts, such as starting savejpg.com, writing blog posts, commenting
on Twitter and Flickr, and generally making your voices heard, have
provided exciting new opportunities for us.

We’re thrilled to say that because of you, we have multiple
credible buyers interested in giving JPG a home. We will be keeping the
site up after all, and hope to have a final update in the next week or
so on who the acquirer will be. Thank you for making all of this
possible.

Laura Brunow Miner

Editor in Chief

Congrats JPG Magazine! Code Nine Design and I will continue to be inspired, and hopefully, continue to contribute. To anyone who is reading: go check out www.jpgmagazine.com.

Thanks and keep designing!
-Ryan