This post is not about food and drink, but about gadgets. The reason I’m putting it up is because there are any number of people out there taking very respectable photos and even movies these days done with an IPad or smart phone. I am one of them.
My Nokia 850 has a 6 Meg camera. This resolution is better than that DSLRs that came out a mere 10 years ago. It is right on the edge of the resolution a magazine requires for a full page spread, and is absolutely fine for smaller shots particularly in newspapers or lower resolution publication. (And yes, I’ve had phone pictures published in respectable magazines, although I never told them the source.) And of course the Web. (The shot above and those below have all been massively downgraded by a factor of about 1/10 from the original resolution of my P&S Nikon Coolpix.)
The problem with using your phone or your IPad or other device as a primary camera is the tripod mount. Everybody who knows anything about photography knows you always use a tripod. (They also know you spend more time on lighting and less time on equipment than amateur photographers.) In marginal lighting or merely because you had too much coffee today, the speed of the shutter may be insufficient to resolve to max sharpness. Tripods are the single easiest way to ensure high rez photos. So the question is, how do I mount my phone on a tripod?
Meet Joby, the company that has come up with any number of professional grade solutions to peculiar situations. They began, I believe, with their still for sale and fabulous Gorilla Pod.
The two items on the palm of my hand are a camera mount and a micro tripod, both folded for travel. Here they are ready for action.
The mount is spring loaded and I may end up using it as an alternative mount for my P&S camera which it can also clamp.
The two together maybe weigh 50 g. making them the ideal travel and pocket combo. The tripod may have trouble with an IPad has it is rated to only 250 g. The phone mount is rated to 350 g. and extends to just under 3 inches, enough for a Galaxy 3. The camera mount is threaded for a standard small tripod screw and can be used on regular sized tripods.
Joby makes a complete line of mounts, including a couple intended for tablets. If you’re doing tabletop macro work, (taking a picture of a wine bottle perhaps?) the above solutions are brilliant. Below I’ve got a picture of the pair loaded and ready to record yet another excellent wine label…
