TrueHDR and Pro HDR iPhone Apps

Being some what impressed with the iPhone's built in HDR capabilities I wanted to see if I could get even better results from the HDR apps. While the iPhone's HDR captures images almost instantly, the HDR apps tend to require you to hold the camera very still for a longer period of time while capturing multiple images. I decided to try Pro HDR and TrueHDR. My initial impression was Pro HDR was the better app, and for some situations it still maybe. Pro HDR allows you to make some adjustments to brightness, contrast, warmth, tint, and saturation. This allows you to do some fine tuning before saving the image. However, in high contrast shots you often get some funky distortions in the images where something bright meets something dark.

Recently TrueHDR released an update and it seems to have resulted in much better results. TrueHDR has an automated mode that will automatically take 3 pictures at different exposures. It then merges them together and produces a pretty good image. They offer two modes via the settings menu, vivid and natural, depending on what you like. There is also a semi-auto and manual mode, which allow you to select the bright and dark areas of the image yourself.

This is an image I captured today that came out pretty good. I did nothing more than rest the iPhone on top of my vehicle. I will post the original images (it saved two) along with the final merged image.

Under exposed image which captured the details in the sky:

Over exposed image which captured detail in the barn, cars, etc:

Merged image containing details from the sky and barn:

These are the images straight off the iPhone. I decided to adjust the contrast of the final image to make it appear less washed out:

Unfortunately I didn't try to capture the same shot with ProHDR, I will try to do that in the future. 

Testing iPhone 4 iOS 4.1 HDR Photo

After installing the new iOS 4.1 I was excited to try out the HDR photo mode. I had mixed results, but in some situations it really works well. It's useful for when you have a lot of bright and dark areas in the same scene, like direct sunlight, and shadows.

It does appear to fire off 3 quick shots, as if there is movement it will create a ghosting effect. As you can see in this picture the cars look funny in the HDR shot, but are fine in the regular shot. When using HDR mode it will take a normal pic, and also create the HDR image.

Here is the normal shot. As you can see the road is over exposed, and there are a lot of dark areas.

Here is the HDR version.

Could an iPhone save your life?

Countless numbers of people die every year thanks to mother nature, or other unexpected events. How many of those people could have survived had they received critical information in a timely fashion? Sadly many people with the opportunity to keep themselves informed choose not to. For example, severe weather can bring floods, tornadoes, lightning, and a host of other life threatening conditions.

Some people don't want to be bothered with keeping an ear on a weather radio, the news, etc. So why not take a moment to install some apps that can send you notifications if there is something going on in your neck of the woods? Once these apps are set up you can move on with your life and if something goes down you will hopefully be informed about it.

On my iPhone I have an "Alerts" folder where I keep my current collection of apps that send me various types of alerts.

My iPhone Alerts folder.

As you can see in the image above I currently have four applications. There is POM Alert, Boxcar, WeatherAlert, and Quake Alert. Some of these apps are for curiosity more than anything else. I don't live in an earthquake prone area, but it's interesting to be notified when there is a large quake in another part of the world.

When it comes to an app that may be the most likely to save someone's life it would probably be WeatherAlert. Within this app you can select from a slew of weather events to be notified about. I personally choose to receive them all, but sometimes you get multiple warnings about the same event, like a heat advisory. If certain events aren't important to you, simply disable them. This app is location based, so be sure to set it to the location you are currently in.

Another interesting notification app is POM Alert. This will alert you to a variety of different things, from a registered sex offender moving into your area, to Homeland Security updates.

As you can see in the image above, you can also receive alerts pertaining to Disease Control, earthquakes, weather, traffic, wildfires, FEMA, and volcanoes. This app is also location based. I would be surprised if I ever got a volcano warning, but you never know!

Quake Alert is more for my own curiosity, but it maybe useful for someone who lives in an earthquake prone region, and life saving if you are vulnerable to tsunamis. It also includes a form you can fill out if you experienced and earthquake to help give information to the earthquake center.

As seen above, you can register to receive notifications when there is an earthquake that meets the criteria you specified. You can choose the distance and the magnitude of the earthquake you would like to be alerted about. I just set it to the max distance and anything over a 5.0. I have already received multiple alerts within hours of installing it. I may up it to 6.0, which is the max, to reduce notifications. The interesting thing is just tonight a major quake happened and I got a notification about it from this app before the media sent out their alerts.

Above you can see there was a magnitude 7.5 earthquake near Vanuatu. It triggered a small tsunami. If I lived in this region, and could get service, I would have received alerts about this event and I would be able to take the appropriate action.

Then there is Boxcar, which can notify you about Twitter happenings, RSS feeds, etc.

I use this app to alert me to a variety of happenings on Twitter from mentions to specific keywords. You can also use it to monitor activity on your Facebook and RSS feeds. For example, I set up a Google News alert for my home town. If there are any news articles posted that mention my town Boxcar will notify me when they show up in the RSS feed the Google News alert generates. 

While these may not all be life saving alerts, they do help keep me informed to what's going on in my area.

If anyone uses any other apps like these, that they would recommend, please leave a comment. 

iGoneMobile Windshield Mount

With the additional of more turn by turn based GPS apps for the iPhone I decided it was time to find a way to mount my iPhone 4 in our vehicle. I decided to look into something that would suction to the windshield to keep things simple. I started by doing a Google search and the first product I looked at appeared to be just what I was after! At $8.99 with FREE shipping I decided it was a no brainer.

I placed an order with iGoneMobile. The product I ordered can be found here: http://www.igonemobile.com/product.aspx?p=24918

I wasn't sure what to expect for such a great price, since some of that cost had to go to the shipping. I waited about a week and it showed up in the mail. When I first opened it I was a bit confused how to get my iPhone in the thing, but I then found the magic button that allowed the arms to spring open! Wow! Plenty of room for my iPhone, or other things, to fit in there. You simply pop the arms open, place your device in, and squeeze the arms closed around it. The arms click into place and hold the device tightly until the release button is pressed again. This makes attaching your device and freeing it a breeze! I am using this for my iPhone 4 and there is plenty of room to attach the USB power cord which I attach to a 12v car charger. You can also hit a button to rotate the holder so you can switch between portrait and landscape view if you are using an iPhone!

Here is how the unit looks installed in my Honda Odyssey, minus the iPhone 4 which was taking the picture:

Great! I can now pop in my iPhone 4, plug it in to a power source, and fire up my GPS app of choice and hit the road! While my minivan (yeah, yeah) already comes with a factory installed GPS, the DVD software was dated even when the vehicle was brand new. I have yet to dump $180 to purchase an updated DVD. Also the GPS interface is fairly basic. You need to manually punch in addresses, and trying to search for things is a real pain. With the iPhone I can do a Google search from within my GPS app and quickly find what I'm looking for.

Lately I have been using a free turn-by-turn app called Waze, which adds some social interaction along with the turn-by-turn navigation. You can report traffic problems, police, hazards, and even ping other Waze users, if you happen to come across any. Of course you shouldn't interact with people while driving! While this is a neat app for free, it isn't perfect when it comes to getting you to your destination. It does have map problems. I have had it tell me to turn left onto a road I was driving over on an over pass.  I have also come across problems where it's missing a part of a major road, so it tries to take me out of the way instead of keeping me on the road which is there in reality. So use this app with caution!

One cool thing I realized I could do with this configuration is use my iPhone 4 as a dash cam! I can shoot 720p 30FPS video, or take 5MP still shots. I could even stream video to services like Stickam or Ustream! I may look into a way to wedge something between the holder and my dash to act as a stabilizer, like a piece of sponge. Right now hitting bumps will make things a little shaky. :)  Here is a sample video:



I have been so pleased with this holder I ordered a spare in case this breaks, or for use in another vehicle. Over time I can't say how well it will hold up, but for the couple weeks I've been using it I haven't had any problems.