Which is why Eye-Fi, has always been an interesting little company. Its first product, launched in 2006, was designed to get photos off a camera and onto your PC without worrying about wires and synching. It also worked with some digital picture frames as well. But since most of us don’t want to ship snaps from our dedicated cameras to a PC and then to Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, Eye-Fi needed something to keep up with our mobile addictions.

That apparently is the Mobi card, which costs $50 for an 8 GB option and $80 for a 16GB option. Users can ship photos direct to the their smartphones or tablets for editing and sharing, instead of waiting to transfer them later. The card provides its own Wi-Fi, so users just replace any camera’s standard SD card with Mobi, download the Eye-Fi app on their iOS or Android device, and start transferring.

The product speaks to several shifts that have occurred in the seven years Eye-Fi has been around. First, picture sharing has become part of the everyday, instant conversations people have, while the editing and sharing tools on a smartphone have become powerful enough for people to prefer those over any desktop. Eye-Fi’s making a bet, though, that despite our willingness to consider the smartphone’s apps and tools “good enough” for editing, we’re not entirely satisfied with our smartphone’s camera.

This is a good move for Eye-Fi, which risked becoming a super niche product for professional photographers who wanted to ship large photos to their desktops. While a majority of casual, smartphone picture-takers may never need this, anyone with a DSLR should take a look.

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We’ve covered Pelican before. The startup has designed an “array camera” that is essentially composed of multiple smaller cameras, all organized in an array. Why do this? Because when you get to the tiny form factor required of handset cameras, the sensor is so small that you’re highly limited in terms of the number of megapixels you can squeeze out of it before image noise becomes unbearable. New approaches are needed, and this is one of them.

Of course, if using many tiny cameras was that easy, we’d see it done in smartphones already. The secret sauce lies in the software used to bring the multiple resulting images together, and it’s that part of Pelican’s work that seems to have attracted the interest of Nokia Growth Partners.

“It’s very complicated to do this algorithmically and Pelican is one of the companies that has mastered this technology,” partner Bo Ilsoe was quoted in the piece as saying.

Imaging is central to Nokia’s current handset strategy, from its top-end Lumia Windows Phone smartphones down to its cheap Asha phones — all these devices have clever photo-taking features of one kind or another. The standout model there, so far, is the Symbian-toting 808 PureView, which uses a technique called oversampling to get something usable out of a 41-megapixel image (the same technology is apparently coming to the Lumia line, too). However, that camera module is rather chunky — something which array cameras are designed to fix.

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But Canon, for one, also sees the advantage of pairing up with the iPhone. It has an app called CameraWindow that allows devices to wirelessly access photos directly on the point-and-shoot camera. This year Canon started including the feature that enables similar apps to be used by its higher-end cameras; previously it was all low-end devices. I had a chance on a recent holiday to try out the CameraWindow app on the just-updated S110. Here’s what I was able to do with my iPhone 5.

Access camera photos on your phone

The way it works is simple: both the camera and your iPhone join the same Wi-Fi network. (If a Wi-Fi network is not available, the Canon PowerShot camera will create a local Wi-Fi network that can be used solely for the purpose of reviewing and transferring photos.) You start off by pairing the iPhone and the camera together. Upon the initial connection there are a few steps to complete, but the Camera will remember the nickname of the iPhone it paired with to make future connections fast and easy.

Once the connection is established, you can either review the photos from your camera or from the iPhone. When you see a photo you like, you can transfer it from the camera to the Photo Library on the iPhone. As soon as the photos are on your iPhone, you can then use any number of applications to modify and share. I was able to use iPhoto on my iPhone 5 to create a great gallery that documented our trip, and was also able to share the images in my iCloud Photo Stream.

Update location information remotely

Another interesting feature of CameraWindow is its ability to record your GPS location when taking pictures. You set up the app to record your location information to a log while you take photos with your Canon PowerShot camera. When you are finished, you pair up your camera with your iPhone and elect to add the location information to the photos you just took. The photos on the camera are then updated with the latitude and longitude information. No need to transfer the photo to your iPhone first in order to perform this operation. The photos stay on the camera making the whole process quick and easy.

Canon’s CameraWindow works with iPads and Android devices as well.  The functionality provided in an app like CameraWindow is a great way to extend the capabilities of my point-and-shoot  camera.  It’s a handy way to get photos off of the camera when in the field and quickly edit and share them with family and friends, as well as update the information of each photo while it is still on the camera.

While some have already written off the era of the compact point-and-shoot camera entirely, I still feel that there is a need for a better optics and saving the original RAW image file when it comes to taking truly great photos. Looking beyond the compact market, Canon has also been introducing this smart app strategy into their DSLR lineup.  So it all just depends on how much you are willing to spend on the ability to take better photos.   With Canon pairing with smartphones like the iPhone 5 using their CameraWindow app, it’s a good way to have the best of both worlds.

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Purple haze, all through my lens

iPhone 5

When I posted my original review of the camera, I noticed a purple glow in the top left hand corner of the above image. Since there was a blue diode on the speaker and the metal on the desk lamp was blue, I assumed that the purple glow was a trick of light caused by any reflections off the blue materials.

I was wrong.

Instead, the purple haze is a now well-known issue caused by several factors. The most common causes seem to be when shooting into bright daylight or having the light source be just off frame. This report by DP Review gives the best technical analysis of the issue I’ve seen.

Conducting tests, again

Since my initial analysis about the purple haze being caused by an odd light reflection was incorrect, I decided to test out this problem under better control. Previously, I had just tried to get the camera angle as correct as I could. For these tests, I held both iPhones on a stand that was in a consistent spot on my desk (and marked where on my desk it went so I could make sure it didn’t move). Due to the size difference between the two iPhones, the camera angle isn’t exact, but it’s as close as I could get it.

Now, instead of just testing how the iPhone 5 camera handles low-light situations, I was also trying to replicate the purple haze problem.

Test #1: A messy, well-lit desk:

This is shot with my blue desk lamp as the sole light source. My monitor and halogen lamp were switched off.

A messy, well-lit desk shot with an iPhone 5

A messy, well-lit desk shot with the iPhone 4S

Not much of a difference, huh? That’s to be expected since at this point it’s not a low-light shot, but a decently lit shot. I think the overall image quality of the iPhone 5 camera is better — mainly around the speaker grill — but I don’t see a big difference.

Test #2: A messy, not-so-well-lit desk:

For this shot, the blue desk lamp was off, the monitor was off. However, I angled the head of the halogen lamp so it shined directly against the wall, indirectly lighting the desk.

A messy, not-so-well-lit desk shot with the iPhone 5

A messy, not-so-well-lit desk shot with an iPhone 4S

For the record: the lighting between these two shots is exactly the same and with no flash. And lookie there, the iPhone 5 shot has some purple in it. What I find interesting is that the main light source is off frame and lighting the scene indirectly by reflecting the light off the wall and it still generated a purple tint. However, in every shot on the DP review, there was some blue in the source material or lighting, I did a follow-up test with just the iPhone 5 camera. In this case, the only light on was the halogen lamp lighting my work laptop off frame. In this case, there’s nothing blue in the scene and I wanted to see how the shot would come out.

No purple.

So, what does all this really mean?

So far from my tests the purple haze is caused by off-frame lighting, the color blue is present, and the low-light sensor has kicked in. Naturally, you may experience this issue under different conditions. Unfortunately, it’s been raining for two days here so I couldn’t test this under daylight conditions. After spending more time testing and researching this, I still fail to get worked up over it.  Yes, in certain conditions you may get a purple haze to your photographs. If this is something that would bother you — and that’s not sarcastic; shooting in those conditions might be standard for you — then the iPhone 5 camera is not the camera for you. That’s OK. There are plenty of cameras out there that will suit your needs.

However, if your aim is to get a usable capture in low-light situations, the iPhone 5 camera is better than the iPhone 4S. Most of the pictures I take with my iPhone are to remember an event by; not create a tack-sharp image.

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Initial camera impressions

At first, I was a tad disappointed with the camera in the iPhone 5.  Each iPhone’s camera has been significantly better than its predecessor’s. My general experience has been that for most day-to-day uses where the image has some decent lighting, you’re not going to notice a gigantic difference between the iPhone 4s and iPhone 5 cameras. I think that’s because the iPhone 4s camera was so good, that’s it’s like the Spinal Tap version of cameras: How much better can it be? None more better.

Instead of the camera lens, where Apple can make more significant improvements is in the software. According to Apple, the iPhone 5 has faster photo capture, better low-light performance, and improved noise reduction. My initial test backs those claims up. I noticed a huge difference in low light captures between the iPhone 4s and the iPhone 5. Below are two images of the junk pile on my desk:

iPhone 4s

iPhone 5

There are a few obvious points here. The first is that I really need to tidy up my desk. The second is the the iPhone 5 photo really is a lot better than the iPhone 4s. I’ve tried to line the two shots up as close I could (and for the pixel peepers, the controls for my headset have moved between shots).

With the iPhone 4s camera you can vaguely see an iPhone 5 box and my EarPod case. With the iPhone 5, the overall image quality is lot better. There are only two light sources with this capture: a Luxo-style lamp behind the iPhone 5 case, and a 27-inch monitor slightly off-camera. The iPhone 4s picture also has a lot of noise, which gives it some unwanted grain. The iPhone 5 camera, again, is much sharper. For giggles, I also took a panorama with the iPhone 5 in the same conditions.

The screen

Aside from the size, the iPhone 5 screen covers the full spectrum of sRGB. Apple has also eliminated one of the layers in the screen composition, moving the pixels closer to the edge. While overall the screen has better blacks and more saturation, it’s a subtle, subjective difference.

As a photographer, the overall screen quality between the two phones isn’t a big selling point. That’s because for the most part, I rarely show someone a photo on my iPhone. Usually, I’m posting it on Flickr, or sending it directly to someone. Where it will, however, come in handy is how it affects my overall workflow.

My iPhone 5 workflow

I tend to shoot a lot of low-light images — bands, for the most part — and the iPhone 5 will come in handy for that. While I doubt an iPhone camera will ever replace my DSLR as my main photo for these shoots, the iPhone 5 camera will increase the images I capture and immediately post to Facebook.

The screen, though, I think will have the biggest impact to how I handle shots taken on my iPhone. Since iPhoto for iOS takes advantage of the larger screen, I won’t feel as cramped when I edit the image. iPhoto is great for taking a photo, performing some minor edits like cropping and white balance adjustment, and then posting directly to Facebook.

One personal challenge I’m taking on this year is to enter a photo taken and edited solely on my iPhone 5 in one of the competitions my camera club runs. I continue to be amazed at what the iPhone 5 and iPhoto can do, and want to shake myself free of the mentality that I need to use my DSLR to create a competition-ready image. I’d be surprised if the technology hasn’t gotten to the point where an image taken and edited on an iPhone won’t at least score well. I’m a firm believer that the real magic of photography happens with the person taking the photo; not the camera he or she uses.

Final Frame

The iPhone 5, and the Camera app, is the best iPhone camera yet. But, that’s what we expect these days, isn’t it? While you may not notice a difference in the majority of your shots, if you deal with less-than-ideal lighting and don’t want to use a flash (an example that comes to mind is shooting someone blowing out the candles on a cake) the iPhone 5 camera will blow you away.

That said, previous iPhone cameras I’ve felt were worth the upgrade alone, but this camera upgrade feels more situational and subjective. I expect this is likely to be the case going forward. There’s only so many dramatic improvements you can make in a camera designed to fit into a slim body.  The biggest software improvement I want is an app — either from Apple or someone else — that shoots true RAW images. This would allow for better post-processing edits in software like Lightroom and Aperture. Unfortunately, the closest app I’ve seen, 645 PRO, still doesn’t take full RAW images.

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If so, that’s a good thing, given our love of visually rich web sites and our predilection for snapping and sharing mobile photos as easily as we once made voice calls. Not only will image-processing software be easier to write, but Halide might also help spare our mobile batteries by using our processors more efficiently.

The challenge of computer sight

Getting a digital camera to “see” like a human’s eye is not an easy task. Heck, exactly how the human eye “sees” isn’t an easily understood thing. Fortunately for us, our brains handle all the complexities associated with compensating for lighting, discerning color from different wavelengths and all pulling it all together into something meaningful to a human being. But for cameras on mobile phones or pictures sent to the web for editing, image processing is the result of many different steps — all of which take a lot of processing power.

The MIT folks explain it like this in their release on Halide:

One reason that image processing is so computationally intensive is that it generally requires a succession of discrete operations. After light strikes the sensor in a cellphone camera, the phone combs through the image data for values that indicate malfunctioning sensor pixels and corrects them. Then it correlates the readings from pixels sensitive to different colors to deduce the actual colors of image regions. Then it does some color correction, and then some contrast adjustment, to make the image colors better correspond to what the human eye sees. At this point, the phone has done so much processing that it takes another pass through the data to clean it up.

And that’s just to display the image on the phone screen.

The problem is getting bigger and the features are getting richer

The problem is that our many-megapixel cameras are gathering in more information and that takes a lot longer for the relatively weak processors on a mobile phone to turn into an image — never mind editing it for red-eye correction or balancing the light. Hence the need for fancy algorithms that can help divvy up that processing among multiple cores present in desktops and phones. But as the bits in our photos bloat, so do those algorithms, becoming longer, more complex and device dependent.

That’s what Halide aims to solve. Those algorithms are still useful but instead of making the algorithm worry about how to divide up the job amongst the available processors, Halide splits the job into a scheduler that worries about what where to send the data and leaves the algorithm to worry about the actual processing. This means the programmer can now adjust to different machines by adjusting the scheduler (after all, that’s the part that cares about how many cores are in the processor) and she can also describe new features in the scheduler and let it implement them in the algorithm.

By rewriting some common image-processing algorithms in Halide, researchers were able to make image processing two or three times faster — or even six-fold, while also making the written code about a third shorter. The MIT release notes that in one instance, the Halide program was actually longer than the original — but the speedup was 70-fold.

The code, which was developed by Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, a graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Andrew Adams, a CSAIL postdoc, can be found online here.

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As shown at CES, the big attraction of the Android device is its 12-megapixel rear camera. Sony’s fast capture and quick launch features allow a user to activate the camera from standby and snap a first shot in 1.5 seconds. It also has lag times of less than a second between shots. In video mode, the rear camera captures 1080p video, while the front camera shoots in 720p. The phone will link directly to a TV through an HDMI port and hooking it up to HD monitor will automatically launch media management software, which will allow the device to be controlled via a Sony Bravia TV’s remote control.

Another interesting feature on the device is its near field communications (NFC) chip coupled with Sony’s SmartTag technology, which allows a subscriber to instantly customize the phone for specific locations. The Ion ships with a few tags, which can be programmed to configure the phone’s settings and apps when tapped. For instance, tapping a SmartTag in your car could immediately activate Bluetooth pairing (which is one of the biggest complaints about current connected car technologies) and turn on the phone’s GPS.

Some of the actual smartphone aspects of the Ion leave a bit to be desired. At this late date releasing a new mid-tier Android device without Ice Cream Sandwich may seem ridiculous, but the Ion is shipping with Gingerbread (Android 2.3) nonetheless. The Ion sports a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor and 16 GB of internal memory (with a micro slot for expansion). The 4.6-inch LCD display will render 720p video and Sony boasts that it is powered by the same Bravia engine used in its TVs.

The Ion can support Sony’s Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited, though the former isn’t exclusive to Sony devices. Sony is offering up a free 30-day subscription to Music Unlimited for Ion buyers, but no other special considerations apply. Ion owners must download the apps from Google Play and any song downloads or streaming, as well as movie purchases, count against their data plans. Finally Sony has certified the device for its PlayStation mobile games.

The Ion is Sony’s first U.S. device since its divorce from Ericsson, which left Sony with the suffering handset business. The device isn’t exactly Sony’s flagship phone, but the imaging and NFC features – as well as its low price – might make it attractive to U.S. audience. The inclusion of LTE is also key, showing Sony is specifically optimizing its devices for U.S. networks even though LTE is still in the minority in the rest of the world.

Here’s the AT&T promotion video for the Ion:

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An Instagram photo I took in Laramie, Wyoming.

We saw a lot of impressive stats following Instagram’s release on Tuesday of its photo-sharing mobile app for Android users: with 430,000 people on the waiting list for the new version of the app, once it hit Google’s Play mobile store there were 2,000 new signups a minute for the service. That’s in addition to the 30 million iOS users already, who have been uploading 5 million photos a day to the service. But as impressive as those stats sound, there’s way more room for Instagram — and apps like it — to grow.

A detailed report from 6sight was released this week and it showed that smartphones and apps have much more room to grow when it comes to how people take photos and edit or enhance them. Analysts from 6sight — a group focused on imaging technology — interviewed 1,065 North Americans who take at least one photo a month with a digital camera, smartphone or tablet. It’s a specifically younger demographic they chose too – three-quarters of 6sight’s respondents were under 35 years old.

The group found that while smartphones are used on more occasions to take photos, those who use digital cameras still take more snaps overall: 91 percent of smartphone owners use the device to take a photo at least once a month, compared to 73 percent of digital camera owners. But camera owners take twice as many photos per month as smartphone photographers — 77 versus 34 per month, according to 6sight.

The real eye-opener, however, was how people edit and enhance their photos. According to 6sight, the vast majority of photo enhancing and editing is still done on a computer, not a mobile device. They found 83 percent of digital camera photographers use a computer and a program like Photoshop to edit their photos. Meanwhile, just 15 percent of smartphone owners take and edit photos on their mobile device.

Knowing that Instagram (free) and Camera+ (99 cents) are consistently ranked in the the top 10 most downloaded free and paid apps for the iPhone, it’s not a surprise that iPhone users edit their photos on their device often: 25 percent versus 13 percent of Android phone owners.

Credit: 6sight

6sight’s Hartman said those results were somewhat unexpected:

You hear so much about Instagram, but even with the audience we [surveyed], which was slightly younger and more into smartphones, people still see their computer as a primary environment to enhance their photos. That was a big surprise to me.

We know that browser-based photo editing is plenty popular. Photo-editing tool Aviary is already on more than 1,000 websites and last week got a huge boost when it became the built-in editing tool for Flickr. But for desktop photo enhancing or editing, Hartman said, “it’s mostly a Photoshop and Photoshop family [of products] that rules the roost — kind of a reality check.”

I’m one of those people who only uses a smartphone for photos — I lost my digital camera years ago and haven’t felt the need to replace it thanks to the iPhone’s perfectly capable lens — and I know lots of people like me. Seven months ago I became a relatively late hop-on to the Instagram for iPhone bandwagon, and I find myself using the service far more often than I thought I would, especially the social sharing aspect. I love snapping a moment as it’s happening. I was, and still am, however, a Camera+ user, especially for fixing/enhancing batches of photos before I upload them to a Facebook album. I can’t remember the last time I touched desktop photo-editing software.

So, sure, these stats from 6sight are a reality check — for now. As computing increasingly goes mobile and consumers snap up mobile devices with increasingly better cameras built in, as buying patterns are showing, it means that Instagram, which just opened the floodgates, has even more room to expand.

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One of the most popular and beloved camera apps on the iPhone, Camera+, is rolling out a significant update Wednesday. Camera+, from the iOS app developer Tap Tap Tap, is adding improved sharing, UI tweaks and its first ever API, making photos taken and edited with it easier than ever to integrate with other apps.

Camera+ has already opened the API to a handful of apps. While Twitter integration is probably the one with the broadest appeal, I’m personally most excited about the Foodspotting integration — as a frequent taker of food photos in dimly lit restaurants, I’ve longed for an easier way to tweak the brightness of an image and then upload it to their app.

Camera+ photos can now be shared with multiple social services at once.

Other apps with the API in action include WordPress, Tweetbot, Twitterrific and Twittelator Neue.

Also updated:

• Share to multiple services or multiple accounts, like Twitter and Facebook, simultaneously
• Import multiple libraries into the app at once
• More flexibility: can either shoot a bunch of photos at once and then edit, or edit as you go with the new Workflows feature
• Refreshed app icon
• Better clarity — “especially with the iPhone 4S,” says Camera+ co-creator Lisa Bettany
• Focus and exposure locks
• Better sharing of photos via SMS feature, also renamed Message
• Improved notifications that are “not intrusive” and “opt-in only”
• Enable setting “VolumeSnap” in menu — allows you to shoot pictures with the iPhone’s volume button

Stay tuned for our hands-on review of the new features.

Disclosure: Automattic, the maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

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For me, that convenience comes wrapped inside the iPhone 4S. For others, it might be a Samsung Galaxy. But in the end it is the convenience that makes all the difference.

Let me explain!

I have a Lumix GF-1 on loan from a friend, but frankly, my rowing machine gets more use than that camera.

Why? I am just one of those weird people who likes taking photos with my iPhone 4S, which is with me all the time (except when I am sleeping). I don’t need to carry any extra chargers or different cables. These days with iCloud and PhotoStream, I don’t even need to back up photos constantly. In other words, it is damn convenient. But mostly I like the iPhone as a camera because it is just there, ready to go into action, when the right moment strikes.

Sure it doesn’t have the greatest lens and has shortcomings. I like its constraints, and I like its simplicity. And I like the fact that the photo is not a snapshot, but instead it is a networked moment, meant to be shared.

What photos mean today is changing

The iPhone 4S actually fits how I like to take photos and why I take photos. For me, photos are not creating art. Instead, for me photos are social experiences, moments (a phrase often used by both Path co-founder Dave Morin and Kodak) to be shared with others who matter to me. Most people take hundreds of photos and then find the perfect one.

I do the exact opposite. I find the perfect moment and take a picture of that. Think of it this way — the frame (or the moment) unfolds in front of my eyes, my brain captures it and then I whip out the iPhone to digitally record that moment in my brain. That moment has context and emotion attached to it, and that is something I like to share with others.

Sharing is the important part. Recently, when I went to India, I found some old photos from my college. I uploaded the scan of those photos to Facebook and tagged a bunch of my classmates. And a wonderful discussion — a trip down memory lane — followed. It was less about the photo and more about the shared context.

Camera+ apps + network = New photography

In many ways I think of taking photos much like how I write and take notes. In the past, I would typically take notes and capture the mood, decor and location and feelings attached to something I was doing. If I was traveling overseas, I would create a travel journal. Airline tickets, restaurant receipts, stubs of museum visits and random drawings would find their way into my notebook.

Now, my photos are those notes or “moments.” Apps such as Camera+, Photogene and Snapseed that come with different filters help evoke context and emotion. (For instance, my photo of Connaught Place, a British-era shopping area was filtered to evoke that vintage feeling of the past and yet it was contemporary.) The GPS sensor helps provide the location context, which is also important.

What iPhone (and other camera phones) and photo apps (filters and editing) and networks (Path, Instagram, Facebook) are creating is a new kind of photography. Some call it iPhoneography and that’s fine by me. I am just happy snapping photos. Gotta go take some photos of Seattle!

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