OSnap! - time lapse for iPhone/iPad

Some time ago I wanted to try time lapses, you know when you take pictures in intervals and then put them together into a film. I have a D200 which is capable of interval shooting, and there are a few well executed time lapses on Youtube that are shot with a D200. I never got a around to making a time lapse with it though. Interval shooting really drains the battery fast, and I don't feel like buying a power adapter just to try lapse shooting. Also, there´s nowhere to plug a power adapter out in the middle of nowhere if I don't bring a generator set. Well, my iPhone 4s consumes much less battery power while shooting, it fits nicely in my pocket, and there is a bunch of apps for it. There are several time lapse app comparisons out there, and after much reading and googling I finally decided to buy OSnap! and try it out.

Time lapse is quite fun! I set my iPhone 4s on a silly little tripod, guesstimated the interval, and forgot about it while me and my brother tried to fix a SIM-card he accidentally cut to the wrong size. I imported the video to Pinnacle Studio on my iPad mini, added some text and sound and made this:

No Oscar winner, but it was just for fun and testing purposes anyway…

In OSnap! you set interval, resolution, number of total photos (which you can leave unrestricted) and orientation. When you´re done shooting you can select export video framerate, quality, audio and more. You can have several projects going on separately, but of course only shoot in one at a time. There´s also an overlay guide to help you take for example a photo each day of your growing beard. All in all I´m happy with OSnap! You might not use it every day, but is sure is a fun app to have on hand. With some imagination, creativity and planning you can make really good time lapses using it!

Tags : TIMELAPSE-IPHONE-IPAD-TIME-LAPSE-OSNAP

iSymDVR - iPhone dash cam that works! ...and no longer availiable, though. See end of post!

Note: This post is best seen as a historical reference, see the update at the end of the post!



I'm back with an other one of those block rocki... oh sorry, got a little carried away there!

Seriously though, I've had quite some time to use iSymDVR now, an app that turns your iPhone into a dash camera. Well, it does it really well! I've ranted before in this post about how annoying I think it is when people review stuff sent to them without actually using it long enough to give good advice. Everyone can repeat specs and say thing like "this looks promising" and blah blah blah.

I'm not going to give you any specs, you're smart enough to find them out if you want to know them, but still it's worth mentioning that you can choose between different resolutions on the footage/film captured. There's plenty of other meaningful settings to fiddle with.

I use the highest resolution available, it's no problems at all to read license plates on vehicles in good light. The problems comes when it's low light and you have vibrations in the camera mount. I currently use a frankenmount with the suction cup and ball from a Garmin GPS that I superglued to a iPhone 4s holder. (Update 2015: I now use iPhone 5s with magnetic mount) Quite stable but not perfect, and trust me when I tell you that any vibrations will effectively blur the frames.

That's a useful feature: when you replay clips you can choose between 8x, 4x, 2x, 1/2x the actual speed, and also step frame by frame. Really useful when you want the plate numbers from some stupid driver or from someone involved in an accident. In Sweden you can text the plate number and get a reply with information about the vehicle and the owner, a really handy service. Especially when people park in front of your driveway...

Back to iSymDVR. It splits recorded material into clips of a length set by you, in my case 3 minutes, and stores them until they reach the space limit set by you. Then it simply overwrites the oldest clip and continues looping like that. If something interesting happens, you tap the screen to display a star and make it store the current clip in "Favourites", where it won't be written over. Nifty, eh? You can also set a G-force sensor to activate recording to favourites, so if someone smashes into you it safely stores what happened.


This is an expamle of a pulled frame while going 70 km/h in mixed, harsh light. The quality degrades when exporting, but you can still read the plate:

Screenshot exported from clip by iSymDVR - iPhone 4s, iSymDVR app

So what do I like about iSymDVR?

- settings for resolution, clip length, max space available for the stored clips
- export with or without info such as your own speed, time, date, GPS position
- export single frames as photos
- very stable! I use it almost every time I drive, and no hiccups
- you can have map directions running in the background
- you can display a speedometer while recording
- you can adjust screen brightness by up / down swipes. Perfect while night driving!

What do I not like about it?

- stops recording when a call comes in (iOS limitation, no way around)
- can sometimes overheat the iPhone 4s in sunny, hot weather when shooting high-res (I've since found that directing air from a vent helps cool the phone, no problem)
- can sometimes be unresponsive for screen taps when speedometer is shown



There's lots more, but this is enough I think. It works very well and is quite capable of capturing high resolution footage when driving. Which is what you want from a dashcam.


I'm using the app on my iPhone 4s, I suspect the iPhone 5s would have much better low-light performance. Say, if you could send me one I'd be really happy to try it out heh heh....

UPDATE september 11, 2014:

I thought I found a bug so I emailed Alex Crimean about it. Surprise, within 15 minutes or so he replied! That's good support! 

Turns out it wasn't a bug but my mistake, so this is still a very stable, functional app!

UPDATE 2015: Now using iPhone 5s, still works perfectly. Catches some interesting things in the traffic! :-)

UPDATE 2015 june: The developers account is terminated, so no more support for this app. That also means you no longer get iSymDVR! There is a replacement availiable though, I´ll see if I can get ahold of it to try it out. If I do I´ll post about it.

Bic stylus - cheap and great! ...and a little bit of rant, for good measure.

Whenever I saw a stylus that was reviewed or hanging in a store it was several if not all of these things:


- "Revolutionary" in some way. A paintbrush, why??
- Whatever crazy color the anodizers could provide.
- Heavy.
- Too short.
- Usually round and slippery. At least slippery. My Targus is.
- If it had a pen on one end, it was not of high quality.
- If it had a pen on one end, there was nowhere to put the cap that covers it. I mean, come on!
- Made of metal that goes "clank" against my iPad screen. Ouch.
- More money than I want to spend.



You know, since nobody pays me or sends me stuff to review I can say whatever I want. While I'm at it, isn't it a little annoying that most people who write "reviews" write about new stuff, not things they have had for some time and really used and tried out? It's so easy to mention this new thing with these specs that you can buy at this place for these kind of money. Kind of useless when what you really need is people with experience of that thing you are ready to spend money on telling you what is good and what is not so good about it. Ok, I'm done for now heh heh... And to be honest, there are very good reviews out there too!

My favourite stylus is not the latest whizz bang gizmo in pink or blue anodizing with amazing features. No, it is as long as the standard ballpoint Bic, as lightweight as the standard ballpoint Bic, as grip-friendly as the standard Bic ballpoint and writes as good as the standard Bic ballpoint. It is in fact a standard Bic ballpoint pen - with a stylus on the end. And yes, the cap fits right over the stylus end while you are using the ballpoint, and I paid a whopping 1,90 EUR for it. Actually, I bought five of them (hey, when you find good and cheap stuff you've better stock up) and it was still cheaper than the stylus I used until now. (UPDATE: next time around I bought ten heh heh)


This is what I'm talking about - The Bic Cristal Stylus:

Sure looks cheap but it's sooo good! - iPhone 4s, Camera+

I find the light weight keeps my hand relaxed and the hexagonal shape is easy to hold (you can try the grip and feel yourself - just grab a Bic pen!) The stylus tip responds with a light touch and the pen works.... well, as a pen should. The plastic has more friction to it than the slippery paint on my Targus  and improves the grip. Those guys or girls who made that Bic the first time new a thing or two, didn't they? Besides the obvious, it works great for drumming. You can make little buzzes and rolls with it, and that is something you can't do with that short, clunky metal one. Even if it's pink or whatever bright color the anodizers... ah, you've heard that before. You can also use a Bic, this one included, to test the sharpness of knives - but that's for another time.

Perhaps it won't make you feel as special as the guy who spent a fair bit of cash on his unique, elegant design thingimabob, oh yeah I spent some google time and words like "nostalgic", "dynamic" and "good looks" come up, but you won't have a $39,90 hole in your wallet either. What you will have is a perfectly good lightweight stylus on a perfectly good pen, and that's a winner folks!

Oh, and everyone I give one to agrees that it is very, very good! Now also has the wifes approval!

Don Nepo - good food in Fuengirola!

If you are in Fuengirola, Spain, and want good food served by a nice family you should visit Don Nepo, a small restaurant along the beachwalk.

As we are regulars, we have a sort of close relationship with them. They are lovely people and they make delicious food. Try their "Gambas Pil Pil" - hot, spicy prawns served in a clay bowl, sizzling as it is served. Don't burn your tongue, they are HOT when served. And quite the spicy meataball too.

Gambas Pil Pil - iPhone 4s, some cropping

The entrecote is big and juicy, the black pepper sauce is quite spicy and the fried potatoes are well made. Quite a meal for a price well worth it:

Entrecote with pimiento sauce - iPhone 4s, some cropping

The chicken fillet in garlic sauce is a mainstay for me - a tasty meal perfect for lunchtime.

Chicken fillet in garlic sauce - iPhone 4s, some cropping

While you are there in the sun and heat have the daughter in the family make you Sangia - you'll get what is probably the best Sangria in the entire city of Fuengirola!

If you are not that hungry try their Tapas - smaller portions of delicious food. The Gambas Pil Pil above is served as a tapas dish. You're bound to find something in the menu that fits your tastes.

There are many good places to eat at in Fuengirola - Don Nepo certainly is one of them!


Here´s a quick video of the food above:

NightCap - iPhone low light, night, photos

One thing my iPhone 4s won't do well is night photographs. There is just not enough shutter time available using the Camera app. Of course some clever guy decided to make an app that gives longer shutter times and better low-light shots.

One of those apps is NightCap, an app I use and like. It gives you manual control over shutter times up to 1 second among other things. Oh, forget handheld use. I use tripods or my DIY suction cup mount. I'll write about that one some other time, it works really well when I use my iPhone 4s as a dashcam.

Anyway, brace the iPhone 4s somehow and launch the native Camera app, and you'll get this:

Fuengirola by night - iPhone 4s, silly tripod, cable release

And then let's fire up NightCap, set the manual exposure for 1 second, wait while the display sloooowly updates (yes, forget quick snapshots), start the self-timer and you'll get this:

Fuengirola by night - iPhone 4s, silly tripod, NightCap, self-timer

The cable release won't work with NightCap, but there is a self-timer as a kind of workaround. Just be gentle when you tap it so you don't shake or shift the iPhone too much. A stylus can be a great help.

While the small sensor in the iPhone 4s just can't perform any better than a tiny sensor can, the difference is there when you use NightCap. No way you can compare this rig with say my Nikon D200 with the 50mm F1.8, but then you already knew that. What you can do is get perfectly usable photos instead of dark, grainy ones. Nobody who is half serious about photography would compare the iPhone 4s with a DSLR anyway.

If you want to shoot night photos with your iPhone, I recommend NightCap. It won't give you perfect night photos, but perfectly usable ones. And thats a lot better than no photos at all!

Pop-A-Graph your photograph!

I played around some with the PopAGraph app from Flambe Studios LLC, an app that is mainly for adding 3D-effects to your photos. Probably not what the developers would say, but you can read what they think in the description on AppStore heh heh.


 This one was shot with my DSLR and "popped" on my iPad mini:

Popped flower - Nikon D70s, Sigma 70-300 F4-5.6 APO Macro Super II, PopAGraph

This is the original photograph:

Flower - Nikon D70s, Sigma 70-300 F4-5.6 APO Macro Super II

The auto mode works so-so if you intend to blow the image up. I had to manually mask and tweak this one to get the result I wanted - smooth masking and the right details included. Not a bad thing as long as you understand that you have to invest some time and effort to make things look good. 

There are a bunch of filters and effects you can use, as well as different frames. 

So why bother with this app? Well, you won't use it all the time, but for those shots where you want to add some wow-factor or really make the subject stand out, this is it. Better yet, if you plan the picture before shooting it, with a clear subject and well planned composition and background, you can create some stunning images with a little help from this app. Even if the viewer can't see that the subject extends beyond the frame, they will feel it. Thats what it is all about.

Now, off you go and Pop-A-Graph that photograph!

Fun stuff! Old gentleman's cow clipper...

Yup, time again for one of those fun little jobs. This old gentleman came into the shop with an old clipper machine. It had this brass adjusting screw that goes into the gear housing and pushes on a bow-shaped spring that in turn pushes the moveable clipper blade against the fixed one. On the end of the adjusting screw there is a small shouldered steel screw that holds the spring and screw together through a hole in the spring. That small screw was broken off and the gent had tried to drill the remains out.

Well, brass with a bit of steel stuck in it is not that easy to drill, so now the thing was messed up with a hole poking out the side of the brass screw. As we talked, we arrived at the price of the repair. Sadly, the size and the price of things like this seldom match. This nice old man understood that I charge for my time, and replied that this repair would be cheaper than a new clipper anyway so go ahead and fix it. Man, I like to hear that!


So, here is new screw assembled with the spring:

That's fun & done! - iPhone 4s

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures during the making of it, but it involved turning and knurling the brass stock, turning the major screw diameter, single point threading it M6x1 (IIRC) to a nice tight fit for the locking nut, drilling and tapping the end for a M3 thread and then parting off the screw. For the securing screw I took a shortcut, I actually loctited a nut on a M3 screw and then turned that into a shoulder that fit the hole in the spring. This is hidden inside the gear housing so it was function before looks on this one and it does the job just fine.


I really enjoy these little jobs that comes every now and then, especially when the customer is as nice as this old man was! Now cows, you better watch out...