[Leica] Camera Phone Wars in Los Angeles! (you don't stand achance)

[leicaslacker at gmail.com (kyle cassidy on the LUG)]

I find the cell phone challenging for art photography because there's so 
very little control built into the camera, you essentially have two buttons 
"meter/focus" and "take the photo" -- and for something like this:

http://www.kylecassidy.com/lj/2010/iphone-daph-1.jpg

which is an unextrordinary metering job for someone with even the meanest 
dslr, when trying to do it with a camera phone you need to bring in other 
sources of light (in this case in the form of reflectors) to keep the 
contrast low to keep the camera from blowing the highlights. I don't know 
that it's ground glass, but it requires similar skill to exposing an 
ordinary frame, you just have to imagine that nearly all of your controls 
are inoperable. Let too little light onto the shot and the camera will 
auto-lift the ISO to mind numbing numbers and you'll just have a bowl of 
grain for breakfast.... 

I think the pre visualization is important, but with a camera phone you need 
to be more aware of the minutia instead of the gross. Or you can just let 
everything blow out and chalk it up to DIY style.....


On Sep 17, 2010, at 2:33 PM, slobodan Dimitrov wrote:

> So far, it's been corporate people who are taking the class.
> I've seen what some of my "fine art" acquaintances  are doing digitally.
> They just haven't been able to get it.
> I'll let the cat out if the bag on this one.
> If you are used to shooting RF, and/or with a ground-glass, the phone 
> camera is a cake walk.
> The phone camera is basic ground-glass photography. On the other hand, 
> with the ability to pre-visualize learned from using a RF, you can shoot 
> with any photographic instrument, regardless of quality, or mechanical 
> complexity.
> If you've only known photography through the 35mm SLR, there will be a 
> steeper learning curve.
> S.d.
>