This new camera is 5 megapixels (back, the front camera is VGA) and shoots HD Video – yes, HD Video! The same touch to focus interface works in still and video mode – one of the coolest features of the iPhone camera. The back-side camera also has a 5X digital zoom – however, I recommend not using a digital zoom, take your shot and crop later. The other new – and cool feature – is a built in LED flash on the back!

I’ve started to assemble a collection of iPhone photo apps that are worth considering. Here is what I use:

Camera+ – I use this instead of the built in camera for several important reasons. The first is, Camera+ allows you to tap-to-focus AND tap-to-set exposure! Using a 2 finger tap, one finger sets the focus and the other the exposure, the newest release allows you to move these separately after setting – way cool. Another great feature is “fill light” mode for the LED flash. Basically, you can turn on the LED continuously. Great for focusing in the dark and other tasks. The software also has a stabilizer which works reasonably well. Finally, it supports cropping and dozens of photo effects. For $1.99, it is well worth it!

360 – this new app takes 360 degree panorama photos just like that Sony camera in the commercial with Taylor Swift! Very cool and works great.

Pano – a traditional panorama stitching app that works very well. Overlay of the previous frame helps you align the next frame in the pano.

NightShot – improves the night time performance. Sometimes useful.

iMovie – Apple’s iPhone iMovie app for editing movies right on the phone! Still simplistic but you can see where this app is heading. You can make a decent movie with it though.

Finally, myZenfolio. I use Zenfolio as my photo sharing (and remote backup) site. This app gives me direct access to my photos. Very cool!

The section “Tenkara in the Land of Little Rivers” was shot in the Catskills. One of the attendees, Christopher Stuart has many appearances in the video and is the gentleman who introduced me to tenkara when he posted a comment about my horse hair fly lines on this blog! My son and I also have a short appearance (but I would like this video anyway!). The video is remarkably affordable at $5 too. Daniel (founder of Tenkara USA) has done a wonderful job educating and promoting tenkara to American anglers. There is a great section on tenkara techniques and equipment on the DVD too. Check it out!

I now take a tenkara rod on all my backpacking trips or to keep one in my car for a quick stop at a local stream.

One of my goals for the book was to make it practical for people to actually make a brass reel. I realized early on that the book would be a lot better if I could get a few people to read a draft version and build a reel.  I set a goal to have between 3 and 5 people successfully build a reel before I would publish the book. To accomplish that goal, I created the “Reelsmith’s Primer Challenge“ and gave draft copies of my book to anyone who wanted to build a reel. Dozens of people all over the world participated. During the challenge, anyone who finished and posted photos of the completed reel will get a copy of the book when it goes to press. To date, 5 new reelsmiths have completed the challenge and several more are near completion! Their dedication, feedback, and craftsmanship is outstanding. Many improvements were made to the book as part of this process.

A few of these early reelsmiths asked me if I would put together a package of all of the materials to build a reel — a one stop shop for reel building materials! I did and set up The Eclectic Angler to sell these packages, my reels, and other angling items. All of these efforts are interconnected and reinforce each other and they were all developed at the request of actual “users”. I even used the community to help design the book’s cover. The cover concept is shown above. Completing the cover is my next project.

I’ll be writing more about my publishing experience and updates on the book in future posts.

Cheers!

So, now that I’ve update four of our Macs (Family Pack) with Snow Leopard and used it for a few days, what do I think? Well, there is very little change in the user interface. That’s a good thing, I hate relearning new UIs. The real power of Snow Leopard is under the covers – full 64 bit support and a completely re-written Finder (that is, of course, 64 bit). Almost all of the Apple apps are now 64 bit too (Mail, Safari, iCal, and iChat). Snow Leopard’s “Grand Central Dispatch” is an enabling technology for software developers to write better multi-processor applications more easily. OpenCL taps in to graphics processors to use for more than just graphics. Very cool, I can hardly wait to see what developers do with it! Snow Leopard comes with QuickTime X also. It includes a new Player, really improved internet video streaming, and built in audio and video capture!

So far, Snow Leopard has been noticeably faster and completely transparent – meaning I have not run in to any problems with any of the apps I run – Photoshop CS3, ViaCAD, the iWork suite, Lightroom 2, TextMate, etc. The new XCode is also really solid.

Well, I just had to get the new iPhone 3G S. I’ve been an iPhone fanatic since the original came out 2 years ago. Last year, I upgraded to a 16 GB 3G and loved it. The GPS feature has been great. Well, when I heard that the 3G S has a 3 megapixel camera AND a video camera, along with a real compass, I just had to have one. In addition, the 3G S is supposed to be 2X faster than the 3G.

I normally do not pre-order things but this time I did. AT&T promised overnight delivery shipped the day before the official release date. Today is the day! The phone arrived this morning and 30 minutes later, I had transferred all of my “stuff” and was on the net. That was very easy. Now that I’ve had the phone for a few hours I can say, “Wow!”. It really is faster than my 3G. Everything loads so much faster – email, web pages, apps start up faster.

The new features in OS 3 are also nice – I had updated to it on Wednesday when it became available. First there is sideways text entry in Mail, Notes, and Messages – the keyboard flips to the landscape orientation when you rotate the phone. Nice feature, makes typing even easier. Then there is Copy, Cut & Paste! The real thing! The UI is very well done – not an easy task for a handheld device with a touchscreen.

That stuff is nice but get this – Voice Control! It can dial phone numbers, look up names in Address Book, and play music music by saying the artist’s name, a playlist, and even control the songs playing – and it can tell you what song is playing. And, it works amazingly well! The voice dialing alone is worth its weight in electrons! Then we have Compass – it basically turns your $299 iPhone in to a $20 compass. But it is pretty and it works really well. It can tell you exactly which way you are facing. Goggle Maps is compass aware too, when you tap the location icon a 2nd time, Google Maps rotates as you move around! I can’t even tell you how cool this is!

Ok, but it keeps getting better! There is a new Spotlight application built in to search for things on the phone. You get to it by flicking left from the main page. If you look at the little page icons at the bottom of the home pages, the one on the far left is the Spotlight magnifying glass icon. Nicely done! And there is now a built in Voice Memo application that records audio and then lets you share it or email it. I make audio notes to myself all the time in QuickVoice but I’ll try the new Apple recorder.

There are a number of other enhancements too – Stocks has a new graphing mode, updates to Calendar, Find my iPhone shows you where your phone is and Wipe lets you wipe it clean – all from MobileMe. There is also built-in support for the Nike iPod sensor. Internet Tethering and MMS  are built in to OS 3 but not supported by AT&T yet. MMS is promised for late summer, tethering is not mentioned by AT&T.

And now we get to the new camera and video camera! The camera is MUCH better than the original. At 3 megapixels, it is actually usable and it has a new autofocus feature with a really cool manual focus feature. Simply touch an object on the camera preview and iPhone focuses on that object! Including exposure and white balance. This is a very neat feature, I won’t be surprised if some digital camera companies steal this idea – it’s that good! Video is also very usable. 30FPS VGA recording when the phone is held horizontally (wide screen mode). And, it has built-in video editing! How cool is that! The editor is a simple “clip” editor but it is simple to use and nicely implemented. Video can be shared or emailed right from the Camera application too. The camera is much faster too, so you can capture sequences of photos.

The iPhone 3G S is a winner! Not revolutionary but a great evolution from the original iPhone and iPhone 3G!