NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

I need to interrupt my regular scheduled programming to write a little blurb about the new iPhone 4s. I keep reading over and over again how great the camera is in it, especially in low light, but few seem to have compared its pictures to the pictures of anything else. So while the word on the street is that the camera does as good a job as a point and shoot, and that it basically makes having a second camera kind of redundant, nobody’s really shown any substantial evidence to back that up.

I didn’t want to take the tech pundits’ words for it, so tonight I drank a PBR, put the can down next to a cool Vespa calendar, and decided to make my own little comparison. I scrounged up every camera I could get my hands on and took a picture of my PBR/Vespa scene. The list of cameras included the iPad 2, the iPhone 3, the iPhone 4s, Panasonic’s DMC-FX500, Canon’s G9, the Rebel XTi, the 40d, the 5d, and the 5d Mark II. I fitted Canon’s 24-70 f/2.8 L series lens to the dSLRs just to make for a fair comparison. I mean, the optics in a Canon L series lens are about on par with a phone’s camera, right?

I dimmed the lights in the room and created a scene with the following exposure: ISO 800, f/2.4 to 2.8, and 1/15th of a second. Basically, in layman terms, that means there was about as much light as a restaurant at night. Not a dimly lit one, and not a bright fast food place. didn’t use a flash and I shot with Auto White Balance on all the cameras. I actually took the first shots with the Apple phones, imported them into the computer to find out what their exposures were, and set the rest of the cameras to match. I’m sure there are all sorts of people who are going to argue with my methodolgy, but this isn’t really intended to be much more than a rough idea of how these these gadgets stack up against each other.

So what did I find? Well, the pundits are kinda right and kinda wrong. The iPhone 4s’ camera isn’t bad at all — in fact, it’s great (for a camera in a phone) — but I hesitate to compare it to a quality point and shoot, at least in the poor lighting conditions that illuminated my PBR/Vespa scene. Of course the 4s is way better than the iPad, and it’s also significantly better than the iPhone 3, which suffers from a soft lens and heinous color noise in low light situations. But to say it’s as good as a point and shoot is a bit of a stretch. The flash is underpowered and there are no manual controls that would otherwise let you milk a scene for the best results. There’s a fair amount of noise at ISO 800, even compared to my 3 year old Panasonic DMC FX500, and the iPhone lens just can’t compete with the more sophisticated lenses in dedicated cameras.

But — and this is a huge but — there’s something to be said about an 8 megapixel camera stuffed into a smartphone. For everyday purposes, this thing does outdo a point and shoot simply because it’s already in my pocket. And what’s more, in broad daylight, the gap between the iPhone 4s and the point and shoot cameras narrows dramatically (see below). I anticipate it’ll take two to three generations of smartphones to truly close the gap with point and shoot cameras. But meanwhile, I bet you I could make a pretty fancy looking 20×30 canvas print with my new iPhone 4s if I took a picture in well lit conditions.

Anyway, as I expected, the iPhone 4s camera came in just behind my Panasonic DMC FX500 from 2008. It got trounced by the Canon G9 from 2007.

Here are images from all the cameras, roughly resized to the size of the image from the iPad at the top. I realizing that resizing them doesn’t make for a fair comparison, but I’ll leave that to the camera review sites. Hopefully this will give some people a rough idea of how everything compares.

Some general thoughts:

• iPad 2 – The camera is basically a joke. I included it for reference only. It’s less than 1 megapixel and the noise is horrible.
• iPhone 3g – Check out the shadows on the right of the picture and you’ll see the color noise. This is hard to clean up. You can also see, when compared to the image below it, how soft the lens is.
• iPhone 4s – Pretty good, though there’s a lot of shadow noise. The good thing is there’s nowhere near as much color noise as in the images from its predecessor, which is impressive.
• Panasonic – This is the closest competitor to the iPhone 4s camera, but it’s still sharper and cleaner.
• Canons – These are in here just for reference. Notice how tight the grain is on the G9 compared to the iPhone.

I also decided to to check things out in daylight, the results of which are below. Realizing that the only real competitors in my closet were the Canon G9, the Panasonic and the iPhone 3, I left the iPad and dSLRs out. The results were still pretty much the same, though (as expected) the gap in image quality between the cameras narrowed dramatically. The G9 still stands on its own, but the difference between the iPhone 4s and the Panasonic is very narrow. There’s less chroma noise in the 4s, though its grain is really ugly. I found the white balance to be pretty good on the iPhone. Go ahead and click on that below image if you want the full res version.

I was intrigued by how the iPhone stood up to the Panasonic in daylight, so I decided to just take a picture outside to get an idea of what regular snapshot actually looks like. Pretty good, particularly on the web. Again, clicking below will get you a high res version.

But I was a little disappointed by the amount of noise present in the sky, which you can see below at a 100% crop. Otherwise, the lens performed well and is pretty sharp.

Anyway, all in all, not a bad little camera. The iPhone 4s is not a replacement for a point and shoot, but it’s pretty close if you have a cheap one or an old one and you shoot pictures primarily during the day. If you are traveling and want a good camera for your trips, consider investing in a good, modern point and shoot.

Now, enough pixel peeping. Back to the fun stuff: people getting married!

NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

Happy Holidays everyone!

I’m writing this note from the West Coast of New Zealand, where I’m traveling at the moment in pursuit of beautiful light, great imagery, and an endless summer. It’s been a fun trip so far, and I’m excited to see what’ll happen next. Before I start the busy 2010 wedding season, I’m headed to Australia, Tasmania and Tonga, three places I’ve never been but have always dreamed of visiting.

2009 has been a wild, wild ride. It’s taken me across continents and oceans, and I’ve photographed almost everything imaginable: climbing in France; coral reefs off the coast of Venezuela; landscapes in New Zealand; and weddings in the Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, California wine country, and as far away as Norway. Back in September I added up the days my car had sat at the Denver International Airport parking lot, and was startled to discover the total: nearly 18 weeks. That means I was shooting out of state for about half of the first 9 months of the year. In October I shot weddings in Colorado and California, and climbing in both Zion National Park and Yosemite, and in November I flew to New Zealand. Despite being on the road, I’ve kept busy with new bookings and album designs — and as a cool side note, JenLos’ book, from their Virgin Islands wedding, was picked by Kambara USA as a sample album that the company will bring to trade shows around the country.

It’s been humbling to win awards from the WPJA, it’s been fun to see my shots for Sigma Photo show up in magazine advertisements around the world, and it’s been exciting to grow my studio with the addition of associate photographers (in two different states) and a production manager. Expect to see profiles of Bernd and Chris in upcoming blog posts — we are currently booking them weddings in both California and Colorado, and they do an absolutely rocking job. Both of them have seen it all: Bernd shot a wedding in Vail this year with a reception so bumping that the smoke alarms went off and the Fire Department came, while Chris just recently shot an elopement in Rocky Mountain National Park in the middle of a whiteout. Party on! You’ll love these guys.

I’ve had more fun behind the lens in 2009 than in any other year of my life. It’s been awesome to see the resurgence of break dancing, and I’ve been downright impressed with the all-star partying I’ve encountered at this year’s receptions. Resisting the urge to boogie has been a challenge, especially after watching people bust out award-winning worms, aerial stalls, head spins, and every other dance move invented in the last 40 years. I have realized that I need to learn to break dance. Can someone teach me? It’s also been cool to reconnect with past clients, learn about their lives, and even see their new babies. I love this job.

I’ll try to get a best-of-2009 post up soon, and maybe I’ll put up a few shots of my winter adventure so far. Meanwhile, here’s a shot of me jumping for joy somewhere in countryside in New Zealand, courtesy of Rannveig Aamodt.

Last but not least, please excuse me if I don’t respond to emails immediately. There’s a day or two lag time here, as cell reception is spotty.

NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

So… aside from building out our basement into a studio, we’ve got other big plans. Redoing the entire floor, redoing two bathrooms, redoing a kitchen. When we move we’ll have renovated almost every room in the house, as well as every window and the roof. What?!

Aaaaaanyway, Alicia went to the local home center the other day to pick up some thinset, which we needed for the tiling job in one of the bathrooms. She came back with this:

Doesn’t look like thinset to me. It was “on loan” for a day and it went back to its family after a few hours. But we were both a bit smitten, so… who knows what’s next!

NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

Back in Cali kickin it with the crew. Miss it here. Good times, great friends. Toots got his first chance to visit one of our favorite places on earth, the stunning mountaintop boulder field at Lizard’s Mouth, home to the best moderate sandstone bouldering anywhere. And actually thanks to our buddy Bernd, a bunch of new hard lines have gone up in the last year.

Here we are on one of them, an unnamed route overlooking the ocean. We spent sunset here taking pictures.

If you want to know how it’s done, I used a really fast prime lens at f/1.4 coupled with a single flash bouncing off a gold reflector disk. Reflector was pointing up from ground level, flash was triggered via a PocketWizard. Very low ISO (100) allowed me to get the dark blue sky at 125th of a second. It also let me have a very noiseless image. I passed off the camera later on and Bernd grabbed it to take the last two shots, one of Steve and one of me.

Quite possibly the highlight of the day was seeing Alicia’s parents’ chihuahua Rosie wearing Bernd’s kid’s diaper. Finn, Bernd and Hjortis’ little infant, was nice and warm and had a spare diaper. Rosie was freezing and had nothing. So… What happens when you have a spare diaper and a freezing chihuahua? Diaper Dog. It’s was the only solution.

NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

Sorry, more dorky house maintenance stuff. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum!

A few days ago we had 20 windows in our living room, which was annoying. And then we started putting them in, and things got even more annoying. I’m surprised I can type right now given the times I’ve turned my thumb into ground beef with the hammer. Yeeouch. 10 down and 10 to go.

The guy who sold us our house didn’t tell us about the leaky roof and the leaky windows, so as we installed the windows we also had to reframe a bunch of them because the leaks had rotted the wood away. I have absolutely zero idea what I’m doing but at least I’ve got some mad style points. Dig the hat?

Alicia, who took these pictures, is psyched to do all the trim work on the inside of the house. That’s a good thing too because I don’t have the patience to do all the little details, and she does. So I’ll keep tearing 8 foot holes in the walls and she’ll make it look nice afterward. Cool deal.

We also installed a new patio door in the basement, which required us to replace a sagging, 7-foot header. We had to jack up the house with a couple of huge posts and go to town. Here’s me and Jim and the gaping hole in the wall…

NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

Straying from the wedding and portrait theme lately, but hey, I think this stuff is cool.

Our home!

First, something with big paws and big claws visited us the other night — we think it was a bear trying to get into the hot tub for a soak. Notice the claw marks on the cover.

NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

So we’re trying to clean up a guest bedroom on a windy, cold Saturday when we hear Toots throwing a hysterical fit outside. He’s ADD to begin with, so when he gets fixated on something, well, beware. This time he couldn’t take his eyes off of a huge deer on the other side of our fence — and the deer appeared to be taunting him. I grabbed my little point and shoot and started recording a movie. I wish I was fluent in Dog and Deer.

Toots: Get out! My yard! My yaaarrrd!! My my my yard! Mine! Mine!
Deer: Dude, step off.
Toots: Get out get out get out get out get out get out. Get out! Get out get out get out!
Deer: I’m 20 times your size. Do you know who you’re talking to?
Toots: Get out get out get out get out get out get out!! Get out!!!! Mine mine mine!!

Or something. Anyway, this is how it ended. If there wasn’t a fence in the way, Toots could have been worked. Or he would have ran into the house with the deer chasing him, in which case we’d have had quite the scuffle in our living room. Click on the thumbnail below to watch the mayhem.

NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

A while back I mentioned that we’d gotten a Basenji with a gas problem that we named Toots.

Here he is! Not the greatest pic, but enquiring minds want to know. We don’t know where his nipped ear came from. The furrowed brow is a typical Basenji thing. By the way, Basenji literally translates to ‘bush thing.’

Today Alicia was with him at the dog park while I was getting paint, and a crazy storm came in. I looked out the store window and hightailed it to the park to find Alicia soaked to the skin and Toots shivering like mad. So of course we had to go get him a parka. With a hood. I think he likes it. We’re such suckers.

NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

Alicia and I have been kicking around the idea of getting a dog for a while, so we cruised down to the Denver Humane Society and looked around. We almost came home with a neurotic, bug-eyed Boston Terrier named Rader, but instead we brought home a mellower pup who’s part Basenji. The Basenjis — which translate to ‘bush things’ — must be part feline, because they walk, run, play and groom themselves like cats. Pretty cool. We named him Toots because we were listening to a Toots and the Maytals song on the way home (a John Denver cover, actually, but no matter) that went, “Take me home to the place where I belong.” Then, as if to seal the deal, the dog started farting. Or ‘tooting,’ if you will. So Toots became his name.

Then when we got back to Estes we drove to our first house! We closed right before we went to the Humane Society! So we’re now in the process of moving, which is becoming an epic, but we’re super excited. The home is perched up on the side of Prospect Mountain overlooking part of the Estes Valley, and it’s got a great hot tub on the porch for those cool winter evenings. Our home inspection missed some problems with the place, which became way too apparent once it started raining really hard (which it hasn’t done in months). Basically the roof leaks. So do some windows. So if anyone out there knows much about composite roofing and window reframing, give me a shout. This week we’re going to be doing home repair 24/7.

Anyway, as Toots wandered around the house, it became apparent that he hasn’t had much of a chance to get out much. In fact, we think he’s afraid of heights; the other day he freaked, jumped off the staircase and headplanted in the middle of the living room. Not good for a trail and crag dog, but he’s an athletic little dude who will probably learn to deal pretty quickly.

I wish I had pictures, but right now I don’t. Stay tuned!

NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

There’s something so hilarious about washing a neurotic lapdog, so I figured I’d post a few images of Alicia giving Armstrong (no relation to Lance) a bath. He goes from a fuzzy ball of joy to an irritable skeleton as soon as his fur gets wet. Here he is..