I've noticed a flurry of similar products appearing lately that turn an iPhone into a shutter release for your SLR. Here are links to a couple of them. The first, ioShutter, is being promoted by the excellent Photojojo which I encourage you to subscribe to. The second is a recent Kickstarter project by the name of Trigger Happy Camera Remote. But let's back up a moment. The equivalent Canon product is the TC-80N3 which allows you to not only remote trigger your camera but also program a number of shots to be taken on a timer and set the duration of bulb exposures - it's sometimes called an intervalometer. Useful stuff but the typical price here in the UK is £120 or $135 in the states. Honestly that's *way* over priced for what it is.

So the prospect of turning a camera phone into an intervalometer is intriguing, first because the "brains" of the gadget can be provided by the phone which should make construction much simpler and cheaper but also because the phone should make the interface easier, prettier and allow it to do more. I first saw the Kickstarter project and I was impressed by what a good idea it is but when I saw the price they were asking my first thought was that the creators were smoking crack. They want $70 for the Trigger Happy Camera Remote when it launches (or $50 if you get in on the Kickstarter funding). ioShutter is even worse - they want $70 just for the cable and another $10 for the app.

But hold on a minute - wasn't this idea meant to replace the complex bit of this gadget, making it simpler and cheaper? See the thing is, I've already bought an intervalometer and I didn't pay £120 for it. I didn't even pay £50 for it. I paid about £20 for it on Amazon. Just try searching for "TC-80N3" on Amazon and you'll see a load of extremely affordable alternatives to the Canon version. There are Nikon equivalents. Mine was made by a Chinese company called Yongnuo and yes it's a cheap knock-off but it's pretty solidly made. It works reliably and it's a *fraction* of the price. I've been delighted with it. Here's one for just $15 on the US Amazon store - it's identical to mine, clearly a rebadged Yongnuo.

The ioShutter and Trigger Happy Camera Remote guys think Canon and Nikon are their competition but they're wrong. Their real competition are these cheap knock offs. So tell me, how much do you want to pay? $70 or $15? I don't care how much prettier the iPhone version is, that's a no-brainer.

But that's not all!

Triggertrap Mobile cable+dongleThere is another option - Triggertrap Mobile costs $10 for the app and then $20 for the cable+dongle, so $30 for the lot. Still more than the Yongnuo but when you see what you get it's *really* worth it. The Triggertrap app does all the intervalometer stuff plus you can trigger your camera for time-lapse, distance-lapse, motion detection, sound, magnetism, vibration and even facial recognition. For $30. Sign me up - I already placed my order.

I love Kickstarter and entrepreneurs. I usually want to support them and I've backed quite a number of Kickstarter projects but I am getting mightily sick of the price gouging that goes on with photography gear. I've not used any of these products yet but on what I've seen so far the Triggertrap leads the pack by a country mile. Hurrah for sensible pricing.

Liverpool Apple Store

First of all I booked a genius bar appointment at my nearest store which is not all that near to be honest, in the Trafford centre in Manchester. I drove up there (40 mins drive) and they confirmed what I already knew - SMART was reporting that the disk was failing. They told me they didn't have the part in stock and that it would take 5-7 days to get the work done. Not good - I have customers waiting on me to deliver. So we called around and found that the Liverpool One store had the part in stock. Ok I say, let's go. It's another long drive and Liverpool traffic is a bitch but finally I get there and I'm politely dealt with - even being taken up to the inconveniently located genius bar in the staff lift because I'm carrying an extremely heavy and sharp edged 27" iMac. No surprises - they can't fix it there and then. 3-5 days I'm told.  Disappointing when you consider they have the part, the tools and my computer all in the same place. It crosses my mind that if they'd give me some desk space I could just do it myself. But no, I am well behaved and I go home. Another long drive in heavy traffic - nearly 2 hours. I hate to think how much I've spent in petrol up to his point. Nearly as much as the cost of a new hard drive. Considerably more if you factor in the cost to the environment and a whole day of my time. 

I leave the Apple guys alone for the whole of the next day, Tuesday, only occasionally looking at my empty desk and fretting about the lost work time. But on Wednesday the lack of productivity and a weird sense of responsibility towards my customers forces me to call Liverpool to ask where they're up to with my machine. You have.. 5.. calls ahead of you in the queue. The girl who eventually answers is polite but resolute in her unwillingness to give me any idea when the work will be complete. Her best estimate is the same 3-5 days I was originally told. Here's the thing, though. When I was told that, I was hoping Apple liked to under promise and over deliver. I needed my computer and I needed it NOW. I literally had nothing I could do without it except hassle the Apple store folks. So that's what I did. After being cut off and calling again (you have.. 4.. calls ahead of you in the queue) I speak to the same lady and she tells me that she's spoken to the staff the back and my computer will be fixed today. Great! I tell her I'm driving up and I'll wait in the store until it's done. Yes I know that's going to put pressure on the store staff. That's the idea.

So I make the long drive to Liverpool again.. More petrol, another lost day of productivity, more high blood pressure. And I deal with the guys in the store. The chap running the genius bar is annoyed with me but keeps his cool and after some cajoling he nudges the guys in the back.  They promise they're now working on it. I drink coffee in Starbucks - getting out of his hair for 30 mins is my little reward to him for his compliance. Eventually I go back to the store and almost another hour later my computer is brought out. I force a smile, thank the staff for putting up with me and head home. It's another long drive and I arrive only just in time to pick up the kids from nursery. Another day is lost and all of that night and half of the next day will be taken up reinstalling but at least my destiny is back in my own hands. I resolve never to give away that control again. 

So here's the problem. Apple are rightly proud of their customer service. The staff interpersonal skills are superb. That makes dealing with Apple a very smooth ride but where the rubber meets the road is getting the damn computer fixed. Apple performs very poorly indeed on this point. What matters to me as a business when my computer has failed, especially when I've paid extra for AppleCare (my colleague jokingly suggested that perhaps I'd inadvertently purchased AppleDontCare) is that my computer is fixed fast so I can get back to work. 

I lost most of Sunday, all of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and half of Thursday to this failure and it was only that quick because I bothered and cajoled the Apple staff. If I'd not done so I would have waited even longer. I also paid a crap ton of money in petrol and invested a lot of my own time driving around. Compare this experience with how I would have handled this failure in a PC. All I would have done there is driven to PC World, overpaid for a new SATA drive and then replaced it myself. Total lost time - 1 day tops. Even with AppleCare paying for the drive and the manpower this was much more expensive than simply swapping a drive in a PC. 

Consider that business proposition again - if I had a PC I would have paid less for the computer, less for the drive, less for the petrol and I would have been back to work in 1 day instead of 4. Tell me again how great your premium price Apple solution is?

What I've described here isn't extraordinary - a disk died, they replaced it. Nothing went wrong particularly aside from the disk itself. If anything they went faster than they typically would - because I nagged them. And yet I still consider their performance apalling. Apple don't seem to be aware of what matters to business. Paying extra for AppleCare gets you no special treatment. They don't appear to have anything like the necessary infrastructure for repairing stuff quickly and getting businesses back to work. As a result I'm considering switching away from Final Cut and onto to Premiere so that I can use PCs again. Premiere is way too expensive but the overall risk to my business is considerably less than sticking with Apple. 

In fact the genius of Moo is not just in the presentation of their product. This is the company that started out offering just minicards which were a strange shape and on fairly thin card but with the ability to put a different image on the front of each one. They weren't business cards and they weren't prints. It's hard to say what they actually were besides insanely desirable. What Moo do best of all is design *great* products. Their product range has always been limited but with each piece carefully chosen for paper quality, print process, lamination and presentation. They don't try to make everything but what they do make is *good*. Reading from the Apple playbook again then.

Buying from Moo is a pleasant experience from beginning to end - enough to make up for the fact that they're actually quite expensive. And Luxe cards are at the ouch end of even that curve. What you get are business cards printed on a fascinating new triple layer paper with a stripe of colour sandwiched between two white layers. This new paper is very stiff and has a matte finish which is much easier to write on than Moo's usual laminated cards. The matte finish does mean that blacks don't print very dark, though. My own black and white designs have very strong contrasts but came out looking lighter than I would have liked - a common problem with matte printing.

Moo Luxe business cards edge view

Overall, though, the quality of Luxe cards is absolutely up there with what I've come to expect from Moo. Where Moo's minicards or business cards are a great opportunity to show off your photography, Luxe cards are better suited to being actual business cards, especially if you want to wow people with quality.

Moo Luxe business cards are £23.99 or $34.99 for 50 cards and you can find out more at moo.com.

I'm going to tell you to do something I think you all know in your hearts that you should do - "post the pictures you love". It sounds almost fatuous but it's harder to stick to than you might think. For example, I was lucky enough to attend a workshop with Welshot Imaging last weekend - normally I'm teaching workshops for Welshot so it's nice to attend one for a change and the teacher, Adrian Wilson, was excellent. We were there to learn about HDR photography and we'd made arrangements to visit Liverpool Cathedral for a few hours to shoot some material to process later.

I have a twisted streak that likes to subvert things so I'd been wondering how I could do something using HDR that didn't fit the stereotype of how HDRs usually look. I settled on two ideas and shot for them all day - black and white HDR and shallow depth of field HDR. I'm pretty happy with the results and you can see my complete collection of images from that day on Google+ and 500px but that's not what this article is about. I want to talk about selecting which images to show.

I've been posting the pictures one by one over a few days after spending some time with each and deciding if I really like it enough to post it. I came to the picture you see above of the staircase and I very nearly didn't post it. You see I'd been shooting HDRs inside a beautiful old cathedral all day surrounded by amazing stonework detail, high ceilings and stained glass windows. And this picture I was considering was just a wooden staircase - and a fairly modern one at that. I imagined that people would think the staircase mundane and out of place. So I vacillated for a while and eventually decided to post it. And to my surprise it gathered the most comments of any picture in the collection (on 500px).

The reason I shot that picture and the reason it was in contention for posting was simply that I find it visually pleasing with the lines that guide the eye and strong contrasts and detail. There are lots of diagonals to keep feeling dynamic and the contrast between the wooden stairs and the stonework is pleasing to me. It's one of my favourites from the day. But it's not really what you'd expect to see in a cathedral picture and I very nearly let that be my guide for what to post. So I have a simple call to action for you:

Find a picture you love but didn't post because you thought others might not appreciate it. Now post that sucker!

First of all I'm not sure I can put my hand on my heart and say I won't buy a Canon 5D mk3 when it comes out. Trey says he won't buy any more DSLR gear because this 3rd gen thing is coming in the next couple of years. I agree with his timescale - heck I think 3rd gen cameras are good enough NOW and I said so last year. I'm serious about picking and buying into a system like micro four thirds. But I think I'll need to get comfortable with that before I let go of my DSLR. Aparrently I lack Trey's bravery. ;-)

The other point where Trey and I differ is on the subject of time spent in Lightroom. He quite rightly says that in future our cameras will be able to shoot many more frames quickly and we'll be able to pick the good ones from perhaps 200 instead of 20. I fear he's right about that but I won't be thanking Nikon or Canon for the extra post processing work. I teach photoshop and lightroom so you'd expect I love doing that stuff but what I enjoy is shooting and making great images. Picking through a big batch of pictures is to find the ones I want to keep is work to me. It's not much fun. Once I've found that one I want to work on - THAT'S the fun part. So honestly I think he's right that we'll shoot many more pictures and have to spend time picking out the good ones. But Trey says he enjoys sitting in Lightroom and picking the winners. He's clearly derranged. (Just kidding Trey - you rock man).

It's simple supply and demand really. There's much more great work being produced for much less money now. In short, you people are getting too good at taking petter pictures and processing them to a professional shine. This is as a result of the rapid educational possibilities of the internet and technology advances that have put in the hands of the masses the same creative tools that were formerly available only to a few. And, shock horror, it turns out that there were loads more talented people out there who previously wouldn't have had the education and tools needed to produce competitive quality work.

Ironically Photoshop is a great example of one such tool. Look at the amazing wealth of superb quality photography on Google+. Even 5 years ago the typical standard of photography I saw online was markedly lower than it is today. And tools like Photoshop are partly responsible. People have always had talent but, today, more than ever in the past they also have the knowledge and tools they need to produce the images they envisioned.

My worry, though, is that Photoshop is returning to being a tool only for the 'elite'. I got a lot of feedback for my article Wave bye bye to Photoshop. Most of that feedback was agreement but of the few that disagreed the majority were basically saying,

"Photoshop *should* be expensive because it's a professional tool and there are lesser tools for the plebs who can't afford the good version".

In essence they were saying that because they could afford it they quite liked the idea of locking everyone else out - everyone else can use the less good tools that produce less good results. This is plain and simple elitism of the most unattractive kind.

The joke is on Adobe and the big media content producers, though, because this problem is going to solve itself. If Adobe don't sell a product that people can afford then smaller, hungrier companies like MacPhun, Coppertino, Realmac Software, Pixelmator and many others will just steal their lunch. The same is already true for the creative work producers. Big stock agencies are already feeling the pinch from micro stock sites like iStockPhoto. And in the music world too with millions of independent producers making and selling music direct to their fans without ever signing a record deal. Google Music is all set to capitalise on that gold rush.

The message for Adobe, Hollywood and the big content producers is simple. Make your product available to people where they want to buy it (online) and make it affordable. Cause one thing is for sure - we masses aren't going to go back to making crappy quality work. The competition is here to stay.

A cursory inspection, especially by a non-professional, might conclude that the iPhone is nearly as good as the SLR - in some cases the exposure looks better on the iPhone. So should pros be considering iPhones as a valid alternative to their SLRs?

Sounds like an idiotic question doesn't it and, sure, you obvisouly won't want to shoot a wedding with an iPhone where looking like a pro is as important as shooting like one. But I'm not so sure the answer is as clear cut when you're just shooting for yourself.

Camera phones haven't got the pixel count or flexibility of an SLR, yet. And it'll be a while yet before they get full manual controls, large sensors, RAW recording or interchangable lenses.  But if all you want are snaps that you'll only ever view on a screen or print small then they're more than good enough - and getting better all the time.

This is a perspective issue. When I look at an iPad I see a much more limited version of my desktop computer. I think about all the things I *can't* do with it. When I look at an iPhone I see a much more limited version of a point and shoot camera. But young people don't see limitations - they see opportunities. Young people didn't look at a mobile phone and think, "I'll never be able to type on that". They just used what they had and got really good at it.

And in just the same way young people will use these new tools to make genuine art. They will become skilled in ways that we don't appreciate. We always say, "it's the photographer, not the camera", don't we? And while they're making art those "lesser" tools will improve until they're nipping at the heels of our "proper" gear. We can see that improvement happening already. That's what that The Guardian's comparison article is all about.

We have to be honest with ourselves about the state of technology or we'll end up being one of those old guys still buying 33rpm records and complaining that we don't understand how people can put up with the dreadful quality of those awful CD things.

Despite this Photoshop has been seen as the defacto photo editing standard for years and for good reason - nothing else can do what Photoshop does. But I teach a lot of photoshop and photography courses and the dirty little secret is that a great many people using Photoshop do so illegally. Why? Because it's way too expensive. Among those that do have legal copies it's very normal for people to be one or two versions out of date.

Cue the recent announcement from Adobe's David Wadhwani that to qualify for Photoshop upgrade pricing you'll need to be on the previous version. So you'll need to own CS5 to qualify for an upgrade price to CS6. As far as I'm concerned that's putting a gun to Photoshop's head and pulling the trigger.

Until now you've been able to upgrade Photoshop from any of the 3 previous versions. Many of the people I teach who own Photoshop rely on this and upgrade every second or third version - particularly because each product version tends to add comparatively little that's compelling to the feature set.

Adobe's answer is that you can subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud which gives you access to all their creative suite apps plus some other products and services that you didn't know you needed, all for the low low price of $49.99 per month. Yes month. And here in the UK that'll probably £55 per month if Adobe's previous over seas pricing is anything to go by. Well it's the wrong side of the line for me. It's just too much and I won't pay it. I don't like software subscription services at the best of times but this is extortionate. And I'm pretty sure most of the people I teach would just laugh at the price.

Adobe seems to be moving in completely the wrong direction here. They should be giving those huge number of pirate users out there a way to go legal and stay legal. Everyone else seems to have figured out that if you make your software cheaper then you make more money. But Adobe is so caught up in corporate sales that consumers are being priced out of the market.

Time for some video reviews of affordable Photoshop alternatives.

View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here

Throughout the course of this tutorial we'll take a single image from the original RAW through to a finished image. This video is one part of a multi-part free video tutorial and review. You can find the other parts at photowalkthrough.com/tutorial23.

View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here

Throughout the course of this tutorial we'll take a single image from the original RAW through to a finished image. This video is one part of a multi-part free video tutorial and review. You can find the other parts at photowalkthrough.com/tutorial23.

View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here

Throughout the course of this tutorial we'll take a single image from the original RAW through to a finished image. This video is one part of a multi-part free video tutorial and review. You can find the other parts at photowalkthrough.com/tutorial23.

So without further ado, below is my NaPodPoMo podcast for today which contains your first assignment - "Squares".

View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here

Throughout the course of this tutorial we'll take a single image from the original RAW through to a finished image. This video is one part of a multi-part free video tutorial and review. You can find the other parts at photowalkthrough.com/tutorial23.

View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here

Throughout the course of this tutorial we'll take a single image from the original RAW through to a finished image. This video is one part of a multi-part free video tutorial and review. You can find the other parts at photowalkthrough.com/tutorial23.

View all 6 chapters of this free tutorial here

In this first chapter we look at Color Efex Pro 4's integration with Lightroom and examine the user interface before using the Skin Softener filter. This is the first chapter of a multi-part tutorial. Find all the chapters and loads more free video tutorials on Photoshop and Lightroom at www.photowalkthrough.com

Colour Splash Studio is one of an emerging breed of photography applications that aim to do one task well and that are priced very affordably. Colour Splash Studio is for photographers wanting to make black and white photos with selective colour elements in the style of the movie Pleasantville.

When you first open an image with Colour Splash Studio it'll immediately turn your image black and white. You can now use the brush tool to paint back areas that you want in colour. The brush is edge detecting, which makes the process easier and faster and you've got control over the size, softness and opacity of the brush which combined with zooming the image to full size means it's pretty easy to paint in a good selection quickly. Once you've painted in your selection you can tweak the colour and greyscale areas separately with brightness, contrast and blur controls. Sadly there's no local contrast control but on the colour layer you can also tweak saturation, hue and exposure. I found these sliders a little harsh in their operation - fine tweaks were not at all easy and of course they apply to the whole image so there's no opportunity for tweaking just a portion of the image. There are also no controls for crop or rotation and very few options for getting more creative with colour (cross processing or split toning, for example) or black and white (dodging and burning, for example). I was very pleased to see support for my Wacom tablet. Pressure can be used to control brush size. I would have preferred it to control opacity but this is a good start. I was also very pleased to see standard Photoshop keyboard shortcuts working such as [ and ] for brush size and spacebar for dragging around the image while zoomed in.

It's clear that Colour Splash Studio is trying to do just this one thing well and I can respect that but for an app that concerns itself *only* with turning your image black and white there is one glaring omission - the lack of ability to control the black and white mix. Any photographer that is serious about wanting their image to look just a certain way is going to expect to have much tighter control over the black and white conversion process by being able to dial in brightness values for red, green and blue or at least by choosing from a selection of black and white filter presets.

As it stands right now this is a fine app for one simple task that does an awful lot right. I believe they've gone a little too far with simplifying by not including a black and white mix option and they should look at making fine control of those sliders easier. In a perfect world I'd like to see some dodge and burn options to further improve the black and white control. The quality of the application's results is excellent, however, and if you only want that simplified, limited set of options then Colour Splash Studio might be just the app for you.

So far so good right? Right - I love innovative ideas and I'm delighted to see Nikon coming up with some creative new features. but I can't help feeling these cameras aren't aimed at me. For starters there's the 10 megapixel resolution which is a good bit lower than I'm accustomed to. Even camera phones are getting close to the 10 megapixel mark (the new iPhone will likely have 8 megapixels). Also the on-camera buttons and controls have been pared down to something similar to a point and shoot. No scroll wheels under your fingers here. Not even any dials for selecting aperture priority, shutter priority or manual mode - even on the big brother V1 model. Then there's those new shooting modes. Do I really want to fill my memory cards with motion snapshot video? Do I want to go through the process of picking the best shot out of 5 when I take a picture? Now I think of it those seem like they'd be more useful on a consumer focussed camera.

But then they also seem to be lacking consumer features. Neither model has a touch screen so there won't be any touch to focus or expose and neither model has a fold-out screen either. The V1 is also lacking a pop-up flash though an optional hotshoe flash is available at extra cost. They're both also very expensive compared to consumer cameras and then there's the extra expense of interchangeable lenses. They're also both lacking a built-in GPS, which is becoming an increasingly important feature. So if this camera isn't aimed at pros and it's not got the features of a consumer camera then who is it for?

Ironically it might be the video guys that find this first crop of Nikon 1 cameras most appealing. The V1 has a mic input and both cameras can use the 10-100 PD-Zoom lens with variable speed zoom. There's an optional add-on That 1080p video with great quality Nikkor lenses might be very appealing indeed.