Using an iPhone & iPad in Thailand Tips, App Reviews and News for the iPhone and iPad by Richard Barrow

How to shoot panoramas on your iPhone in seconds

DerManDar for the iPhone lets you capture and share panoramas in just seconds. It’s easy to use and its fun interface will change the way you take photos!

There is a new iPhone app out that is quite exciting for photographers like myself. It is called Dermandar and like it says on its website, it really can help you shoot and make a panorama in seconds. I did just that last night at the Democrat Rally in Bangkok. I took some pictures of the local area and then within seconds I had uploaded the panoramas onto Twitter. The picture above and at the bottom is an example. Click on them to see a larger image.

It is quite simple to use. Hold your camera in portrait mode (above left) and avoid tilting it in any direction. The camera icon at the bottom goes dark when you are holding it straight. Press this icon to take the first picture and then rotate to either the right or left. As you move the two shapes at the top will come together to form a circle. At that point it automatically takes a picture. Continue for as long as you like to either make a wide angle shot or a 360 degrees shot. To finish either press the camera icon again or just tilt your iPhone to landscape orientation. Within seconds a panorama is stitched together and you have the option to save or discard.

You don't need any special skill to do this as it is very easy. However, you do need to make sure people are not moving at the point where two photos are being stitched together. If you look closely at the above pictures you will see a few problem areas. With experience you should be able to get picture perfect panoramas. If you have a free Dermandar account, you can apparently upload to their website and then tweet to an "immersive 3D viewier page". I haven't done that yet but the examples on their website look great. I'm looking forward to testing this app out more on my trips around Thailand. Put a link in comments to any of your own photos shot in Thailand with this app.

Download Dermander for free on iTunes >>>

Camera Plus App for the iPhone

The built-in camera app that comes with the iPhone is getting better all the time but there are still some things that it cannot do. One major problem is exposure control. You can choose where you want to focus, but it will also take the exposure at that same place. I bought the Camera+ app specifically to solve this problem, though of course it does do a lot more. As you can see in the photo above, you have your basic auto-focus square target which you can easily move around the screen depending on where you want to focus. Initially in the corner there is a small plus sign. Click on this and the round shutter icon appears. You can then move this to wherever you like on the screen. In this case you can see it on the right-hand-side. I find this particularly useful when I am taking close-ups of food. I just move the shutter icon around the screen until I get the exposure that I am happy with.

There are more options to help you to take a good picture. The flash is the same as the normal app but you get a bonus of a continuous light if you prefer. There is also a stabilizer and countdown timer. As you can see in the top picture there is also a grid to help you get your pictures straight. When you take the picture, you can save it into the "lightbox" for editing or just save it straight into the iPhone photo album. There are lot's of things you can do like changing the orientation and cropping. You can also add some weird and wonderful effects and borders as well. However, I often use the filters in the "scenes" tab which help enhance your photo.

These two photos are a good example of how well the "clarity" filter works. Of course, in the above picture I could have used the "exposure" trick to get better lighting in the area where the guys are sitting. However, that would have made the background all white. So, I took a picture where the background is the perfect exposure and the area where the guys are sitting is dark. But, not too dark. Now,  normally to get both areas correctly exposed you need to use a HDR app that takes two pictures, one under and one over exposed. However, with the "clarity" filter you can get a similar effect with just one normal picture. Take a look at the result below. Of course, it doesn't work with every situation, but when it does it is really great.

Download the Camera+ app from iTunes for 99 Cents >>>