Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large. 

Entirely shot on iPhone

It is a good weekend indeed when I accomplish everything I list out to do. Errands were done, a book was read, and the piano was practiced. While sometimes it is good to do absolutely nothing on weekends, I have to say it’s a nicer feeling come Sunday evening when the two days have been spent towards action. I guess that’s just how I am wired.

Now that I have my new MacBook Pro, I was finally able to put together my annual calendar (shoutout to the Apple Photos app and the Motif plugin). Made up of photographs I took throughout the year, the self-made calendar is what I give out to friends during Christmas. It isn’t exactly cheap at about $25 a copy (altogether), though cumulative speaking it is cheaper than buying individual gifts. Not that my friend group does that anyways. This year we’re doing a white elephant gift exchange, with a limit of $30.

It would be cruel, wouldn’t it, if I put my calendar into the white elephant pile. “Sorry guys, only one copy this year. Fight it out!”

After nearly a decade of making these calendars, this is the first year that every single photo was taken with an iPhone. The cameras in the iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 13 Pro are simply that good. I bet if I didn’t explicitly tell my friends the pictures were from a smartphone, they would not suspect otherwise. Smartphone camera technology have come a tremendously long way indeed. All hail the gods of computational photography, bending the rules of physics.

Perhaps then I should sell my Sony A7R2 full-frame camera. I honestly have only used it once this year, and otherwise it’s sat on the shelf collecting dust. Are there a huge demand for used cameras due to the global chip shortage, similar to the used car market? I’ve read the waitlist for the newest Canon full-frame mirrorless camera is six months!

Yeah, probably not. Once I can properly travel again, I would prefer to take the Sony with me. For the truly beautiful and breathtaking stuff, I still want the “proper” camera. For now.

Stainless.

Making of the calendars

It’s getting to be that time of the year when people agonize over what presents to buy to gift to friends and family. It’s also that time of the year when people procrastinate until the very final Friday before Christmas. It’s why I never visit malls - or even go outside - on that particular weekend: too much frantic, too much mayhem. The danger of an unsuspecting driver too worried about finishing his errands crashing into my car in a parking structure is immensely high.

Best to avoid all that.

In fact I avoid holiday shopping entirely by getting (making) the same present for everyone: a bespoke calendar for the following year, using the photographs I’ve taken in the current year. My friends receive something uniquely special and useful, and I save lots of money because each calendar only costs 20 bucks.

In the past fews years I’ve done this through Apple’s Photos app, utilizing their official printing service. The results are typically Apple, which is to say amazing and proper quality. Unfortunately, this year there’s a bit of hiccup: Apple for some reason have decided to end its photo printing products operation. What a shame; I guess the scale wasn’t enough for a company that sells iPhones in the billions of dollars.

So for those dozens (?) of users, we are relegated to using third-party companies. Two of those - Mimeo and Motif - provide an extension that integrates with the Photos app and offers a convincing facsimile of the discontinued official product. To produce my calendars this year I chose Mimeo, primarily because for first time users there’s a 20% discount. I’m actively saving up for an 911 so every single cent counts massively.

Having since received the calendars, I have to say the quality is surprisingly good. It’s not to the levels of Apple where the font design and layout of the dates is more clean and carries a simplicity, but where it counts the most - the pictures, Mimeo does the job well.

I do still miss the Apple version, but I’m glad there’s viable replacements readily available.

A study in uniformity and scale.

A study in uniformity and scale.