Common Problems With the Selfie Stick

This accessory is a must for the trigger happy traveler. Gone are the days when you need a dedicated camera to snap something interesting. Gone are the days of composing a scene before snapping a photo remembrance. Anyway interesting bits throughout your travel happens in a spur of a moment, unplanned adventures and random scenes. This is why you need a point and shot snapper, but of course you want yourself to be in the scene as well, that's why a £7(or less) investment of a selfie stick is not that bad idea at all..



Although simple, it also comes into different models and different minor disappointments. This post will give you a head start on what to expect using the different models and hopes to help you decide which one to go for.

Triggers

• Compatibility of the wired trigger stick.

With the two main operating systems, android and iOS, the later is a bit primadonna, not every stick is compatible to apple product. This is because of the 3.5mm male socket of the stick. It somehow can not activate the volume sensor inside the iPhone's 3.5mm input.

So if you have an apple product, be sure to test it in the store, or if you are not allowed to do this, try it as soon as you pass the door so it is easier and faster to return or swap for another product.

If in case you have bought it and could not exchange it for any reasons, you can keep it and just use your remote earphone (volume control -/+) to control the camera button.

• Bluetooth trigger blues.
  

With the above problem, you might be contemplating of just buying a bluetooth trigger stick. This is also not bad, but in my experience of pairing, turning on the bluetooth is  a hassle for me. Plus the fact that bluetooth transceiver on both devices uses power and it could affect specially the phone's stamina. Another problem when you are running low on battery is the phone swithes to power saving mode and this usually turns off the unnecessary connectivity of the device, bluetooth included. The stick might go low bat as well adding to your disappointment.

In case this happens, setting up the timer could save the day but a little fiddly, or just use the remote earphone!

Barrel 

• Smooth model.

Unstable holder rotating to either the right or the left is a design flaw. If you have this problem, 100 percent you are using a stick with a smooth body. When new, this is still tight and can hold your mobile phone in place, but because of wear and tear, it becomes loose. And depending on the weight of your mobile phone, heavier ones are more affected and it's position to the center, it will rotate either each side when you extend the stick to adjust the subject's position. This is so far the most annoying problem and this is the time to upgrade to a grooved model.

• Grooved model

The grooved model has not given me as much annoyance as the smooth one. You just need to choose a sturdier model though. Specially when you have a heavy phone, you will be better off with a bigger diameter barrel. Using it most of the time with the barrel extended to its maximum can bend the stick and positioning it too much at an angle can also misaligned the trigger button from the protective sleeve, causing a miss shots. But this is easily corrected by manually rotating the sleeve to correspond to the triggering  mechanism!

The Problem With the Selfie Stick and the iPhone

Since the introductiion of the front facing camera on mobile phones, a new word has been coined in the dictionary, a new past time has been added to social media fans, and a new business opportunity has opened to those with creative minds, the selfie,taking selfies and the selfie stick!

Innovation with the selfie stick has evolved as well, from the simple attach and go to the latest with cabled or wireless  remote controls.  Though these new sticks do not cost that much specially with the wireless remote, do we really need them? Or if you already have the earlier version of the stick, is it worth to upgrade?

I am not a big fan of taking self portraits and I really feel awkward when involved doing it but I admit it is actually a good tool when you are on vacation with family and friends. Most of my friends do it, and all my family enjoy doing it, so yes, we really need to get one to satisfy the selfie trigger happy finger. We do have the very first built, just the stick with no remote at all.

It would be nice to have a remote controlled one, as my wife finds the bad combination of the apple device, which do not have a native self timer with the iPhone5, and the regular selfie wand to be a pain when she takes pictures.  Second party camera applications can settle this discomfort but still the trouble of touching the screen to set it up when the view is perfect is also annoying. The other stick with a built in cable remote do not work with apple though it works with android.

If you have the same problem as my wife then I guess you are contemplating of dipping into your pocket for the wireless remote controlled selfie stick.

But before you splash out some cash,  there is a simple solution to this using an accessory that comes with the iPhone, the earphone.

How it works?

 It can act as a remote to take photos when the camera application is active. It is so easy to use, just plug it in to the earphone jack, start the camera application, position your phone to the selfie stick, then when ready to take a photo, just press either the up or down volume button.

How to set it up?

With the iPhone 5 and later models, you do not need to set up your phone. Plugging the earphone to the 3.5mm jack activates the volume control of the earphone to act as a trigger. I am not sure about the earlier versions, but you can find this out easily. If it can take pictures when you press the volume button of the phone, then the earphone should work! Happy snapping!

Upload Photos in a Flash

Holidays means photos, and there's nothing that can stop you in recording memories specially now that they can be stored digitally on a stick without worrying about the cost. But the temptation to share it to the world  through social media or emails can be hindered by sluggish upload, specially when your photos are taken with a high resolution camera. Not to mention the bandwidth your ISP provides, as they usually deliver lower digits for uploads compared that for the download. This  means the speed when you are uploading is just a quarter or less  than when you are downloading..

To compensate on this situation, one of the solution is to reduce the file size of the load. You might already be thinking of photoshop or other premium paid for application, but believe it or not, you do not need one to do this. It is already built in to every windows computer, an under rated application that in fact the most common tool that I use when I open up my laptop.

The Paint Program

This is under the accessories (1)on earlier versions of windows up to windows 7 and can be accessed using the search function(2) on  windows 8 and newer versions by typing paint or mspaint.

The Paint application is a "basic" photo editing program built in to every windows operating system. Though it can't do extensive editing task that other premium apps can, reducing file size of a picture with it is very easy. Here's are the steps.

• Load photo to paint.

There are many ways to do this, one is going directly to the picture  folder where you keep the photos you are planning to upload . As you will be using the paint to edit the photos from this folder, it is more practical to set them all to open with paint. To do this, right click one of the pictures, and if you see that paint is not selected as default (4), click change, select pait(5), OK(6), then apply(7). Now, all files with the same extension as the recently changed default program will open with paint(8).

Another way is whilst paint is active, you can load the photos by using it's built in browser, click the dropdown  menu at the top left corner(9), open, choose the correct folder(10) and the correct photo file(11), then open.

• Paint compared to other photo editors.

The good thing about using paint when reducing file size is, it renders the original size of the picture. Not like other applications that pictures are automatically rendered to fit the screen, no matter how large the file size is.

Below is an original  picture size using Irfanview. I can also use this program to reduce it's size but because it is rendered full blown, it will be hard to know how many pixels or percentage I am going to reduce it to.

Rendered by IrfanView

The paint version might not be attractive at first as it shows the raw size of the image. This rendering is very useful and the the information  below, size of the file(A) and the picture view percentage(B) are important in determining how far would you go to resize it without compromising the the picture's rendition..

• Find Suitable Resize Value

Resizing is not just cropping though you can do this first to eliminate unwanted features. This also reduces the amount of pixels from the chopped portion. To find the suitable resize value, drag the slider(B) towards negative until the whole picture is fit to the viewer window. The resulting figure gives me 25%(D) of the original size. This means I can resize the photo down to 25 % (1/4)of the original 2.6MB(C) size and still gives me a viewable picture. Note that at this stage the photo is not yet resized.

• Resize.

Click the resize button(12) and tick percentage(13), type the value(25) then click OK.

The photo seemed too small(14) for the time because the viewer is still set to 25%(F). The size has been reduce to 187.KB from the original 2.6MB.

To see the correct rendition, slide the percentage to 100%(G),  the whole picture at 187 KB(G)! As this file is way lighter than its original size, this will upload faster, uses less bandwidth, but the rendition will still be the same.

• Last Words

The only downside for this is when you are planning to further manipulate or enhance the image, smaller file is limited to what you can do so before you resize your photo's,  it is recommended to make a backup of each picture you will be editing. I found out that creating another folder side by side to the original is easier, Just rename it any name you like, then from the original folder,  copy the pictures you will be manipulating and paste on to the new folder.

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Portable Scanner

Do we really need a scanner? Not everyone needs this but for someone like me who does a trickle of agency work, a scanner is a must. This is to "monetize" receipts that incurred whilst performing a job, for obvious reasons, cashbacks!

The traditional method of scanning with a dedicated machine is not as pleasant as it may look especially that I have an old machine and am not ready to upgrade it to a newer model that has a USB port or the ability to send the scanned image to a cloud storage. But again although it is easy, it still takes me at least 10 minutes from start to finish, connecting the scanner to the computer, scanning image. reducing the size, and emailing to the agency. That is without the hiccups of "scanner not detected",  or "program needs to update before you can use application" errors.

Quicker method is taking a photo with a smartphone, trimming the unnecessary edges then sending it, only to find out the image is not legible and need to send another one. This means the pay is delayed until this is cleared!

Fig 1. Native camera shot with manual editing

The better method is the first one, but still not the easiest. Merging the better and the quicker method may be my dream of yesterday, but today, thank you for the coders of CamScanner that they merge this two features and cut the time of processing in less time.

This is a cross flat form  application and can be downloaded from google's play, apple itunes or windows application page.

How to use it?

Scanning .

After download, open up the application then touch the camera button and take a snap to the document you want to to scan(1), continue with tapping the check button. At stage two(2), the application comes to work and it detects the edges automatically(2),tap check button. The next stage comes the magic, it stretch the image and give straight line at every edge, making it looks like professionally edited. The result is far better than just using the native camera and editing it manually.

Fig.2 Using the native camera with CSscanner

Sharing.

Emailing your scanned image is easy as well and you can do it within the application itself. Just tap the share button at the bottom of the application and you can choose to sent it as a jpg or pdf file(5). You can then email it(6) or send to your dropbox or google cloud storage. It also capable to transfer it with other devices through bluetooth or the faster wi-fi direct!.

Image quality.

I experimented in emailing and I could not fault the image quality. The result is better than the manually edited version. It is quicker to process and it does it all automatically.

Last Words.

This application became one of the useful programs I have downloaded. It also support OCR which means can distiguish text when you scan something. Although you do need to download another additional program. It can scan single images at a time, this means even if you take two photos side by side, it can only scan one of them. So if you have multiple receipts to scan, you need to do it one at a time. It is also best to hold the phone upright and not sideways. This is to avoid manipulating the object later to it's proper orientation, though you can do it within the application if you just did it sideways! Also when emailing, I prefer to use jpg because pdf usually is in a bigger file. You can also use the app to revive old photos easier and more comfortable than using a bigger machine.

Practical Photo Sharing Tips

Have you shared your photos yet taken during christmas and new year? Gone are the days when you usually share them using the post. This time it is easy using digital snaps and the internet. In just a few clicks, your family and friends can already see whom you were with and what was in the menu.

Sometimes it is not really straight forward to upload photos, especially when you are using large photo files from an SLR or from any high megapixel camera. As they are so big, it takes time for you to upload them. And when it is uploaded, depending on what device they use to access them, your friends may have a problem in downloading them.

Here's a practical explanation on how you can upload faster and how to get a copy of a photo that can not be downloaded.

Upload Photos Faster

You can upload an image faster by reducing it's size. But before that, you might like to trim or crop the photo to remove unwanted elements. If you are using a windows computer, you do not need to additional software as the paint program can do this.  After cropping, next is to resize it. 

Paint is my favourite program to do resizing because it shows me the correct dimension as you resize it, and I find it very easy to use. Other programs automatically fill in the whole photo in the screen as a default view.

An 8.3MB photo. Using paint, you can preview the size of the image whilst using the adjustment at the right.

Here's the photo at 25% of the original size. This means it can shrink the 8.3MB at 25%  and still get a reasonably good photo size.

At this stage, I tried to resize it by 25% of the original 100%. 

If you think the size is still high, you can still resize it. I did resize it a bit more until I come up to a 679KB  from an 8.3MB photo file! This means this can be uploaded, theoretically, 12 times faster!

It will also benefit those who will be viewing your photo as they will have 12 times faster loading and use 12 times lesser bandwidth, especially those using mobiles and dongles on a low data tariff. 

Resized or not, when a photo is uploaded into a site's server, it will still be resized, especially on social networking sites like facebook. So it is better to resize whilst the photo is still at your hands to benefit from faster uploading.

Photo's Can't Be Downloaded

There are sites that the web masters disable the right click menu. This means you can not bring out the save as menu to save an image. If this is this case, a straight forward solution to copy a photo is to do a screen shot. To do this, go to a page or a photo you want to copy, press Prt Scr button, open up paint, then press paste then save. 

If you have a problem downloading emailed photos on your facebook email account using a FB application on your smartphone, do not worry, there is nothing wrong. This is just how FB designed their apps, it doesn't have the necessary button to download. The soft keys menu are not helpful as well.

Good news is, you can download this using the smartphone's built in browser. Go to http://m.facebook.com, navigate to the emailed photo attachment and a download button is just below the image. You can also use the left soft key to bring out the download menu.

How To Do Selective Colouring Effect In Seconds

This is a trick where in the artist wants to emphasize an item in the photograph, by making everything in black and white and the main item in colour. If you search for the word selective colouring effect or colour popping, there are online step by step instructions on how to do this trick, but for a novice like me, those instructions are a bit lengthy and seems like complicated. Tricks involved are tweaking the photo's saturation, layers, flattening, and other terms I really could not understand, and too novice to comprehend. And the fact that they use paid for imaging programs have put me off and I am sure to those who do not want to spend a penny but would like to try their hands and want to make their photos  become a bit more creative. So how we can do this in seconds then?

Look at the photo effect I did in a matter of seconds. The task involved is just pointing the mouse over to the parts you want to colourise. The only hard bit is adjusting the size of  the  mouse tracing.

1.Original Photo                                  2.When Loaded at Leaf Interface                         3. While colour tracing the loaded pic

Finished Product

How to do it?

1. Download the leaf at http://www.bendigodesign.net/leaf/

2. Open the program and open the photo you want to work on by clicking the open file option. Once the photo is loaded, it is automatically transformed into greyscale, so no need to tweak it. You can start working and turning it into popping colour effect straight away.

2. Use the slider button to adjust the size of the virtual wand and slowly hover over the area you want to colourise.

3. Then just save it when you're finished! Done, simple no fuss.

Do More With Digital Moments

Festive season is one of the best times to record smiles. The awe from a child's face while opening up gifts is priceless taken at a perfect moment. Get together atmosphere lingers in the air and immortalised with a snap or two. A picture of happiness and togetherness stamped at a time, in a place, one at a time.

May I ask, what are you planning to do with the photos you have? My first guess is to upload it at a social network site, then to video hosting sites or email to friends, or just sit on the computer's memory  waiting to be accessed after the last bubble of eagerness bursts!

What you are doing my friend, is just sharing the priceless memories you have in a digital form, the downside of this is, these digital images are like dreams that can only be accessed when you're asleep. And to see it in a particular dream is another story and effort. What I mean is, digital data, as it is easy to produce and reproduce and so easy to distribute is somewhat making these priceless memories looking "cheap" and less important. Another thing is, you cannot physically see them without a device!

To keep  memories as precious as ever is to convert them into hard copies, develop them, print them, make items out from those smiles. And you do not need to leave the house for this purpose as you can do it online!

Getting Started

1. First step is to create an account with an online photo service, I personaly choose boots, mypix, truprint, photobox, jessops,  and asda photo, for their wide range of services and projects, and easy registration process that you do not need to reconfirm your email when you register first time.

Create an account with any of the following to get started!

Asda    

Boots

Jessops
myPix 

PhotoBox

Truprint

2. Before you can upload your pics, Asda photo, jessops, or myPix will let you download their own uploader software. This will be automatic when you press upload photos. Just let it install in your system or just allow the software to run and once installed, a windows explorer type interface will be embedded in the upload page, here for example is photobox uploader window.

3. Now you are ready to upload. This is the most painful part as uploading is harder than downloading. You might have 10MBPS download speed but 0.34MBPS kbps upload speed. I would suggest at this point to edit your pics properly,  crop unnecessary parts, or reduce the file size and put all photos for upload in one file before you try uploading photos.

Check your download and upload speed here

4. Once you have created your online photo album, you can order prints from all of your album's content or handpick the pics you want. Online editing of pics is also available. You can also experiment by making a PHOTO BOOK, or use your pics in making novelty items. There are a lot of projects to choose from which can make your memories special and a treasure to keep as well!

Prices for standard photo prints start from 5pence to 8pence per 3 X 5. Below is from PhotoBox and myPix screenshots.

Standard Photo Prints

PhotoBox

myPix

Photo Book

And Many More

How to recover deleted file on a memory card

One of my friends, 'Te Lorna should remember this, accidentally deleted the files on her camera while transferring it to her computer. Wrong button was all it took, then all gone! Nada! No more happy memory pics! Did it happened to you? It did to me several times, and everytime it happens, I never thought of possibly recovering it, because I do not know how things are stored electronically and how they are deleted.

Deleted files, based on what I understand by reading posts and other resources, are not really deleted, they are just not allocated a name and place that can be seen by the computer. When you search an SD card's directory, the computer could not find any name on a particular address, and that makes the computer say, no file detected.

A specialist software scans for every digital data stored in a device, and could see anything invisible with the computer's point of view and could read and bring it back whatever is left. Just like a scavenger, finding pieces of trash in the bin, and bringing it back with the hope that there are still things unbroken and put into use!

A specialist software, although free, the one I used in the previous post will help us in this tutorial.

Oh no, my deleted files!

A friend of mine, way back in high school , Nora,  now in Germany, visited us en route her training here in London, and another classmate, Eya, joined us just to see each other again. Imagine not able to see one another for the last 26 years? Every pic we took counts a lot. Until I decided to transfer everything in my laptop. The laptop's battery is old and can not hold a charge any longer than 3 minutes, so it is always plugged into a wall socket every time I use it. And this time, I forgot to check if the wall socket's secondary switch was on. I did CUT on the pictures, which I always prefer than to COPY, from the SD card and started the transfer, when the unexpected happened, the power was cut, and so was the transfer, and the content of the memory card was wiped out, !

Thanks to GlarySoftUtility which is free to download at

http://www.glarysoft.com/products/utilities/glary-utilities/download/ ,

the same software I use in the last post.

Recovering the files

1. Open up Glarysoft Utilities, goto MODULES TAB, then select, PRIVACY AND SECURITY, FILE UNDELETE

2. A window of the utility will be shown and choose which directory the memory card you want to recover by using the dropdown menu. Highlight the directory, then click search

 

3. The Utility will search for files, damaged or not

 5. Click on the files you want to recover, at this moment I have chosen all, and click restore. , then specify a directory or folder for easier archiving. This time I decided to create a folder for recovered items at my desktop

6. The recovered and unrecovered files. The file recovery is not always perfect for some reasons like how long the item is already deleted, the longer it takes, the unlikeliness of recovery is higher, as the file allocation might have been overwritten by most recent photo, files shown here are the files recovered fully (with thumbnails), and the files not fully recovered(only represented by icons).