PED-3, the perfect iPhone stand

If you follow this blog, then you will know that I have the perfect iPhone tripod in the form of the NAJA King. Well now I have the perfect iPhone stand in the form of the PED-3, that if used with an app like PhotoFrame can turn your iPhone (or iPod Touch) in to a digital photo frame. Whilst I know that the iPhone only has a small screen compared to most digital photo frames currently on the market, it does have the added advantage of being portable, so you could have one on your office desk and have your favourite photo's running as a slideshow.

PhotoFrame (App Store Link) is priced at 59p ($.99), shows the date and time, and allows you to load up to 20 photo's and play them back as a slide show.

The PED-3 as with the NAJA King is available from Thoughtout in the USA priced at $39.99 or The Mac Cafe in the UK/Europe priced at £34.99

PED-3 iPhone stand + PhotoFrame App = Portable Digital Photo Frame.

NAJA King, the iPhoneographers tripod

So you're an iPhoneographer, and it's Christmas time, you've bought yourself a self-timer app so you can use your iPhone's camera to capture yourself and your family enjoying the festive season, but wait how do you set up the iPhone to take the family snapshot? You could prop the iPhone up and hope for the best, or you could get yourself a NAJA King. This neat and portable flexible iPhone stand is the perfect tripod solution for any iPhoneographer. Concisiting of 2 parts, the holder and the all important flexible coil which allows you to posistion the NAJA King in any position you like.

I used one of these myself on Christmas day, to capture the families Christmas dinner. I placed the NAJA King and iPhone out of the way, and set up the self-timer app to capture the festivities. All seemed to go well, until I checked the end results, which sadly due to a problem with my chosen app (but this is another story) failed to capture the events. Despite the software problems, the NAJA King, which is portable enough to fit in your jacket pocket so you take it where ever you go, proved to be the perfect iPhone tripod (OK I know it does not have 3 legs, but with its coil, can't really be called a monopod either), and is now part of my iPhoneography kit.

The NAJA King is available from Thoughtout in the USA priced at $39.99 or The Mac Cafe in the UK/Europe priced at £34.99.

iPhone App Review: FotoTimer

Recently there have been a few iPhone camera self-timer apps appear in the App Store, so I decided it was time I check one of them out. As they all do the same basic function, I decided to make my choice based on price. I decided that I did not want to pay much for this basic function, so had a choice between the 59p NaughtyNuts Camera Self-Timer Lite and the 59p FotoTimer from Mac About Town, and decided on the latter.There is not a much that can be written about a self-timer app, as all it does, is delay the time between pressing the shutter to take a photo, and the time the actual photo is take. In the case of FotoTimer you have fixed delay times of 2 seconds, 5 seconds, 10 seconds and 20 seconds. Also on the apps interface is a camera icon that you touch to initiate the self-timer to take the photo, a retake icon and an icon to save to camera roll. In addition to the interface icons there is a small count-down timer showing how many seconds left before the snap is taken. Overall this app is quite good, doing exactly what it says on the tin, however it has what I consider to be quite a major shortcoming, and that is, it has no audible sound to indicate when the photo is about to be taken (this feature is also lacking from NaughtyNuts Camera Self-Timer Lite, but is present in the more expensive NaughtyNuts Camera Self-Timer), and is the only additional feature I would like to see adding to the next release.

Likes:

• Ease of use
• Simple interface

Dislikes:

• No audible countdown

Whilst testing this app I came across one big problem (not with the app), and that was how to position the iPhone to be able to take photos using the self-timer, and that is because typically if you are using a self-timer app, it's so that you can also be in the photo. Well for those out there reading this article, I may have found the solution, the NAJA King from thought out. With this unique iPhone stand you can position your iPhone easily in an upright position on any surface, check the composition, touch the camera icon and get in position, ready to be included in the photo.

Overall this is a good app that can be greatly enhanced with the use of a stand like the NAJA King.