Radically Retired

Tag: iPhone photography

  • Happiness Is – A New Phone at a Great Price!

    Happiness Is – A New Phone at a Great Price!

    Towards the end of last month, I traded in my iPhone 15 pro for the current newest in the line, a 17 pro.

    There were several June promos happening at my dealer’s store, so I jumped on.

    After my trade-in and all of the perks, I was out of pocket only $10.59 CDN ($7.45 USD) for a $1650 CDN ($1160 USD) phone, and this included a high-end case and an installed tempered glass screen protector!

    The deal required me to maintain a 2-year contract with my provider, at the same price point as the previous year. I’ve been doing this with my provider for as long as I’ve had a mobile phone, and am very happy with the service.

    I upgrade my phones according to the new technology in the cameras. This time, I liked the 48mp capability because this allows for large prints. I’ve always wanted to print some of my best shots on large canvas. Now, I can.

    My greatest excitement is the optic-quality 8x zoom native lens. It’s not a true optical zoom because it combines zoom and cropping to achieve the outcome. I’m OK with that.

    Red Winged Blackbird

    The above image was my first attempt with the 8x zoom. With shooting practice to ensure stability, and more experience with post processing to fix focus, I’m sure I’ll get satisfactory clarity.

    There are many other excellent upgrades to the iPhone camera in this model. I’m learning as I go.

    So far – zero regrets on the upgrade.

  • Stress Free Lesson Prep

    Stress Free Lesson Prep

    In recent years, I’ve been offering a free smart phone photography class for seniors here in our park.

    The class has been popular and teaching it has been a fun and rewarding venture for me.

    The only issue I’ve had is that as technology evolves and advances, prep for this course has always been tedious and time consuming.

    The 3-4 hour session is for both android and iPhone users. I shoot with strictly iPhone, but because there are many android users, I have to teach myself those camera systems too, so I can hopefully offer assistance to everyone in attendance.

    This year’s course is at the end of February, and I was dreading the prep.

    Hmmm, I wondered if ChatGPT could help.

    I entered what I was looking for, and after a couple of minutes of refining via the question and answer format of the app, voila!! I not only had the course outline complete with practice exercises for participants, but handouts were also created. All of this was returned to me in a printable pdf version.

    What usually takes many hours out of several days in preparation, took less than 15 minutes total this year.

    Thank you, ChatGPT!