Wow - NFC Fun!

I'd been wondering when I'd have a chance to play with the NFC on my HTC One...!  Turns out it was on the train on the way home the other day...and guess what?

It did *absolutely* NOTHING... ;p

Greater London...

Yes, getting there, I think! ;)

Going to see Santa...!

Okay, bear in mind I'm still getting used to this new way of shooting...but here are a couple of Zoe highlight reels from the weekend...!
First up Reigate Garden centre -

- then Chessington Garden centre -

- (I need a few more dedicated stills in the middle of the "zoe"'s I think...we shall get there!  Now to tidy up my telephone (it's basically full!) using my free new 23Gb storage on my dropbox account (phew)!

Update - Wow, typed in my password on the phone and it did it all automatically...!  HTC One = amazing... ;)

Zoe, zoe, zoe...

...yeah, so I'm still trying to work out how best to use Zoe...you can do this sort of thing...(it's an automatic process, but from the looks of things they only stay on the server for 700 days)...I really wish you could upload the excellent slideshow (there may yet be a way I haven't discovered), but when I had a look at the files on my storage card this morning --over the weekend-- I took 5.1Gb of Zoe "pictures"...this is just *way* too much to use for routine purposes, finding space for all the Canon shots is bad enough, no way I can cope with that sort of volume of files...!  So I'm going to have to prune very carefully and Flickr I think...

There was also a rumour of a load more dropbox space for getting this telephone, so I'll have to look into that also...humph... :S

Update - Ah, what I am after is actually called a Zoe "Video Highlight", I'll have a play and get back to you... ;)

HTC One HDR Mode

(With HDR above, without HDR below)

Okay, so I've played around with the HDR mode on the HTC One a bit now (and eaten a nice Zizzi Pizza), and to be honest?  It isn't HDR as one would expect, it does indeed spend a bit longer taking the pictures and the results are *slightly* more colourful, but they don't look a huge amount different to me...slightly more vibrant colours, and almost all over/under exposed areas are filled in with more detail (admittedly), true blacks are certainly *slightly* blacker, but I'm sometimes hard pushed to remember which was which when I'm flicking through the images (true for the pizza shot (bar this illustration), but the combined exposure on the landscape below image basically saved it) for a well lit, semi-macro shot the exchange you are going to be most worried about is potential for fixed detail traded for very slightly worse focus/some blurring (making it hard to pick between them - as both have their own flaws) -

(above is with HDR on, below is HDR off)-

Landscape - Without HDR it's more moody, and truer to "reality", but the extra detail more than makes up for that (it's *clearly* a subjective thing though)...I think I'm going to put it on as my default shooting mode (as the final images are a bit richer - without looking silly) and see how I get on with the focus (as it could all fall to bits when I'm shooting something that moves around - unlike pizza and buildings)... ;)

Overall HDR mode seems (at this stage) to be slightly superior to "normal" shooting (imho), bracketing HDR and Normal each time seems a bit...well...*silly* though (or maybe that's just me)... ;)

Ethereal Shard

It just doesn't look quite *real*, it looks like a sympathetic digital rendering of London...very interesting light indeed... ;)

HTC One Camera

So I had a bit of a chance to play with the camera on my new telephone this morning (after picking it up yesterday)...you can click them to zoom in...

This one I took (and to the naked eye it was practically pitch black - if you need proof, just look below the street light and you can clearly see the pool of orange light it was shedding on the ground - *invisible* in daylight) very early in the morning on the walk up through the woods over the hill...it's a bit spotty and blurry, but frankly I'm blown away...this is the sort of picture I would have expected from my Canon 600D in these extreme low light conditions - not a telephone.

Again, still *really* dark to the naked eye (just a hint of the sunrise to come in the clouds on the horizon) the HTC one manages to find every single spot of light (and an incredible amount of detail) - this would have been a blurry mess on the Galaxy...


In bright sunlight now, at serious risk of over exposure (especially with the light in the background), it seems to have managed to get *everything* in focus...really impressive and absolutely pin sharp.

Now, the "Zoe" feature...this is an interesting one, it takes a bit longer to take a picture (you watch a red thermometer bar for what feels like about 3 seconds) but the effect on the telephone is like something out of Harry Potter...suddenly browsing through the gallery, the pictures come alive!  Each one contains a few magical extra seconds of video on either side of the shutter (it's clearly pre-caching the "before" footage)...the effect (especially in the slideshow where it tinkles in some appropriate music) is like -well- magic!  Check out a demo video here to get a better idea, but here are a few where I managed to pull the video out and into flickr (not quite the same) -

- so this sort of shot would just magically jump into life like this -

- you'll have to manually do it here on the web, but I hope you get the idea, if not watch the demo, keep in mind that these are regular photos - just with about six seconds of video context around them to "bring them to life"...a completely new thing and astonishing to see in action...another example -

Static pic in the middle...and surrounding HD video -

Now imagine these examples as romantic "Perfect Family Day Out" shots, where the kids spring to life being charming (no nose-picking, hitting each other, loud shouts of "NO DADDY!" or falling over), Mummy laughing and swishing her hair (minus "POPPY - DON'T EAT THAT - ITS POISON!" and "THOMAS THAT'S A MAIN ROAD - STOP RIGHT NOW!!!") and my goodness...you may have something like the marketing piece! ;)

Overall, it's got to be one of the best cameras I've ever had the pleasure of using, combine that with the 1080p display on the handset and...just - WOW!  Not even touched on the proper video mode, or the HDR capability!  More on that later! ;)