Sometime in the past few days, the iPhone 4 became the most popularly used camera on Flickr – two months after TechCrunch noted that it was poised to take the top spot. The Nikon D90 now holds the second spot, although its share of users has remained constant whilst the iPhone 4 has surged to the front. The next three spots are taken up by various Canon EOS line cameras including the 5D Mark II, Digital Rebel XSi and Rebel T1i.
In terms of smartphones the iPhone 4 took the lead a long time ago but it continues to extend its lead. It is followed by the iPhone 3G, 3GS and then the HTC Evo 4G. Surprisingly the iPod Touch rounds out the top smartphone cameras at number 5.
The iPhone 4 becoming the most popular camera in the Flickr community comes after the iPhone 3G held the top spot for just over a year. It lost the top spot earlier this year as it saw a significant reduction in users as the iPhone 4 surged in popularity (just see the above graph and the drop-off in 3G users).
Just how many people are using the iPad 2 camera? (Answer: Not many)
Just 22 Flickr users out of more than 40 million use their iPad 2‘s camera to grab snaps, making it 200 times less popular than the iPhone 4. …the total number of images on Flickr taken with the tablet is a paltry 12,570. Number of iPhone images? 51,331,761.
Two things going against the iPad are that it’s unwieldy to use as a camera, and it’s not even a good camera to start with. When we took our test pictures, we got passable (but not really great) shots with enough ample lighting, but you’re still not going to be able to take the spectacular photos that the iPhone 4 can. Compare that to what the iPhone 4 is genuinely capable of in someone like Josh Helferrich’s hands: http://campl.us/6Qb.
The iPad isn’t currently a great tool for photography, and there’s a reason why Apple was seemingly reluctant to add it. Unfortunately, when Apple finally did add the camera, it feels like it’s just there to be there. Electricpig’s infographic makes the point that nobody is using this feature on the iPad 2.
With a note on the official company blog posted earlier today, photo sharing Flickr has announced improved compatibility of slideshows for the iPad’s Mobile Safari browser. By taking advantage of the device’s touch interface, you can now tap on a photo to view at a larger size in the lightbox, and browse through photos with a single swipe. The lightbox displays photos on a clean, dark background and you also have options to mark an item as favorite or quickly go back to the standard photostream.
Flickr also offers a native app for the iPhone, available for free in the App Store, which was recently updated with Retina Display support and sharing to Twitter through the flic.kr shortener. [via Daring Fireball]
It’s been rumored that with the next versions of iOS, and most notably the MobileMe service, Apple will heavily rely on the cloud to allow users to store media like photos, music and videos online and stream them at any time on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. A move to cloud-based storage would allow the company to produce cheaper devices with less internal storage, and let users access personal content anywhere as long as an Internet connection is available at the same time.
Photopod, an iPhone app available in the App Store and developed by Dear Future Astronaut, wants to become the ultimate photo aggregator and manager by providing a unified interface to browse pictures stored on a variety of online services. Think of it as a way to access content anywhere (and download it) using an application that does everything automatically through a tabbed “accordion” UI that brings Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Dropbox, Picasa and your Camera Roll all together.
Once authorized with the aforementioned services in the Settings (note that Twitter will only fetch images shared through TwitPic on your account), the main screen of the app will display a series of vertical tabs you can expand to reveal their contents — namely photos. As you open a tab, a list of thumbnail previews slides down allowing you to see all the photos you’ve stored locally or online. Tapping on the share button in the upper right corner will let you select multiple photos at once to upload them to a specific service. It’s very cool as it also lets you upload pictures from one service to another, or from your device to the cloud. You can also download photos to view them offline, or enter a basic editing mode that enables you to rotate and crop pictures. Everything is kept simple and accessible. Flickr, Facebook and Picasa even get menus for sets and menus you’ve organized your photos with.
I like Photopod because it brings the most popular photo sharing services together into a beautiful package that’s easy to use, fast, reliable and intuitive. The app is available here at $1.99, don’t miss it.
PhotoSync, a universal $1.99 app available in the App Store, has quickly become one of my favorite tools to enhance my iOS devices’ photo and video sharing capabilities. The app, which requires a free Mac companion software to be installed from the developers’ website, allows you to share photos and videos from your iPhone and iPad libraries between computers and other iOS devices running the app. PhotoSync can send multiple photos at once or sync entire libraries with iPhones, iPads and iPod touches, as well as PCs and Macs. (more…)
Vowl by Steven Frank is a straightforward Mac app, available for free in the Mac App Store, that generates an automated Flickr slideshow based on tags assigned in the app’s preferences. The app is really simple with its translucent black window style, and also allows you to click on any picture to get to the Flickr photo page with your default Mac browser.
In the preferences, you can set the delay between photos, add and remove tags (by default, the app comes with “cat”, “dog”, and “chicken” tags) and make the app float above other application windows. When resized to take the most part of your screen, Vowl becomes a pretty effective way to get random Flickr photos on your desktop, and I have to admit I loved the kitten ones.
The app is a free download here, or on Steven Frank’s website.
The latest Flickr update for the iPhone (Version 1.3) delivers some excellent new features for the Flickr community. EXIF data is now preserved across all of your photos (date, time, geo-data), you can batch upload up to five photos, there’s Retina Display support, and you can now share photos to Twitter via the Flic.kr short URL (which I must say, is a very cool looking URL). Your Flickr account just got much more mobile with their native iPhone app, and we recommend you download this update immediately — your eyes will thank you. Flickr’s official app is free on the iTunes App Store.
Slightly updated charts from Flickr, which show Apple’s iPhone 3G (released in 2008) is still the most popular camera amongst Flickr users. The iPhone 4 had a rapid increase in the Popular Cameraphones category, with the 3GS stable right below it.
Also, notice the perfect symmetry in the iPhone 4 and 3GS charts.
FlickExport by Connected Flow is a popular plugin for Apple’s iPhoto and Aperture which allows users to upload photos to online photo sharing service Flickr without having to leave the app. Today Connected Flow announced the release of a major update to FlickrExport, which reaches version 4.0 and, among a number of overall performance improvements and a simplified user interface, adds several new functionalities to an already powerful and full-featured package.
FlickrExport for iPhoto adds the possibility to upload videos, while both the iPhoto and Aperture versions got support for multiple Flickr accounts. All you have to do to add a new account is open FlickrExport’s window (which will sit on top of iPhoto or Aperture) and log in with your Flickr credentials. Switching between accounts is as easy as selecting one in a dropdown menu. Both versions are now also capable of uploading photos to multiple photosets, a much requested feature in version 3.x. Last, FlickrExport for iPhoto finally lets you edit a photo’s license once the photo is uploaded. (more…)
