In celebration of my 50th post on the Education Blog, I’ve decided to return to one of my favorite topics: using my iPhone as a tool for deep looking. In October of 2010, I was interested in using a special photography app (Tiltshift Generator) to place focus on particular objects within a case (read more…). iPhone photography technology, apps, and accessories have really moved forward in the past year and along with a new iPhone 4S (which has a better camera); I’ve found a new tool to take a REALLY close look at sculptures: a new macro lens offered through Photojojo!
In November of 2011, I had just started to learn how use my new iPhone when I was summoned to jury duty. I was practicing with my phone when I struck up a friendly conversation with a fellow juror assigned to my case, Russ, who happens to work at the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue, and who also happens to be a photographer. As luck would have it, ON THE SAME DAY, a NY Times article about iPhone Camera attachments came across all of our i-devices while sitting in the waiting area. This is where I first learned about lenses that attach magnetically to iPhones to give them new powers (well maybe not new to the field of photography- but at least to the field of iPhoneography).
With the approval of my new juror-friend-MacExpert-photographer, these lenses were definitely put on my holiday wish list. Luckily, all the fates aligned, and I’m now playing with the different lenses, figuring out how to use them for the powers of Education.
The lenses are a little tricky to stick on. You have to put a little metal ring on your phone attached with 3M tape. Once on, the lenses attach magnetically to the phone, though the ring comes off every time I take the lens off. It’s not as clumsy as it sounds, and each lens comes with a cap and a small loop that can attach to a lanyard. So far, I’m the most impressed with the macro lens and I’ve been experimenting with our touch collection in the Education Center. Photography always slows you down to look at objects closely, and I found that the being able to magnify particular parts of a sculpture really intensifies investigative looking.
Here are two examples of quick experiments with the macro lens. the photo on the left in each sequence is taken without the use of the macro lens attachment, and the photos to the right use the lens. Each sculpture is about eight inches high and they both have incredible details which are easy to miss.
I would be incredibly careful trying to use this in a museum setting with valuable art objects- you have to place the lens incredibly close to the detail that you are trying to capture. For teaching/touch objects and individual art projects there are countless applications.