If you carry an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you also carry a great platform for displaying your artwork. While photographers such as Scott Bourne claim that they sold artwork straight after showing it on their iPhone, this has never happened to me. But I’ve shown my images in a number of casual settings, often by accident, since the topic just came up. Thus, it pays (literally and figuratively) to be prepared.

So how do you best showcase your artwork on an iPhone? Here are some tips:

Resize your images: The iPhone’s native resolution is 480 x 320 pixels at 163ppi. Since it allows you to zoom in, I resize my images to 960 x 640 pixels at 163ppi. You could make them even bigger, but since the iPhone’s storage space is limited, there’s a tradeoff between better resolution and more images.

Create portfolios: Similar to any showing of your artwork, create portfolios centering around subjects, trips or events, then pick only the best images. Store these as separte portfolios, then transfer them to your iPhone. When you show your artwork in a more ad-hoc or casual setting, people don’t have the time to look at 300 pictures. Thus, I typically pick between 10 and 20 pictures for a portfolio.

Adjust for the iPhone screen: The iPhone screen is not color-calibrated and to my eye, it’s very contrasty. Thus, I have to adjust my images, so they display at their best on the iPhone. Unfortunately, this is a manual process – there’s no one-setting-fits-all slider, button or action you can use in Photoshop. However, if you use a sequence of images in a portfolio that were all taken under similar lighting conditions, Photoshop, Aperture and Lightroom make it easy to apply adjustments to a set of images, so you do not have to do this manually for every single image.

What other tricks do you use to best show your images on an iPhone?

Billingham recently released their PhotoVest in an updated version. I wore one of them on a recent photoshoot – here are my impressions:

Good:

Pockets Galore: In fact, it will take you a few trips to figure out where to put what into one of 16 pockets this vest has and then to find the item quickly when you need it. But it is great to have so many pockets and I stored a huge load of gear in the vest without any problems at all.
Padded Collar: Often, the weight of all your gear pulls the vest down in the front, thus pressing the vest’s collar into your neck. Nothing you can do about it, but the Billingham collar is nicely soft-padded, thus no rubbing you raw in the neck. In fact, I did not notice any pressure in the neck, which is a good sign to me.
Comfortable wear: Initially, I wore the vest over 3 layers of shirts and sweaters. Later, I took on the layers off and tied it around my waist under the vest. No impact on the wear of this vest. It felt well balanced and “comfy”.
Short size: It’s shorter than most vests, which allows you to sit comfortably in a car with a lot of gear on your body. With longer vests, they get pushed up and are bunched around you. Not with the Billingham. Yet, its reduced length still allows you to carry long lenses.
Water-repellant, easy-to-clean outer material: Despite walking alongside a waterfall and getting even splashed on by a big dog coming out of a pool, water did not make it through the outer lining of the vest. I simply let it dry after using and then brushed off some of the dirt from the dog. Done.

Bad:

The price is high, but then, would you put $2000 worth of camera gear on a $60 tripod? With vests as with tripods, you get what you pay.
It feels thick, thus I assume that this is no summer vest, despite its vents in the back. More about that once I’ll wear it during summer excursions.

Verdict: Highly recommended!

Price: $398.00, Amazon: $279.95

At PMA today, DataColor announced SypderCube, a new RAW calibration tool. According to their press release, the all-in-one SpyderCube provides fast and accurate whitepoint correction as well as bracketed adjustments for highlights and blacks. The White face of SpyderCube helps define highlights in relation to the catch-light; the Gray face measures color temperature and mid-tone response; the Black face defines shadows in relations to the Black Trap; and the Black Trap defines absolute black.

One advantage of SpyderCube will be that it does not require specialized or proprietary software to operate effectively and can be used with any RAW conversion software available today to precisely adjust all photos taken under the same lighting conditions.

Availability: late March 2009

Price: $59

Every camera comes with a strap — why would you ever need a different one?

Just put your regular camera strap over your shoulder when you wear one of these micro-fiber jackets — it’ll slip constantly and you’ll be adjusting your camera position all the time. But there’s a solution: The Upstrap. It works so much better than your regular camera strap: its surfaces does not slip and provides lots of stability; it’s made from very flexible materials; and none has ever deformed or ripped no matter what I did to it.

That’s why the strap that comes with a new camera never even gets unwrapped. As soon as I order a camera, I also order the Upstrap.

Highly recommended!

Price: $32.00

When it comes to photo bags, preferences vary. But no matter what bag I’ve tried so far, my main shoulder bag has remained the same over the last four years: The Domke F-4AF. It’s very versatile, extremely well put together and in typical Domke-style, it shows that attention was paid to every single aspect of the bag.

Don’t be fooled by it looking rather small; let me assure you that this bag holds more than you would expect. Its interior consists of one bigger and two smaller departments. To illustrate what you can store in the bag, let’s just look at what’s in mine:

In the bigger department, the Canon Speedlite EX420 flash is placed on the bottom, followed by my Canon EOS 5D with the 24-105/f4L mounted on it. This way, I can just grab the camera by the lens, pull it out and be ready for action.

One of the two smaller compartments holds my Canon 50/1.8 as well as the 70-300/f4.5-5.6 DO IS, whereas the other one houses the 70-200/f4L. Except for the 50mm on the bottom, all lenses are in the bag with their lens hoods mounted!

In addition, I fitted one of the two side pockets with a padded insert, so it now offers enough space for my Canon 1.4 TC, my 85/1.8 and the 100/f2.8 macro. The other side pocket holds batteries, chargers, plates and other accessories, whereas filters and adapters go into the front pocket.

Overall, this bag is a winner. Highly recommended!

Price: $204.99, Amazon: $114.95

How do you know that any of the White Balance settings in your camera actually capture a scene the way you see it? You don’t! But don’t despair – WhiBal is one tool that will definitely help you overcoming this issue.

Rather than setting the in-camera white balance based on a test shot, here’s how I use it in the field: For regular shots, I take a shot with the WhiBal held in front of my camera first (this typically works only, if I use a tripod) and then I take the actual image. Back in my digital darkroom, I adjust the white balance based on the WhiBal shot in Photoshop. For panorama shots, I take the test shot with the camera pointing where I take my meter readings before taking the actual panoramic images. On my computer, I stitch the panorama first before applying the WhiBal white balance readings. While there’s a chance that the stitching software adjusts my some of settings in my stitched image, this has worked for almost all of my panoramas so far. If it does not, I manually apply the WhiBal reading to all my images before stitching.

While the use of WhiBal seems cumbersome, I spend much more time setting up for a shot, so the extra WhiBal shot causes hardly any overhead, while at the same time allowing me to capture very accurate white balance readings. This is one gadget that’s always in my bag.

Highly recommended!

Price: $36.95, Amazon: $36.95