Florence Day 3 - part 2!

So after hitting the sheets for a nice sleep from 08:30 to 10 am and a nice refreshing shave and shower I was back out. I decided upon a trip to Il Duomo the biggest most famous church in the city. After walking through the main body of the church I decided to hit the 463 steps to take me to the top of the tower, the highest point in Florence. The fact that weather is pretty rubbish actually worked well with the misty scenes. Again all pictures shown here taken on the iphone5 (but I took duplicates on the proper camera for later comparison!).

After this it was shopping, including some lovely Italian leather for my gorgeous gf and then a change of shoes and socks as I was soaked again!!!!!!

A quick lunch on the way to the conference centre and into a great afternoon session on preclinical drugs to treat Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Great day (so far!)!

Florence Day 3

Ok, so it's still rather early, 08:18 to be precise but the alarm woke me over fours ago. Yes, up at 4 am and quickly ready before a 45 minute walk across town to get to this spot, which a friend and colleague had told me about. Amazingly, it was n't raining when I set out, nor cold which was good because having arrived at my destination I had some time to wait before the sun came up. Well, as expected it never did but I think I got some decent snaps anyway. All of these shots were taken with the stunningly good camera in my iphone5, can't wait to get home and do some comparison big prints versus the Panasonic micro four thirds camera to compare!!! The last two pictures (which were of course taken first) were in the virtual dark and I could not take them with my camera!!! It did start to rain again as I headed back to the Hotel San Maria Novella where I am staying but that was ok. After a hearty breakfast, I'm ready for a nap I think ;-)

Snapseed

There are quite a lot of apps available for iPhone photography and post production. In a rather boring lecture this morning I tweaked what I took last night using an app called Snapseed.

Below is the before and after......

What do you think?

Bloody weather!!!!!

Is it too much too ask for a bit of sunshine? Here I am in Florence and the forecast is for it to rain for the full six days I'm here :-(

Apparently, the sun is shining in Warboys!!!!

Florence

This place is amazing! Better than Verona? Certainly! Better than Rome, not sure, indeed more time to explore!!!!

First full day and after 8 hours in the lecture theatre I walk out into ...... rain and dusk. Bummer :-(

Oh well, so I wander downtown to hit the markets and the shops and decide to try out the HDR function. If you're not aware this takes three photos at different exposures and combines them so that everything is no too dark or bleached out. The shots look amazing considering the lighting conditions and the fact that it's a camera phone!!!!!

More to follow ........

Technology

So a few days ago I finally upgraded my phone. I've had an iPhone 3GS for three and a half years now and I've loved it. The things that it can do are amazing, beyond the phone and texting, even with pictures, I've used mine as a camera, for music and videos, a GPS for getting places and geocaching, a compass, a torch and for great web access. Anybody who says their non-smart phone is fine because it just does what it says on the tin is naive about what a smartphone can do and quite frankly is missing out on life!!

My good old 3GS was showing it's age though. For some time, as the battery got lower it would just shut down until I could plug it into a wall socket. Unfortunately, the % battery remaining was no longer 30 or 40 when this would happen but more recently had moved to 60 or 80.

So the new iphone 5 in black arrived at the weekend (Kate and I got new ones together). It was expensive and the monthly contract has gone back up but boy was it worth it!! As well as working at what seems lightening fast pace the screen (which is a critical part of course) is just wonderful. I'm liking the voice control with Siri too (now if only I could work out how to convert him into Kylie!!!).

What is actually quite scary though is the camera. It's early days and I've only taken a couple of shots and viewed them only on this wonderful screen but could it be that they are actually better than those taken on my £1000+ worth of Panasonic / Olympus micro 4/3 camera gear?????

Pictures from Florence to follow..... and that's another story :-)

P.s. How appropriate, I've just realised this is my first post from a phone