A Photowalk with my dog – Phone vs Pet’s Eye View
Ok, @instantdan gave me (well, my dog, Maggie) a Pet’s Eye View camera and the other weekend I finally got round to plugging it in and strapping it on (something tells me that Mary Bale would have done that the other way round).
I had my developer release Windows Phone 7 on me as I wanted to look into the user experience behind the camera and gallery on this device – remember this is not a public release phone which is why I’m only posting one image, so you can’t start a conversation about the quality of the images on WP7. Saying that, there’s two things about the interface I can immediately comment on.
Hardware camera button – pick up phone, press button, camera engaged. I don’t need to flick through screens to find a camera application icon, it’s there on the device. Also, I don’t have to worry about touching the screen to take a picture, that’s something which is awkward when the button is on the screen – I take quite a few pictures at arms length (with the wife, the kids, when I’m travelling on my own) and this makes it easier to frame and focus when held at arm’s length.
Previewing pictures you’ve just taken – you don’t have to leave the camera application – the image previews briefly, then slides to new shot mode. You slide your finger across the screen to move between gallery and camera mode. It’s a lovely touch.
So, a few things to note, I had the Pet’s Eye View camera to take pics every minute (you can set it to 1, 5, or 15) and most of the pictures from it were poor, don’t blame Margaret for that, she doesn’t understand about technique or appreciate camera blur, I tried to explain to her the need to keep still when taking pictures but let’s face it, she’s a dog.
The first shot is one from my phone with one of Maggie’s, where she took a picture of me, taking a picture of her, taking a picture of me. All the other’s a her own work. Woof.
Next time, i’m going to attach it to one of the kids.
