Roger2011 Loc: Central Illinois

I'm thinking about using my iPhone to get into the Soap Opera business, but I don't want to use people actors because they cost too much. Instead I would like to employ a downy woodpecker couple because they'll work for suet. Shown below is the couple, and as we can see, they're about to be paid in advance at a fancy restaurant.
For those who don't know, the guy is the sillier looking one with a red beanie. From the photo it looks like they're ready to start acting right now, but I haven't come up with a script or whatever it is soap-opera film directors use. Part of the problem is I don't know a whole lot about Downy Woodpecker Dining Etiquette, so I'm not quite sure how the scene should unfold from here anyway.

This is my iPhone soap-opera filming setup. I've attached my iPhone to a tripod and set it up about three or so feet from the dining table. I could have set my iPhone up to make a dining movie, but that would get boring fast and I can't show a movie here anyway. So instead, I purchased one of those bluetooth thingies that will trip the iPhone camera shutter whenever I press the button from my patio. Now all I have to do is wait for my actors to do something interesting and click.

Disclaimer. It turns out I didn't have to write a script or do any directing because my actors already knew how to act. All I had to do was click my little bluetooth button now and then. But before I post a few snaps of my resulting iPhone downy woodpecker soap opera, I was thinking about having a little contest right here to see who can come closest to predicting how the soap-opera scene actually unfolded. The winner will receive a round of applause from the remaining losers.

So what did this couple do in the next several minutes right at this nice dining table (pretend you didn't see the unsightly duct tape) in a fancy restaurant? It might help to know a bit about Downy Woodpecker Dining Etiquette. And like, who wears the pants in this family anyway?

I'll wait a week for folks to make their predictions and then put up some more photos on March 31.

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jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Great idea!

Roger2011 Loc: Central Illinois

Better yet I'll post the set of images in the Photo Gallery on March 31.

Wingpilot Loc: Wasilla. Ak

Great shot.

Fstop12 Loc: Kentucky

Nice image. What kind of Bluetooth remote are you using. You should continue your follow up set of images right here in the Smartphone Photography section.

Roger2011 Loc: Central Illinois

I looked back on my Amazon purchase history...

Hisy Wireless Smartphone Camera Remote for Apple/Android
Brand HISY
Connectivity Technology Bluetooth
Maximum Range 90 Meters
Number of Batteries 1 Lithium ion batteries required.
Place your phone down, step back & Click!
Recorded videos remotely
Be in every group photo

The main reason I got this item is its 90 meter range, about 3 times more than cheaper devices, which often didn't work even at 50 feet away. This one (almost) never failed. On cold days I'd set my iPhone up outside on a tripod, sit inside on a chair, watch birds and pesky squirrels through the sliding glass patio door, and click whenever something interesting happened at the feeder. However, the signal wouldn't reliably go through the closed patio door window or thick walls of the house, so I had to crack open the sliding door and hold the device near the crack. That worked just fine and I was spared most of the cold.

As for the followup images, the rules say no more than 10, which I will limit to. I will put them here if admin is OK with that. I think those images will be educational because they may provide incentive for others to exploit remote control of their iPhones. The 10 images I will show are part of about 150 or so I tooto k of those two birds with that bluetooth device over a period of several minutes from about 70 feet or so away. Unfortunately my laptop recently spontaneously disintegrated and I lost most of them, all because I never backed up anything. Fortunately I was able to recover a select few, the ones I will post here on March 31.

One last thing. The image I posted above was not the first in the sequence. She was there first, enjoying a meal all by herself when he sat down at her table, uninvited. A guy's gotta eat sometime, but right then may not have been the best decision.

Fstop12 Loc: Kentucky

Thanks for the info. As the moderator of the recently formed smartphone Photography section,I encourage you to post your Smartphone images,how to’s, etc, in our section.

Roger2011 Loc: Central Illinois

Thank you Fstop12, I'll do that.

I received a college degree in Electrical Engineering in 1967, back when they were still teaching design with vacuum tubes. I started using a cell phone—an iPhone—in 2016, and its camera in late 2018 and early 2019, through the iPhone Photo Academy. Today, my 11 year-old granddaughter knows infinitely more about how to use an iPhone than I do. I use mine primarily as a camera, telephone, and hotspot for my laptop. Acceptably high-quality images are now at the fingertips of anyone who can afford an iPhone. Attached lenses and focus bracketing have opened up a whole new macro world for me, not one that will compete with the 5-10X macro I expect to get from my expensive Canon-based macro system setup, but one that will impress a lot of friends and relatives who had no idea: You can do that on an iPhone?!

I struggled for months and months to learn focus bracketing on my iPhone because there wasn't much out there, and what there was, assumed a lot more from me than what I had. I was amazed when one day, a small pile of my wife's sharply focused, colorful, plastic-headed sewing pins filled an iPhone image. Not 1X by macro definition, but maybe (1/3)X or (1/4)X. Three or four Creeping Charlie flowers filling an iPhone image look a whole lot more inviting than three or four million Creeping Charlie flowers filling our yard. My goal in the coming months is to show anyone who is interested how to get sharply-focused images of flowers and fungi and cooperative insects as small as 1/8 to 1/4 inch in size on their iPhones.

Focus bracketing and stacking isn't as easy as point-n-shoot and takes some diligence and patience. But, at least for me, the rewards of seeing tiny things we too often overlook and step on appearing human-sized on the computer screen is simply amazing. I had written up more than fifty pages on the processes and posted the material in the iPhone Photo Academy Facebook group back in 2019, but people have to pay to see that. In this smartphone Photography section I could split the processes up into bite-sized chunks to make them easier for people to absorb.

jederick Loc: Northern Utah

Fstop12 Loc: Kentucky

Great idea! Bite sized chunks is a great idea.

al13

Thank you for information I can’t use my Fuji since my stroke so I purchased an iPhone12 pro I can only use my right hand so still experimenting.

Roger2011 Loc: Central Illinois

Sorry to hear that but what you need is a grandchild who loves to show you what she knows about iPhones. Unfortunately my granddaughter lives 2000 miles away, and we don't get to do much fun stuff together very often.

Tell Siri, "Say Cheese" and your iPhone will snap a photo for you.

https://www.popsugar.com/tech/how-to-take-photo-on-iphone-using-voice-48342620

Tito14 Loc: Central Florida

Very true, great shot!

Roger2011 Loc: Central Illinois

Who Wins the Feeder War? https://www.audubon.org/news/who-wins-feeder-war Some living beings take their dining experiences seriously and may not tolerate very well any deviations from their perceived norm. My experience in the United States is that a stranger does not seat himself uninvited at a lady's private dining table without expecting some sort of reaction. "Excuse me, Sir!?" I'm not familiar with established Downy Woodpecker dining etiquette, but shortly before the previous photo was taken, Ms Downy had been contentedly dining alone when Mr Downy seated himself uninvited at her table. What might have come next? "Excuse me, Sir!?" or something less formal?

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Roger2011 Loc: Central Illinois

Well, if you'd heard what I'd heard just then, we probably both would have agreed that this lady ain't no lady when it comes to fine dining. "Move it, buster!"

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