Wesley's Tool-Box

It's now been nearly two months since iPhone 5S and 5C debuted. They have been available to Koreans for nearly a month as well. So now it's not so hard to find them and take a look if you wanted to. Even half of the people in my team who had old iPhones already switched over to 5S.

If you remember, I gave up the much-sought but hard-to-get gold coloured iPhone 5S for the widely available space gray version because that would've been the only way I could get my hands on a 5S as soon as possible.

Looking back, I think I made the right choice. I was able to test it out earlier than most of the people. And I was going to put a skin on it as a basic protection anyway. This brushed metal style dark blue skin I put on really suits the phone well. When I finally got to see the gold version in person as you can see here, I still felt that my skinned iPhone looked better.


As for iPhone 5C, it did indeed look like someone put a coloured plastic case on a black iPhone 5. Nothing too impressive, really. I would have preferred the look of a 5th generation iPod Touch. I can definitely see how people would rather pay $100 more and get a 5S instead. This is perhaps why there are so many iPhone 5C ads in the city as well as commercials on TV.

Just a day after successful testing of the iPhone-based tracker, ISS made a nearly direct overhead approach in the sky as seen from my house. This would provide an excellent opportunity to take biggest shots of the station because it would be at the shortest distance from the observer when it's directly overhead.

As the space station rose in the southwestern sky at 6AM, I began tracking it with iPhone 5S and taking shots with SX50 HS. More than 200 shots were taken, and 44 photos deemed of good quality were selected for processing. You can see the animated version of the approach here, as well as the stacked version that bring out the detail of the station at three points of the observation.

This is the first time I could properly see the full spread of ISS in my photos - the solar panels and the main modules of the station in the iconic H shape configuration are clear and large, especially when it was only about 500km away. I'm frankly amazed that a point-and-shoot bridge camera could photograph a satellite this well even under ideal circumstances. We live in amazing times.

Settings: 1200mm (2x enlarged) - ISO 80 - 1/640s
Photos: 13 frames / 9 frames / 8 frames stacked using RegiStax 6.1.0.8
Time: 2013-11-12 06:00 - 06:02 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea

Earlier this month, I devised a way of photographing the fast-moving International Space Station (ISS) with Canon SX50 HS by tracking the station with iPhone 5S. The phone is mounted on top of the camera using a combination of smartphone tripod mount and hot shoe tripod adaptor. In essence, the phone would serve as a more or less "live wide view" unit, while the camera would keep shooting.

I had a good opportunity to test this setup earlier today, as the space station made its pass from the western sky in the early morning. I aligned the iPhone's screen with SX50 HS's by targeting a faraway object, both at maximum zoom. And then I waited for the station to make an appearance. As soon as I was able to spot it on the phone's screen, I started shooting with the camera.

In the end, I was able to shoot 41 consecutive photos of the station in the span of 18 seconds. This proved that the setup worked beautifully - the only limitation was the tripod not being able to position the camera higher than 70 degrees. Stacked image shows the solar panels of the station, as well as the docked Soyuz spacecraft that carried up the Olympic torch for Sochi 2014 games last week.

Settings: 1200mm - ISO 80 - 1/640s
Time: 2013-11-11 06:50:32 - 06:50:50 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
Photo: Top photo made by stacking bottom 14 photos using RegiStax 6.1.0.8
Animation: Continuous loop of the 41 photos shot

By default, iOS devices like iPhones and iPads use 4-digit passcodes for the lockscreen. You could also use alphanumeric passcodes that are more secure, but they bring up a keyboard on the lockscreen. This is rather cumbersome compared to a keypad.

What's often overlooked is that there is in fact a nice compromise between the two. You could use a long numeric passcode, and it'll give you a keypad just like when you use a 4-digit passcode, as you can see here. You do need to press a button after entering the digits, but that's because it won't let someone guess how long it is.

I think this is even more useful when coupled with the Touch ID in iPhone 5S. You can still use the fingerprint to conveniently unlock most of the time, and you'll feel more safe in that there is less of a chance someone else could bypass that and unlock using a passcode instead. And the "autofill" of the passcode when you press your finger to unlock doesn't reflect how long the passcode is, either. It just shows nine dots all the time. A perpetrator won't be able to guess the length of the passcode by glancing at your screen.

I had a chance to ride the Han-gang river cruise tonight. This is perhaps only the second time to ride on one, despite basically living in the vicinity of Seoul for nearly 15 years and seeing the big river very often.

The last time, I rode the ship during the day, so this was the first time I was able to see the riverside and bridges at night. Lots of lighting fixtures were installed on the bridges during the past decade, and they are quite a sight to see. Read on to see the photos of the bridges I took with iPhone 5S.