Justin is holding his above. The photo is printed on aluminum, which is the back of the case. Case edges are black plastic (also avail in white).

The fit is nice and tight. They look really sleek on the phone. I don’t like cases that bulk-up the phone.

These are slim and stylish.
Just like Justin.

$29.95, ready as soon as an hour from now.

Josh’s little troopers — iPhone 4 case

Happy Groom likes his Memento Canvas

“Hey Josh.… here is Jay with his PRINT!!  He loved it!!!   See the resemblance?  Ha!
Thanks for your services…“
– Saul

Saul is an accomplished digital artist.  He is also our client here at Memento.  So when Saul’s friend Jay got married down in Los Angeles, it was natural to create a great, original artwork as a gift.

The groom liked the canvas so much, he sent a photo of himself with the final product.

These canvases always seem to be a hit.  And especially with Saul’s beautiful work on them.

But here’s a tip that helps a lot:  Be sure that all your cameras are set to the same time of day!

For this purpose, it doesn’t really matter if the time zone matches your actual location.   So even if we’ll be time-zone hopping, we just leave our cameras set to the correct time back home.  We get the payoff so long as we have SYNCHRONIZED clocks.  And by “synchronized” I just mean “within a minute or two of each other.”  There’s usually no need to synch down to the second, which is good, because it can be a pain to achieve with several cameras.

Big Payoff by Synch’ing Camera Clocks

Here’s the almost-magical payoff: if we put all the files together in the same folder, and then SORT by DATE CREATED, then all the files will fall into chronological order, regardless of which camera they came from!

I can blast through the photos in less than halfthe time, by not worrying about whether this one came before that one, and oh wait, here’s a bunch that happened a few days earlier, and so on.  Instead, I can focus on the editing task: ranking photos using my software, deleting the terrible shots, and then running through them again until I’ve got what I need for my book.

If you need help learning how to set the time on your camera, please just call or email, we’re happy to help.

Complete Wall Design, Nine Canvases, by Memento Press

After giving us some edits, she approved the final wall design. About a week later, she had nine canvases to hang in her new bedroom. Here’s what she just wrote to say:

Dear Josh and Sheryl:

Stunning! It glows. Beautiful work, many thanks and Happy New Year! Lynn

If you have a wall that could use some inspiration, just call us or come by. We can look at your photos, discuss your wall and your budget. Then we’ll give you options that fit your needs. And you are never under any pressure around here. If you’d like to upload photos to us, just contact us and request a link. Then we can work via phone and email. And your canvases can be shipped just about anywhere.

We can turn any cell phone picture into a gift you’ll be proud to give.

Have a great picture on your phone?

Make it a gift!  Because we make them right here, they are READY FOR CHRISTMAS!

- Wine Box, $39.95

- Cuff Bracelets $19.95

- Metal prints $24.95 for 5x7”

The metal prints come either ready to hang on the wall, or with an “easel back” which allows it to stand up on a desk or mantle.

We have plenty of other gifts we can make including photo mugs, water bottles, travel mugs, silk scarves, mousepads and more.

Back when we got started, customers never had their photos with them.  Now, more and more of our photos spend their whole life in our phone!  The Metal Prints look especially good (I’ll be giving some myself) and come in sizes from 5x7 all the up to a gorgeous 16x20.”

All these gifts are made right here.  So we can have them ready for you in just hours!  Call or email to place your order.  Our personalized order-taking process ensures you get just the right gift.  And there is never any sales pressure.

Well, as many of us have discovered, modern smart-phones have surprisingly good cameras. An iPhone 4s takes better photos than a point-and-shoot camera from 5–6 years ago. I have to think this has resulted in more moments being captured than ever before.

But sometimes, even smartphones won’t cut it. Last Friday, I read a snippet about the next morning’s lunar eclipse. Here in San Fran, the eclipse would be visible (assuming no fog!) from about 5:30 to about 6:30 in the morning. I did a quick websearch to see if there was more info out there about the eclipse than the newspaper put on their website. Lo and behold, an astronomy+photography enthusiast pointed out that the moon would be RIGHT BEHIND the Golden Gate Bridge! This was a once-in-years (decades? lifetime?) opportunity to get the eclipsed moon along with a famous landmark.

2011 Dec Eclipse — near total © 2011 Josh Litwin

As they say, it’s better to be lucky than good. A friend had loaned me his beautiful pro 400mm lens (big gray one like you see on the football sidelines) to shoot the Blue Angels this summer. And I still had it!

My wife is great about letting me do these things spur of the moment. So the next morning, at 4:30, I popped out of bed, and headed for Crissy Field. We knew exactly where to stand, by using this amazing, nifty application. They did a terrific job with it, fun to explore all the different options.

Anyway, it helped me know just where to stand in order to catch this:

South Tower of GGB at Full Eclipse © 2011 Josh Litwin

Luck was with me in all but two ways:
1. It was much colder with the wind than I had expected.
2. My tripod was fine normally, but was too wimpy for this huge lens+camera

Quick trips to the car to warm up helped with #1. But #2 was just a bummer. I could not take a really long exposure, without getting jitter. So only a few of the photos came out sharp. Well, a few was enough I suppose. These shots got more “likes” and comments on my Facebook page than any I’ve ever posted.

Still, I know how much better they would have been with the right tripod. Now I just have to avoid the feature creep: yes now I have a good tripod, but what I REALLY need is one of those little motors that moves the camera slowly to follow the stars! Next Christmas…next Christmas.

–Josh

Tech talk:
Camera: Canon 5D MII
Lenses: 400mm OD f4 L series, 24-105m f4 L series
Tripod: something I’m throwing away
ISO: wanted 1000 max, but had to use up to 6400 for some, since my tripod was jittery
Shutter speeds: 1/50 down to 1/2
F stop: wide open, f4 for both these lenses
Autofocus: disabled, leave lens set to infinity, saves battery, avoids wrong focus. The moon is pretty far away.

What I’ll do with photos: make some canvases, give as gifts

Palace of Fine Arts at dawn HDR © 2011 Josh Litwin

BUT…the big emotional payoff is watching scenes you may have never seen before. Check out this great note from our client of many years, Charlotte:

Oh my gosh.  I finally looked at the tape you transcribed to DVD of Michael in his first 8 months.  I have never seen this footage before. It was mind blowing.  I got to see my dad (he’s been deceased since 2005), my mom almost 20 years younger, and of course Michael –first steps, first tooth, first crawling, laughs and giggles.

I was glued to my computer for 2 hours!

What great stuff.

So I found some more tapes. How much does it cost to transfer them?  I clearly need to bring in the rest.  {click here for pricing}

Thanks Katheryn,

Charlotte

Our customers are discovering the ease with which they can make a whole wall, or whole room more vibrant with photo canvases.

Scan + Restoration + Canvas = Beauty

At home, we find our customers will almost always use personal photos of relatives, friends, pets, favorite vacation spots.

But more and more customers are offices and businesses, that like the gorgeous quality that results from our pre-order attention, as well as the great value compared to traditional framing and art purchase. We’ve done several board rooms, restaurants, training rooms and so on. The client provides logos, product shots, mission statements.

Best Friends

We then show them concept renderings of how the whole wall or whole room will look. They can modify the size and placement we suggest. When everything looks just right to them, Memento gets to work creating canvases, ready to hang.

Private clients are using this same service when redecorating a home, or building a new home. They enjoy the same experienced service, which makes for a terrific look. You’ll be looking at those walls a long time, so why not have an expert help to make them look their best!

Contact us today, we’d be happy to tell you more. And there’s never any sales pressure around here.

But when someone asks for camera advice, my first question is always, “What’s wrong with the old one?“
Depending on the answer, the asker has just given me an important clue where to go with the advice.

Turns out this client was irritated by the annoying shutter lag most people associate with digital photography. Turns out the lag usually has nothing to do with “digital” and everything to do with “automatic.”

We’ve come to love and appreciate all that automation does for us. I’m not sure I remember how to focus a camera myself! But it’s easy to forget how much we’re asking of the camera’s little brain. This is especially true, considering the mere instant between when we start pressing the shutter release, and when that button “connects.”

Focusing takes the most time of all the auto functions. The other functions mainly deal with exposure, which can be measured and adjusted fairly quickly. So the camera makers instituted a feature that every camera has, that is perhaps the most useful technique in modern photography, and that almost no one knows about! It’s called pre-focus.

Pre-focusing is simple. Just point the camera in the direction you’d like to capture, frame your shot, then press the shutter release button down HALF way. If you press gently and slowly, you’ll feel an intermediate “stop.” Just let your finger rest there, holding the button half-way down, while you keep your shot framed. Then, when your Kodak moment arrives, finish pressing. You’ll think you have a new camera!

Experienced photographers pre-focus without even thinking. During the action, their fingers are always pressing down slightly on their shutter release. That’s a big part of the “magic” they work, in order to catch the perfect moment.

Please try it and let me know how it goes for you!

Blue Angels F-18 in a tight turn over the St. Francis Yacht Club, San Francisco

Even with a fancy Canon 5D-MII DSLR, these low fly-by passes happen much too fast for reliable focus. And you definitely cannot rely on full-auto function to set a shutter speed fast enough to freeze these birds. After some testing, I first tried this:
– Autofocus off, leave lens set to infinity (I had to avoid hitting the focus ring by mistake)
– “T” position on mode knob, meaning “shutter priority,” at min 1/500, better at 1/1000th of a second

But the sharpness suffered. So then I stepped up to the “M” (full manual) setting. It had been years since I had to set both the aperture and shutter speed myself. Today, you can set those, and still have a third way to set sensitivity on the fly, which is the ISO setting. In the old days, you could still control that, but only by changing your roll of film! Geezers like me remember when film was rated by ASA or DIN. So I locked down the shutter (fast) and aperture (f11 med/high) and let the ISO float.

This resulted in some pretty fun shots. Having a friend who would lend me his 400mm Optical Diffraction pro telephoto lens didn’t hurt either.

cBlue Angels in formation during fly-by of St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco