Favourite iPad Apps

I recently purchased an Apple iPad 2. I’ve spent a few weeks trying out at various apps – here’s a run down of my top 10 so far:

1. Flipboard – great news reader, aggregates feeds from lots of sites, slick UI
2. FlightCtrl HD – the best iPad game I’ve played, simple and addictive
3. Yahoo Mail – not an app (viewed through Safari) but it’s so well implemented it may as well be an app
4. Good Food Magazine – brilliant interactive magazine, we got the December 2011 issue and got loads of ideas over Christmas
5. Rightmove – find houses to buy or rent, well designed, good interactive map, the only thing its missing is a text search
6. AutoTrader – find cars to buy, well thought out search and filter, nice interaction with Maps app to find dealers
7. Flixster – find movies to watch at local cinemas or rent, view trailers and browse movies by genre, actor, release date etc
8. DropBox – simple UI, works really well, great way of viewing your picture library without a media server of your own
9. Facebook – professional looking, does everything you can do normally (in a browser)
10. Amazon WindowShop – nice app to browse around Amazon, however its crying out for a sort and filter facility

Best of all these are all FREE – with the exception of FlightCtrl HD which was £3 last I checked and Good Food Magazines which are £3 each.

Worth a mention

• The Times – really nice interactive newspaper, but just too expensive compared to Filpboard
• Vevo HD – great app for viewing music videos for free (still not sure how they manage to do that!). If I were more interested in pop music it would be in my top 10
• BBC iPlayer/ITV Player/4oD.Demand 5 – good TV catch up apps, but fairly pointless when you have a digital box (or PS3) that can do the same but on a nice  big TV!
• MLPlayer Lite – good, free, media server browser
• WordPress – nice app for looking at stats & approving comments, but I wouldn’t like to write a post using it, I’ve seen it crash several times too!
• Notability – extension to the basic Notes app you get, allows you to draw freehand, insert pictures and voice recording and export to PDF, costs £0.69
• BBC News – good app for looking at latest BBC news feeds – but Flipboard does that and more
• Natwest – good app to view balance summary and last 10 transactions

Those are my picks. Let me know your top 10 – there are over 500,000 apps out there, I’m sure I’ve missed some hidden gems.

My Camera

For my first technology post I thought I would describe my camera equipment and what I paid for it.

I don’t have a big budget and always try to get the very best equipment I can for the lowest possible price.

I have a Nikon D5000 and several lenses. I bought the D5000 body and 18-55 kit lens in April 2010 for £505.94 on Amazon.co.uk. At the time, Nikon were doing a £50 cash-back deal and Amazon even threw in a bag! Then on-top of that I had £100 of Amazon vouchers for being a good employee at work!! So I managed to get the D5000 body, 18-55mm lens and bag for just £355.94 – which I thought was great value.

At the time there were three Nikon entry-level DSLRs, the D3000, D5000 and D90 (now D3100, D5100 & D7000). I opted for middle, because it seemed to offer the best trade-off between price and features. I looked at other brands (Canon EOS and Sony Alpha), but I couldn’t really see a massive difference between them. The Canons were apparently better taking video – but I didn’t intend on taking videos and the Sony Alphas would have integrated better with my PS3, but I wasn’t too bothered about that. The PS3 will read any SD card with a USB SD card reader, which only costs a couple of pounds.

To be honest I think I would have been happy with any of the entry-level DSLR cameras from Nikon, Canon or Sony. I opted for Nikon in the end due to the number of reviews I found online endorsing them as good cameras for taking pictures – which is ultimately what I wanted. Also it has a screen that folds away to protect it in a bag – which I find useful.

After a few months I was really happy with the 18-55mm lens but wanted more range. The 18-55mm was great for landscapes and portraits, but I was struggling to get good shots of wildlife. I looked online for possible long-range lenses and was amazed by the prices! I couldn’t justify spending £1,000s so I opted for the cheapest – the 55-200mm which I bought (again from Amazon) for £142. I think this is great value – it does feel cheap but it gives you four times the range of the 18-55mm, it’s light and can be hand-held. Unlike some of the huge 400mm and 500mm lenses which cost a fortune, need to be tripod mounted and are heavy to carry around. I may change my mind later in life when I have the money to spend, but at the moment I’m happy being patient and waiting for wildlife to be at least in range of my 55-200mm lens!

My most recent lens was a birthday present from my fiancée- the single focal length 35mm lens. Currently £159 on Amazon. This is great in low light because it can go to 1.8 aperture which helps you get good shutter speeds with low ISO in poor light without flash. Also at 1.8 you can achieve some really good-looking blurred backgrounds. I seem to have this lens on my camera all the time now. Its great in most situations. The only time I find myself changing lens is for wildlife (55-200mm) or landscape (18-55mm) shots.

I picked up spare battery – get the non-Nikon branded ones, they’re cheaper and it makes no odds. I use the standard SanDisk SD cards – I tried their Extreme cards but I don’t think they’re worth paying extra for. They don’t make any difference when shooting, the only advantage I came across was the download speed when uploading files to your computer.

You can see some of the results I’ve been getting in my Photography and Food blogs.

Finally a couple of links I found really useful when buying my camera equipment:

• Nikon Lens Simulator – shows you a single image at different focal lengths
• Ken Rockwell – a review of Nikon lenses

Let me know what you shoot with and whether you’ve been able to find any great buys!