iPhone camera performance boost

I love the iPhone camera. Sure, it’s not a powerhouse lens. But is always with me, in syncs well, lets me push images to Twitter, the avclub (via the WordPress app), and seems to take decent pictures for a phone cam. One problem exists, however.

I take lots of pictures.

And lots of pictures really clog up your iPhone. They consume precious drive space, and I’ve discovered they really slow down the response time of your camera.

In the end, I don’t really need to carry many photos with me. I love to show someone “hey, look at what I saw just the other day.” But that really only goes back a month or so. I did some digging and tweaked a system that’s really working for me.

I’ve set up iPhoto (on the Mac, sorry Windows users) to clean may camera roll off on every sync. Then I set it to grab the last 2 months worth of iPhone photos and put them back on the phone. I end up with the best of both worlds. I have a my “recent past” backlog, I’m not consuming nearly as much memory (prior to this I peaked at around 1,200 photos… geez), and the camera really responds quicker. Here’s how to do it.

(1) Sync your iPhone to iPhoto.

(2) This article explains how to purge your iPhone’s camera roll.

(3) Create a Smart album by opt-clicking the new album button (pictured).
[photopress:opt_click.png,thumb,pp_image]

(4) Enter the following criteria for your Smart Album (pictured).
- match “all”
- Camera Model, is, Apple iPhone
- Date, is in the last, 2, months
[photopress:iphone_smart_album.png,thumb,pp_image]

(5) in iTunes, set your iPhone to sync the newly created iPhone playlist (pictured). You’ll notice I also have an album of iPhone wallpapers for quick reference.
[photopress:it.png,thumb,pp_image]

(6) Sync your iPhone again. You’ll see your camera roll now empty, and the last 2 months of photos moved to the new smart album.

(7) Sync your iPhone through iPhoto again to pull of photos. Be sure to select the option to delete all photos after import (they’ll be moved back on to the phone via the smart album).