The Ty Evans Feature in the New iPhone

It's been long understood that twice a year the city of Tampa gets a bit crazy.

For one weekend annually in December and another in March, hundreds of skaters, industry dudes, and guys who like free booze travel to the Cigar City for a barrage of beer and vodka drinking. For some, it's a chance to skate, catch up with old friends, and check out the best range of both up-and-coming and current talent in skateboarding. For others, it's a liver-punishing freight train of fun and sloppiness, with just a dash of skateboarding amongst the debauchery.

This past weekend was no exception. I played host to Dan Delanois, a Lurkville flow bro, who was in town from the San Gabriel Mountains in California, to meet up with friends and family for a week, while he was supposed to be resting a sprained ankle. The beer got the better of him, though, and he was coerced into skating a local mini-ramp...hammered. He landed some tricks and his ankle didn't explode like Malto's, but he also lost his phone; which if you're traveling out of state without your car, can be a bit tricky.

Since Dan's iPhone was uninsured and I was eligible for an upgrade, the solution was simple. He would get my dusty three-year-old iPhone 4s with the cracked screen and I would come up on a slow-mo capable iPhone 5s.

I'll be the first to admit, I'm not a computer geek or an Apple fanboy. Hell, I'm one of the only people I know that doesn't download music, legally or otherwise. But, during the last few years, I have been completely amazed with the progression of quality cameras on cell phones and love the fact that I don't have to lug around a camera bag if I want to get a decent photograph.

I also wanted to put the Ty Evans-inspired camera to the test.

The phone itself feels lighter than all the previous models even though it got a bump in screen size from 3.5'' to 4.0''. The half an inch is considerable. Remember how good it felt going from the dorky 7.75'' fakie tre flipper to the 8.25'' tranny killer? Yeah, it's kinda like that.

On the tech side of things, the screen is 640 x 1136 and has a pixel per-inch count of 326. The front facing camera also boasts 1.2 megapixels. I'm not entirely sure what all that means, but I have a feeling it's going to put a serious boost in my selfie game.

Less than four hours after picking the camera, I got to fooling around with the eight megapixel slow-mo video camera that has been upgraded with bigger sensors to shoot in low-light situations, like a crusty warehouse full of skateboard ramps, for instance. It shoots at a staggering 120 frames-per-second at 720p, making my clips look like a Pretty Sweet bonus reel.

At the contest, I weaseled my way next to dudes touting huge HD cameras and big-body DSLR cameras to shoot with my shiny new iPhone. I'm sure I looked like a doofus. However, I did manage to shoot this clip of Tampa local Dylan Perry nailing this gap-to-back lipslide down the pyramid rail, which got an Honorable Mention for Best Trick.

The video looked awesome on the playback of the phone, but uploading it was a P in the A. Unless you're posting the video straight to social networking like Faceook or Vimeo (quality killers), you're stuck trying to figure out things like AirDrop, iClouds, and other things that were foreign to me. Eventually, I gave up and just switched the speed setting in Final Cut to 25%, which is what the iPhone shoots at and it still keeps the same effect thanks to the 120 FPS.

So far I've only shot the back lip, but you can check out Rob's Meron Grabs at the Turtle Ditch that were posted earlier on his Instagram, @meronek. At least I'm not the only guy dorking out on the new slow-mo capabilities. I'm sure there will be more clips coming your way soon.