Camera One
Camera One
Version 1.0
Bottom Line: Unimpressed
Camera One by CocoaTek is not a great camera replacement app. For the money, there are better ones out there. I like the feature set and if they worked as advertised this would be a pretty good app. But Camera One is just one of many average camera apps filled with features that either under-deliver or simply aren’t there.
I like the built-in “My Color” feature; the black & white conversion is good and there’s also a nice built-in Vintage effect. The app has a simulated “Flash” effect which is supposed to help lighten the exposure of your images. The Grid Lines are nice and help you compose and level your pictures. There is a good crosshair target in the center of the viewfinder. This app is solid; I was able to take several pictures in a row and the app never crashed. There is an switchable audible ping when you change your camera settings. Unfortunately, turning this off does not also mute the camera’s shutter sound.
There’s a lot here that needs improvement. The app doesn’t retain your settings after you close it. While the developer advertises a 4X Digital Zoom, the quality of the zoom is poor. As with many of the lower-quality digital zooms in the App Store, it’s just in-camera cropping and produces small-sized images. The pan-and-zoom feature and Before-After view are non-existent — these features are just not there.
There is no live preview in the viewfinder for the color effects or for the flash-effect. You have to go to the camera roll after you shoot and the image saves to see the results of the effects. The flash-effect produces unacceptable halos. There are much better flash-effect applications, such as iFlashReady or even the free Zipix Lite. The developer promises image save times of 2 seconds, but on my 2G iPhone, it took over 11 seconds to save one picture and over 7 seconds before the camera was ready to take another shot.
This app may bill itself as an all-in-one replacement for “so many small iPhone Camera applications.” However, few of the features work as well as the apps they are supposed to replace.
There is already a free update in the works which should add new features to the app, including Anti-shake mode, GPS Tagging, Time Stamp, and a big button shutter. These additional features would be nice and would bring the app up to par with many of the other top camera replacements available now. Before they rush out a bunch of new features, though, I’d really like for them to get the current ones right.
Camera One is available for $0.99 USD for a limited time in the App Store.
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FTC Disclosure: I am not associated with this or any camera app creator. I paid for this app in the App Store.
