Actioncam sample featuring the "Romo" filter
Actioncam
Version 1.0
Price: Free, with $0.99 USD in-app purchase to upgrade to more filters
Bottom Line: Very fast multiple exposure camera. Medium resolution output makes it good for online sharing and not much more.
I had a chance to test the new app Actioncam by Stepcase over the weekend. For free, it’s not bad, but it wasn’t compelling enough for me to want to spend the extra dollar to upgrade the filter pack. There are other apps available that do what Actioncam does and I think they do it a little better.
With a touch of the shutter button, you can continuously take multiple shots and combines them into a photo collage. There are several layouts and filters for your collage, and you can shoot manually or in automatic intervals.
The app also features:
• 4×1, 4×2, 2×2, 3×3 photo collage layouts
• manual or 0.2-1 second shot intervals
• 2 free effects, Romo and Ocean Tide
• 3 paid optional effects, C41 Vinny, Vibrant Heritage and Redish Chrome
• Free access to Stepcase online community to share your photos to friends
• Twitter and Facebook sharing support (which I couldn’t find in the app)
The camera’s interface is straightforward and easy to figure out. Just about everything you need is either onscreen or one screen away. Actioncam features incredibly fast exposure intervals — among the fastest I’ve tested in multiple exposure cams — but that’s because it’s capturing very small images.
There are several filters available in an in-app purchase. Actioncam comes with two free filters, Romo and Ocean Tide. While I figured out that “Romo” is their implementation of a Lomo effect and not a filter that makes everything look like a Dallas Cowboys quarterback, the filter names are pretty obscure. The “Ocean Tide” filter is another vintage filter that applies a slight blue/violet overall wash to the images. Regardless of the names, the two free filters looked good.
Output size of Actioncam ranged from 600×800 pixels for a 2×2 quadtych to 900×1200 pixels for a 9×9 image. These resolutions aren’t large enough to make prints, but they’re good for online sharing — email, Facebook, Flickr, and Stepcase’s new online community for Actioncam. Actioncam only allows you to upload to their community from within the app. For an app that encourages online sharing of photos, it’s a serious omission not to include in-app Facebook and Twitter integration. I don’t need another online photo community to keep track of for picture sharing.
The biggest problem I had with the app is that it only saves in portrait orientation, no matter how the iPhone was held while taking pictures. This requires a separate step in another app to rotate your images before you can share them. Not only is this annoying, but leaves an unnecessary, extra version of an image in your camera roll.
The app repeatedly asked me to use my current location, sometimes while processing an image. I’m not sure if this was for EXIF data for Actioncam’s online community or if Stepcase was just being snoopy. There’s no reason given in the app or in the App Store description. There is no option to turn it off other than dismiss. I found it pretty annoying.
If the in-app photo sharing isn’t a factor (and it really isn’t with Actioncam), among multishot cameras Andigraf produces similar results with full resolution and filters that are just as well-rendered. Although it’s not free, I think Andigraf a better, more versatile multi-exposure camera app. Actioncam has an edge on exposure speed, but that’s about it and not by much.
If this is your first venture into multiple exposure photography, there are better multi-exposure apps available. Actioncam is a novelty app and the price is right for what it does. It’s a great example of a “freemium” app in that if you like what it does, you have the easy option of getting the upgrade — of buying more. For me, Actioncam is a decent free app, but not an exciting one.
App Store link: Actioncam
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Related links: AndiGraf
