Camtastic
Version 1.1.1
Price: $1.99
Bottom Line: A good camera app, but a little slow and light on features when compared to Camera+.
Camtastic is a farily new camera replacement app from Indeeo. The 1.1.1 update was released recently and I’m glad I held off on my review of Camtastic until a couple of updates had been pushed out. The two recent updates have really improved the performance of the app.
Camtastic has many of the features, but not all, that I look for in a camera replacement app. If you don’t already have a camera replacement app like Camera+, ProCamera or Camera Genius, this app is good and worth a look if the features appeal to you. If you already have one, though, Camtastic really doesn’t bring anything new.
Camtastic is a camera replacement app which adds functionality to your iPhone’s camera. There’s also a built-in studio module which allows you to apply scene presets and even shoot with several “films” to give your images various retro effects. Camtastic gives your iPhone camera many of the features of a good point-and-shoot camera.
Camtastic has a full range of features including composition grid, camera level, auto-timer, multi-shot, and scene color settings. The timer is user-selectable between 0-30 seconds.
Camtastic has a good viewfinder with quick access to many of the features you need to shoot quickly, including easy access to the flash toggle (on devices with a hardware flash), scene modes and film modes. A button in the app’s toolbar takes you to all of the camera’s features. The composition grids are nice — rule of thirds and very unobtrusive. The level is another handy feature to help compose good photographs. It shows green when the camera is fairly level — a nice visual cue.
The recovery time for Camtastic are about 1.2-1.5 seconds between shots — not the fastest, but certainly respectable. Images are processed and saved in the background allowing you to get back to shooting quicker. The multi-shot feature allows you to take up to 8 shots with a single shutter release. This is not a burst mode per se as the images are taken at the app’s fastest possible speeds — the ~1.2 seconds between shots. There are cameras with faster burst modes available.
The app features several scene modes which improve the color and exposure of your photos to better match the current setting as you shoot. Many point-and-shoot cameras have this feature to help compensate for different lighting and color and to produce more balanced photographs. Matching the scene setting to the lighting and subject is quick and easy and gives visibly improved results. The adjustments are saved along with the photo, though. After it’s shot, there’s no way to change the scene filter for the image. Camera+ on the other hand, allows you to apply scene filters to an image after it’s shot, allowing you to work off a copy of the original image.
What’s missing from the camera module is anti-shake stabilization and big button full-screen shutter release — two important features of just about every other camera replacement app and among the main reasons I use a camera replacement app. The popular separate focus and exposure features are not available in this app. There is also no digital zoom in this version of the app.
The “film” features of the app are good but limited. There are currently eight different “films” — standard and seven retro film styles. Each applies popular retro and border effects to an image. There may be few effects, but they are attractive and well rendered. I was pleased with the choices. They are quality filters and I look forward to additional ones. Shaking the iPhone randomizes film effects and borders, which is fun but a little bit frustrating as there’s no other way to mix and match borders without randomizing.
Images save at your device’s full resolution. The latest update now also saves geo-tag information. Images save to a lightbox within the app — a feature that I like to help reduce camera roll clutter, but I realize that it’s not a popular feature with all iPhoneographers. You can view a lot of detailed information about an image in Camtastic’s lightbox, including date and time, ISO and F-stop settings for the image, and camera Settings used for each photo. From here, you can also reuse settings of previously taken photos. The lightbox and photo info views are pretty cool.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to automatically save images directly to your camera roll. And saving a dozen images to the camera roll was really slow — about 40 seconds total and about 18 seconds just to save all of the images to the camera roll.
Camtastic is a good camera replacement app. Not great, but good. In a crowded field of excellent camera replacement apps, it’s not outstanding, though, especially when compared to the feature set of Camera+, ProCamera, and the improved feature set of Camera Genius. Camtastic is a few updates away from fantastic. But if you like what you see now, it should work great for you.
=M=
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