Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

ProCamera
Version 2.7

Bottom Line: Highly recommended!

ProCamera

A while back, I promised a full review of a previous update of ProCamera. I’m glad I waited until now.

In my idea box of articles I want to write is one for a “FrankenCam” app. For a long time, all of the features that I wanted in a camera app were spread out across several camera apps. I wanted to write an article — more like a wish list to developers — of the features that I wanted in one camera app.

I no longer need to write that article. The new 2.7 update of ProCamera by daemgen.net now includes every feature that I want that’s allowed by Apple in an iPhone camera app… and a whole lot more.

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Monochrome Camera
Version 1.0

Bottom line: Avoid

MonoCam

Monochrome Camera by TouchInside is a new app which saves images in monochrome. It has its own camera function or you can import images from your camera roll. I know it takes a lot of time, effort and coding skills to create any iPhone app, but with all that’s wrong with this one, I wonder how this ever got past beta stage.

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BlueHour
Version 1.2

Bottom Line: A good utility to help plan twilight photography.

BlueHour

There are two special types of twilight called blue hour and golden hour. Both create awesome light for photographers. Blue hour occurs before sunrise and after sunset. The sky turns deep blue during this period of time. The Golden hour occurs right after sunrise and just before sunset when everything has an golden-orange tint (In Texas, the Golden hour is really more like the Golden twelve minutes….).

Of course, these times change daily. Knowing when these times are gives you the opportunity to shoot in some great light. BlueHour by Baum Computer & Graphics is a simple utility that tells you the approximate times of the Golden hours and the Blue hours for the current day.

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Autofocus for 2G/3GCamera
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: Nice faux-DOF but hampered by less than full-res output

Autofocus

Autofocus for 2G/3G Camera by JFDP Labs brings sharp focus and gradual depth of field (DOF) to the iPhone 2G and 3G cameras. The app is optimized for the older generation iPhones which have no built-in focus features at all. It doesn’t modify the hardware on these devices. It does not add hardware autofocus to the devices. It achieves the focus effect by either automatically or allowing you to manually select and define a focus area and then reproducing a gradual depth of field focus blur from that point.

The focus effect is adjustable, subtle and nice, but the app has a few problems in this initial release.

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PhotoSize
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: Essential if you regularly buy photo apps

PhotoSize

PhotoSize by Danny Goodman is a utility that does one thing — it gives you the pixel dimensions of any image from your iPhone’s photo library or camera roll.

Previously, checking this info might involve emailing the image from one of the third-party apps that can email a photo without downsizing it and then opening the image on your computer in Photoshop, or checking the pixel dimensions using Photogene’s Crop tool. With PhotoSize, simply choose an image from your iPhone and PhotoSize quickly and easily tells you the pixel dimensions.

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Glyn Evans recently reviewed the app Straighten Image by appingo on his blog iPhoneography.com.

I was amazed at just how quick, easy and simple this app was to use, but the most interesting thing, and more importantly omitted from the AppStore description, is the save photos are upscaled, and so on my iPhone 3G, were saved at full-res.  Now I’m not sure if this app saves at full-res on the iPhone 3GS, so if anyone has an iPhone 3GS and this, then maybe they could comment on the resolution.

Read Glyn’s full review here on iPhonoegraphy.com. Read my thoughts below, after the jump.

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Trusight Pro
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: Great results, but only saves low-res images. Disappointing….

Trusight Pro

When shooting on my iPhone, I rely on exposure enhancing apps such as Perfectly Clear, SmartCam and FlashPhix as a first step in most of my iPhone photo processing. These apps help remove the gray cast sometimes found in raw iPhone photos, help improve shadow detail, and restore brilliant color, luminance and contrast to an image. A good exposure enhancer does a superior job of bringing out the detail in 3/4-tones and shadows while not blowing out the details of the highlights in an image.

Trusight Pro by Trusight, Inc. is an excellent exposure enhancer. On any iPhone, the app restores color and dynamic range to an image. Unfortunately, it’s limited by what I feel is a pretty signifcant flaw — low resolution output.

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We recently reviewed the free app Camera Plus by Global Delight and named it as one of the best free iPhone camera replacement apps. Hopefully, you like the free app so much, you buy Camera Plus Pro with several additional features. If you’ve been on the fence about buying the app, consider that one very cool new feature in the next major upgrade is video for all iPhones, including older ones. And from a sample clip released this week, it looks like the quality of that video is pretty decent for a phone cam.

Here’s a clip from Global Delight’s YouTube Channel, taken recently, showing the video capabilities of the beta:

As the clip shows, the video is smooth and the frame rate seems better than most of the 3rd-party video recording apps currently available. It appears to offer those with older iPhones a superior alternative if they want to record video on those devices. Glyn Evans on iPhoneography.com recently wrote an excellent article, “Shooting Video on the iPhone 2G/3G.” In it, he notes that nearly all of the currently available video recorders for older, non-3GS iPhones record at 15 frames-per-second or lower, which means that the picture will look choppy when played back. It looks to me like Camera Plus Pro 2.0 will have video of at least that, possibly higher. To my eye, the playback of the beta clip was smoother than any of the other alternatives currently available.

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ClassicPan

ClassicPan is a vintage-style panoramic camera app from misskiwi. I recently reviewed version 1.0.1 of the app. ClassicPan has been updated to version 1.0.3, currently available in the App Store, and it is a great update. Not only does it fix the two biggest issues I had with the app, but it adds two new film modes and some minor UI tweaks.

ClassicPan now supports higher resolutions. It now gives the option to save at 1530 x 680 pixels. While not full resolution for any iPhone, this is most certainly usable. The higher resolution also helps improve the details of the vintage filters.

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January 30, 2010
Giorgi Gallery
Berkeley, California

Bottom Line: If you’re in or near the Bay Area, this is a Don’t Miss exhibition.

Pixels at an Exhibition, Giorgi Gallery

Pixels at an Exhibition is the first brick and mortar iPhoneography exhibit. While there have been other brick and mortar exhibitions where iPhone photography was a component, Pixels at an Exhibition is the first gallery show to feature iPhoneography exclusively. What organizers and curators Knox Bronson and Rae Douglass have done is to reach out to iPhoneographers around the globe. They’ve created an exhibition that exemplifies what the iPhone is capable of artistically and celebrates a broad range of styles coming from photographers who have embraced the technology of the iPhone and the spontaneity of having an inconspicuous camera with you everywhere you go.

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