I’m still surprised at how many photo apps still are not fully iOS4 compatible. I’m even more surprised at the number of camera apps that still don’t fully work with the iPhone 4. There have been a lot of slow days on the App Store updates page. That said, yesterday was not one of them and there were some really cool updates released, including updates to Color Splash, Camera Plus Pro (the Camera Plus with video), GorillaCam, and Tiffen’s Photo fx.
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.
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.
iPhone photography doesn’t have to bust your budget. I’ve scoured the Photography section and found four great, FREE camera apps to help you step up your iPhoneography.
This list is not complete, but these are some of the best camera replacement apps I’ve found. Granted, these apps are not as feature-rich as their paid-app siblings. Some of these apps are ad-supported, but none of them add a watermark to your images, all of them save at the iPhone’s full resolution and best of all, the price is free! For no investment other than bandwidth and download time, you can improve your iPhone’s camera and get some impressive looking photographs.
These are apps that are normally free. Apps whose price has been temporarily reduced to free are not included here.
Free iPhone Camera Apps: Camera Plus, Ultimate Camera Free, Gorillacam
