Life in LoFi: iPhoneography | iPhone Photo News, Showcases, App Reviews

ProCamera screenshot

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Apple’s Camera app is fast and easy to use. The latest version of Camera has an excellent zoom and HDR in addition to the geo-tagging it’s had for a while. With the improvements in the iOS 4 camera, there are fewer and fewer compelling reasons to purchase and use a camera replacement app. By camera replacement app, I don’t mean a camera app that applies specialized filters. I mean a camera app with additional, specialized tools and features that give you greater options than the stock Camera when capturing your photos.

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Real Camera+
Version 1.0
Price: $1.99

Bottom Line: Overall, a sub-par image editing app.

If you are looking for the genuine Camera+ app — the really good one by tap tap tap, this very similarly named app isn’t it. The name is where the similarities end.

This new $1.99 app is confusingly called Real Camera+ and it is anything but real. This is from developer Duan Baoping, who also released the app Premier Camera Flash, and possibly a few other apps that are no longer available in the App Store. There is no link to the developer’s website because the app’s support link takes you to a Flickr group page.

This “Real Camera+” is not a camera replacement app at all, but a sub-par image editor hoping to cash in on name confusion and the absence of the other, far superior photo app. I dropped the $2 so you don’t have to.

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This is not the reappearance of the genuine Camera+ app

[UPDATED 09.04.10 02.50] If you’re looking for the real Camera+ app — and by that I mean the genuine Camera+ app from tap tap tap — it is not currently available in the App Store. Camera+ was recently pulled by Apple over a hack that allowed users to reprogram their iPhone volume buttons as a shutter release.

A new $1.99 app released Friday is called “Real Camera+” and it is anything but real. This is from developer Duan Baoping, who also released the app Premier Camera Flash — another app with shady marketing tactics. This is not the reappearance of the excellent original Camera+ app that garnered rave reviews. This is an attempt by a developer to cash in on name recognition, confusion, and ignorance of the original app’s removal. Avoid this app if you’re expecting to purchase the excellent original camera replacement app by tap tap tap.

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The excellent camera replacement app Camera+ was pulled from the App Store recently. The app violated the iPhone SDK agreement. A hack that unlocked VolumeSnap, the hidden feature that allowed users to use the iPhone’s volume buttons as a shutter release, was the reason.

REAL-CAMERA by Yusuke sekikawa is another iPhone photo app that uses the volume buttons as a shutter release. As expected, it has now also been pulled and is no longer available in the App Store.

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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’re still tracking and updating iPhone 4 compatibility in our iPhone 4 Photo App Compatibility Feature.

Read on for more details about yesterday’s updates.

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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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Updated 01.05.2010

UPDATE 03.10.11: We’ve updated this list for 2011. Be sure to check out our new post “The Ten Best FREE iPhone Photo Apps” featuring both free camera replacements and some great free iPhone photo apps.

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

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