The iPhone camera does not have a true zoom lens. It has a digital zoom, which means that the camera lacks the optical lenses to “zoom†you in closer to your subject. Instead, Apple’s Camera app digitally recreates a zoom effect by cropping and “rezzing up” on the fly. As you zoom in closer — asking the iPhone do more with essentially fewer pixels — your images become noisier and less sharp.
Since iOS 4, a true digital zoom has been a part of Apple’s Camera app. It’s also been available in camera replacement apps since before there were camera replacement apps (anyone remember Snapture 1.0 in the early Jailbreak days?). At some point in your iPhoneography, you’ll probably need to be closer to your subject than you are. Before you crank it up to 5X, read on for our tips on getting the best shots on an iPhone, Droid, or any camera phone with a digital zoom.
8X Telephoto Lens from Photojojo. Photo by Stacy Anderson
The iPhone camera does not have a true zoom lens per se. It has a digital zoom. That means that the camera lacks the actual lenses to “zoom” you closer to your subject. Apple’s Camera app achieves a similar effect with a software zoom effect by cropping and resampling on the fly. As you zoom in closer — asking the iPhone do more with essentially fewer pixels — your images become noisier and fuzzier.
An optical lens will nearly always give better results than a digital zoom. If you use the iPhone camera’s digital zoom often, you may want to consider purchasing an external optical zoom lens. The 8X Telephoto Lens for iPhone from Photojojo is a good — not perfect –optical telephoto lens for a value price.
Check the App Store for the great new update of Gorillacam by Joby Inc. The update adds a few great new features to this camera replacement app that we recently reviewed in our Best Free iPhone Camera Replacements article. Best of all, the app is still free.
The version 1.1 update adds anti-shake image stabilization, tap-to-focus for 3GS iPhones, selectable image sizes and a very nice full resolution 4X digital zoom. It’s a great update to an already excellent camera replacement app.
If you don’t already have a camera replacement app, Gorillacam is worth a serious look — even more so after this update.
Bottom line: Improved. A decent camera replacement for snapshots.
Camera One
Back in October, we reviewed version 1.0 of CocoaTek’s Camera One, a full-featured camera replacement app. Since then, the app has been updated several times, the most recent is version 1.6. It’s currently in the Top 5 paid Photography apps in the U.S. App Store and for this new update, I have spotted a lot of 4 and 5 star reviews from many users who’ve written no other reviews. These look like shill reviews to me — a widespread practice in the App Store to boost app rankings and therefore sales.
I thought I’d revisit Camera One to see how it had improved since our first review and if it was worthy of the praise, either real or fabricated, that was being written about it.
ProCamera Basic by Daemgen.net is available for free for a limited time — down from $1.99.
ProCamera Basic is an excellent camera replacement. I’ve been using the full-version, ProCamera, as my camera replacement app of choice for the the last couple of revisions. ProCamera Basic is a full-featured camera — anti-shake with three settings, composition gridlines, full-resolution 5X digital zoom, Big Button full-screen shutter, and adjustable timer are just some of the features in Basic. Some of the missing features that the full version has are 3G tap-to-focus, video capabilities and the virtual horizon.
The ProCamera apps have become some of the premier camera replacements in the App Store, becoming the standard to beat for price and features. This is a great chance to grab one of the better camera apps available while it’s free.
Long before the App Store, Snapture by SnaptureLabs was the premier camera app for jailbroken iPhones. Even back then, Snapture had features that camera apps in The Store are only now catching up to. Of course, being free at the time of the constraints of Apple’s approved APIs probably helped. My friends were jealous of the true digital zoom and the level guide that I was able to use in my camera.
ProCamera by Daemgen.net got a really nice update to version 2.5 today. The update features several significant improvements and adds several new features.
For the first time, ProCamera now has full-res 5X digital zoom, not just in-app cropping! This can be toggled from the app’s settings — I believe this is the only app that gives you the choice. Very nice! Image save speed seems faster than previous versions.
I’ll post my full review of the new version soon. They did a great job on this update! If you’re looking for a camera replacement app and like the features ProCamera lists, the app is rock-solid, well-implemented and worth $2.99 USD. Definitely recommended!
HD Camera by OutmanTech (no website) is yet another “zoom” app. This one offers marginally better results than the in-camera cropping that most “zoom” apps deliver.
The app functions as a camera. The zoom is set using an onscreen slider, rather than pinch-and-zoom. I prefer this method of setting your zoom level and wish more apps offered this as an option.
Camera One by CocoaTek is not a great camera replacement app. For the money, there are better ones out there. I like the feature set and if they worked as advertised this would be a pretty good app. But Camera One is just one of many average camera apps filled with features that either under-deliver or simply aren’t there.
I like the built-in “My Color” feature; the black & white conversion is good and there’s also a nice built-in Vintage effect. The app has a simulated “Flash” effect which is supposed to help lighten the exposure of your images. The Grid Lines are nice and help you compose and level your pictures. There is a good crosshair target in the center of the viewfinder. This app is solid; I was able to take several pictures in a row and the app never crashed. There is an switchable audible ping when you change your camera settings. Unfortunately, turning this off does not also mute the camera’s shutter sound.
There’s a lot here that needs improvement. The app doesn’t retain your settings after you close it. While the developer advertises a 4X Digital Zoom, the quality of the zoom is poor. As with many of the lower-quality digital zooms in the App Store, it’s just in-camera cropping and produces small-sized images. The pan-and-zoom feature and Before-After view are non-existent — these features are just not there.
There is no live preview in the viewfinder for the color effects or for the flash-effect. You have to go to the camera roll after you shoot and the image saves to see the results of the effects. The flash-effect produces unacceptable halos. There are much better flash-effect applications, such as iFlashReady or even the free Zipix Lite. The developer promises image save times of 2 seconds, but on my 2G iPhone, it took over 11 seconds to save one picture and over 7 seconds before the camera was ready to take another shot.
This app may bill itself as an all-in-one replacement for “so many small iPhone Camera applications.” However, few of the features work as well as the apps they are supposed to replace.
There is already a free update in the works which should add new features to the app, including Anti-shake mode, GPS Tagging, Time Stamp, and a big button shutter. These additional features would be nice and would bring the app up to par with many of the other top camera replacements available now. Before they rush out a bunch of new features, though, I’d really like for them to get the current ones right.
Apple’s built-in iPhone Camera app is a solid if barebones camera. Point, shoot… that’s it. Very few features. Many other full-featured apps have been created as alternatives to the default camera app. One of the more recent ones, Zoom Photo Camera by Planet Blue Art falls way short.
The feature set is pretty unique and would be pretty good if the app worked. There are onscreen sliders you can use to adjust the brightness and color temperature before you snap your picture. The brightness feature works okay, but will wash out your image if applied too much. An exposure adjustment which also balances the contrast would be an improvement here. There is a good anti-shake option and a variable self timer. These features can be toggled off or on in the app preferences.
The app supports a resolution of up to 2048 x 1536. It does not upsample images to that resolution if you are using an iPhone 2G or 3G and it doesn’t appear to support iPhone 3GS focus in this version.
The “zoom” feature is not a zoom at all, but simply an in-camera crop, giving you an image that’s only 25% of the size you are expecting, in my case 400 x 300 pixel images. This is yet another app which touts itself as adding digital zoom to the iPhone, when in fact, the quality of these “zoomed” images will be substandard for all but the most basic of uses. These images may be fine for Twitter, Facebook or MMS, but the digital zoom feature is unusable for any iPhoneography. That pretty, sharp image in the description on the app store is unrealistic and very misleading. You will not get results that good with this version of Zoom Photo Camera. For a true digital zoom yielding much better results, Zoom Lens by BitWink is turning out to be the standard for digital zoom on iPhone, with full-resolution, in camera digital zoom and full-size output.
I had stability problems with the app. Zoom Photo Camera is one of few third-party apps which allow you to fire off lots of images while caching and auto-saving in the background. Well, sort of…. While saving images, the app crashed on me more often than not, causing me to lose all but the first image shot. Shooting 10 images in succession caused the app to crash for me during saves (every time for me, your mileage may vary), causing me to lose most of my shots. Rebooting my iPhone seemed to help, but not eliminate the problem.
The lack of a quality zoom isn’t a dealbreaker for me — the lack of app stability is and this is why I’ve given the app an “Avoid” rating. I don’t have the time, battery or desire to reboot my phone before using my iPhone’s camera, especially when there are plenty of other camera replacement apps that can do the job without the threat of crashing. Many photo opportunities avail themselves only for a moment and my images are too valuable to me to risk losing during an application crash.
For an iPhone camera replacement app, version 1.0 of Zoom Photo Camera is an unreliable choice unless you like gambling with your photos. There are more reliable apps which will give you better quality images, whether you are a casual photographer or a serious iPhoneographer.
Zoom Photo Camera is normally $1.99 USD in the App Store.
=M=
FTC Disclosure: I am not associated with this or any camera app creator. I paid full price for this app in the App Store.
