When I bought my iPhone I thought briefly about waiting for the iPhone 4, but dismissed the idea on the basis that I would not spend that amount of money on a phone. I hadn’t anticipated how much I would use the camera on the phone, and I now slightly regret not waiting – I now see the iPhone not just as a phone but also as a camera I always have with me. Albeit, a camera whose battery may or may not be dead by the time I need it ;)
I’m not the only one, there is a huge community growing around the use of the iPone as a camera, Lee Morriss even did a fashion style shoot to test it’s capabilities.
Another thing I didn’t anticipate was the large fortune I would spend in small increments in the iPhone app store.
Here are my top 5 photography related apps that you need to use or your head will fall off, guaranteed.
1. Hipstamatic
Hipstamatic €1.59. The app that kicked off my obsession with the iPhone as a camera – this app is instant nostalgia in a can. It emulates an old plastic lomo camera that apparently had exchangeable plastic lenses, so you can choose different old school looks for your square format pictures. There are quite a few apps that attempt to recreate old photograph looks in the app store, but none come close to the effects the filters in this app achieve.
Make sure you set the app to take high res images – it takes longer to ‘process’ the prints but if you really like the shot and decide you want to print it, you’ll thank me later. Go to settings > Hipstamatic > Developing > Highquality prints: On. I also prefer to set the viewfinder mode to Precision Framing so I know exactly what I’m shooting.
2. Darkroom Pro
Darkroom Pro €0.79 (iTunes link) is another camera app which takes regular shots but with added features. It has a feature which turns the whole screen into a shutter release, which is a lot more useful than it might sound – I have missed photos fumbling near the small button on the regular camera, especially if I’m trying to get a shot from an odd angle.
The steady shot settings are also very cool – turn on the steady settings and when you take a shot the camera waits until it has the stillest shot possible before capturing. The steady shot has three settings – with the high setting you get great crisp results, but don’t use it if you need to get that shot quickly – it can take a long time to find the steady shot. It has some other features too including a timer – I haven’t used it yet, but I’m sure it will come in handy to run into family portraits :)
I took the shot of the bike above using Darkroom Pro to get a crisp shot, and then I did minimal editing in Photoshop on my desktop – just adjusted the levels and sharpened the image slightly.
3. Swankolab
Swankolab (€1.59) is from the makers of Hipstamatic and emulates a darkroom environment where you can mix your own developing solutions and apply affects to any photos you’ve taken that are in your Camera Roll. It gets some nice vintage effects, and like Hipstamatic the filters are good if you want some quick mood applied to your shots.
Because you can mix your own solutions you can achieve different effects to Hipstamatic, but you have to get used to what solutions do what and in what order to apply them. Once you find a solution that works you can save the recipe for use later.
On the downside, the visual metaphor of the darkroom doesn’t work quite as well as the camera metaphor and it has very annoying ambient bloopy sounds playing while you use the app.
Swankolab is great for getting good vintage effects quickly, but if you want more fine grained control over your image editing you will need something like the following two apps…
4. Photoshop.com Mobile
If you’re taking shots with your regular iPhone camera, or with Darkroom Pro, you’ll probably want to do a bit of image editing on the shots to give them a bit more bite. Photoshop.com Mobile is from Adobe so I had high expectations – unfortunately the app is a little basic, but I have still found it great for some fast, high level adjustments. When I discovered the next app on the list, I thought I might be done with Photoshop.com Mobile, but I have found sometimes that using a mix of the two apps can yield better results that just using one.
Photoshop.com Mobile is Free which is a bonus, and it allows you to adjust the exposure, saturation, tint & contrast, turn the photo to black & white, add sharpness or blur as well as some not so great effects modes.
5. Photoforge
To be honest, I think Photoforge (€2.39) is what I had hoped Photoshop.com mobile would be, but as I said, sometimes the best results are obtained by using both. If a particular tool is getting odd results in one, I take it into the other and try, and switch between them until i get the effect I want.
Photoforge gives you access to tools you’d expect from Photoshop like levels and curves, unsharp mask, and even a clone tool which with a little practise can actually get reasonable results – and the tools tend to have finer control than the Photoshop app too.
You can follow my photographic adventures on Flickr if you like, and if you’re using your iPhone as a camera I would love to hear what apps you use – or any tips or tricks you have up your sleeve…