Appletell reviews Camera Plus Pro and POV for iPhone
by at February 1, 2010 7:06 am
Sections: iDevice Apps, iPhone, iPhone/iPod touch/iPad, Reviews
|
Sign up for the FREE Tell Membership and receive benefits that include the digital edition of Tell Magazine sent straight to your inbox, product giveaways, coupons and much more!
The iPhone camera is not the best. We get that. But with the help of the myriad camera apps out there, you can still get some pretty good functionality or pull off some good tricks. Here are two inexpensive but powerful apps to help you get more out of your iPhone camera than you may have thought possible.
Camera Plus Pro
Seller: Global Delight Technologies
Requirements: iPhone OS 3.1 or later
Compatibility: iPhone
File Size: 4.5MB
Version Reviewed: 1.3
Price: $1.99
Age Rating: 4+
The thing about Camera Plus Pro is that it does just about everything you’d want it to. It’s the antithesis of the default iPhone Camera app, as it allows you to zoom, focus (3GS only), add copyright info, use a timer. crop, and more. Have multiple apps to handle these chores? Delete them. Camera Plus Pro does them all.
Getting full use out of its capabilities is confusing at first, as the icons that represent the various tools aren’t very intuitive. You call them up by tapping an icon on the bottom left of the screen (or bottom right, depending upon the camera’s orientation; the user interface doesn’t rotate with the camera), then tap the one you want.
Some are for use before the picture is taken, some for after, and you just have to know what’s what. A question mark icon can be tapped to pull up the legend if you forget, but if you need to take a photo quickly, you’re out of luck; it’s easy to get lost within the interface, and you’ll likely find yourself quitting the app and restrating just to get back to what you want. Also, you sometimes have to tap an icon multiple times for it to register, and the only indication that a tool is active is a subtle color change from white to blue.
Beyond that, that, though, Camera Plus Pro pretty much nails it. The tools all do their job quite well, whether it’s touching up the photo after it’s taken (basic tools only, but what you’d expect from an iPhone app) or setting up photo quick bursts or a timed shot.
Once the photo’s taken, you can quickly share one or more via e-mail or to Facebook, Twitter, Picassa or Flickr, all from within the app. Oddly you have to log into your account each time you run the app, it seems, but that’s only a minor hassle. You can also lock photos from private viewing, but only one at a time; each photo gets its own password, which again complicates the issue unnecessarily.
Pictures remain within the app on the Quick Roll, where they must be manually deleted or moved to the Camera Roll for importing into Apple’s iPhoto. If you delete them from the camera from within iPhoto, they’ll be pulled from the Camera Roll, but still remain in Camera Plus Pro’s Quick Roll. Whether this is a feature or a bug, I leave to you. Personally, I’d prefer to have fewer clicks between me and an empty camera.
These gripes aside, Camera Plus Pro is an absolute steal at $1.99. It offers much more functionality than Camera, wrapping many tools for which you likely had multiple apps into one convenient shell. It’ll take you a bit to get used to the interface, but once you do, you’ll likely never launch your other camera apps again.
Buy Camera Plus Pro
POV – Photo Illusions
Seller: Philippe Mougin
Requirements: iPhone OS 2.0
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
File Size: 1.2MB
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Price: $1.99
Age Rating: 4+
POV (persistance of vision) – Photo Illusions is an app designed to trick your camera into seeing words written in the air. You enter your text into the app, select from a couple options, then wave your iPhone in front of your camera set to a long shutter speed (at least two seconds). The longer the message, the longer your shutter will need to stay open. The effect, if pulled off properly, can be seen in the image below:
An eye (single) mode is included so you can see the effect without the use of a camera, but I was never able to get this to work…all I could see, even when following the developer’s tips, were a bunch of flashing lights. With my Nikon D40 DSLR camera I had some better luck, but nothing good enough to show off here. I’ll attribute that to my lack of photography skills, though, and not this app.
POV allows you to customize the image by selecting the color and whether the lights are rounded, but that’s it. This is no reason to dock the program, however, because how many options do you need for displaying words in the air? You really don’t need to be worrying about typefaces when creating photo illusions.
The trouble with the app is that it’s difficult to pull off the effect. Based on my experience, I’d tell you to leave this one alone if you plan on displaying the effect to the naked eye; your friends are likely going to see nothing more than you waving a flashing light in the air.
If you know what you’re doing with nighttime photography, however, and are willing to practice on getting the timing down, you can create a cool, but very specific effect. In other words, pick up POV if you need that effect, but I wouldn’t buy this just because you think it might be fun to see.
Buy POV – Photo Illusions
Related Posts