Camera Plus Pro—one of my favorite camera apps for the iPhone and iPod touch—celebrated its 2nd birthday in the App Store this weekend by offering gifts to its users, especially those using the iPod touch and iPhone 3GS. These devices don’t have basic flash functionality, and Camera Plus Pro v4.3 looks to address this with its new live Soft Flash feature.

Camera Plus Pro, one of our favorite camera apps for iPhone, has been updated to v4 with a new camera engine that’s 30x faster, according to developer Global Delight. The update brings with it live photo and video filters, a UI makeover and the resurrection of the jerk-free Smooth Zoom Feature. Camera Plus Pro v4 is compatible with iPhone 3G/3GS, iPhone 4 and iPod touch with camera.

Camera Plus Pro has been one of our favorite camera apps since its release. It was updated this week with 21 new photo filters and 9 new distortion effects, but perhaps the bigger news is Global Delight’s announcement of their Metamorphosis contest, in which Camera Plus Pro users will have the opportunity to win an iPad 2, iPod 2, and iPod shuffle, along with daily prizes for Twitter and Facebook followers.

I find something liberating about all of these photo effect apps for the iPhone. Being an avid Photoshop user, I’m used to getting exactly what I want out of an image if I’m willing to work at it long enough. That type of power and control is not available on an iPhone app, of course, but that makes it more fun to play around with. And when it comes to iPhone photography and manipulation, few are as fun as Camera Plus Pro.

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.