Tag Archives: iPhone camera

ProCamera for the iPhone on sale this weekend… and Wide Angle Photography

In the world of social services that want only square photos, a lot of iPhone photographers I talk to spend time thinking about the center of their photos knowing that is all that will be used. What is lost is the possible full wide view. I have used pano apps before to get a wider than normal view without going 360 degrees. But, the iPhone in landscape view alone is nicely wide. I found a nice article over on Photos Tuts+ that covers things to consider when taking wide photography. It covers things like framing, edge blur, depth of field, and more. The post is positioned towards a stand alone camera instead of a iPhone camera, but it has many important items you should keep in mind when framing up a iPhone shot.

If you have been sitting on the fence about whether you should buy the ProCamera ‘all-in-one’ iPhone camera app, now might be the right time. ProCamera is showing as only 99 cents in the iTunes store right now.

Quick reminder, the ProCamera solution was covered here before –Fine tuning how pictures are taken with the iPhone, before worrying about filters.

Free iPhone Retro Camera with Film – Popular Lomo Cameras on your iPhone

I mentioned the Pudding social photo share service earlier. There is also a Pudding Camera, that seems to be a big secret. Non of my iPhone photographer friends seem to know anything about this fun little app.

Pudding Camera offers a variety of ‘retro’ cameras that you may recognize by their Lomo names. Also, instead of filters, the app has ‘film’ that gives the same effect as adding a filter. Choose a pair to use and snap away.

After photos are taken, they are added to a library within the Pudding Camera app. Go to the area via the thumbnail image in the lower corner. Photos are shown in an overview of thumbnails, opening a single image gives you info about the camera/lens used to capture the photo.

Swipe up/down on the left through the Lomo ‘like’ camera and across the film area for the different Pudding Camera film filters. The window showing the result of matching the camera/film together is nice.

 

The resulting Pudding Camera photo can be saved to the iPhone photo library or shared on the Pudding.To, Facebook and Twitter social services. Output photos are 1280 x 960.

 

Full Featured iPhone Camera App – Camera Genius – on sale today only

Recently one of my more often used ‘all-in-one’ camera apps was updated and I got plenty excited with it’s new power. Yesterday, it was mentioned to me that I may want to look at Camera Genius. The timing was right as it had just gone on sale so I thought I get the word out. Jumping to the end, I would have been happy to have paid full price for Camera Genius.

The opening screen is for getting directly to snapping a photo. Choosing the ‘Menu’ button will bring up a group of options that Camera Genius offers for better fine tuning your shots. Across the top is the flash control and the camera chooser. The lower box of buttons are for using Self Timer, Multi Photo Bursts, Anti-Shake, Big Buttons, Focus Point, Switch to Video and access to the built-in Manual.

Camera Genius provides the Focus and Exposure splitting capabilities through a circle/square graphic. Tap to focus then drag the square to set the exposure. If you don’t like the split, just double tap on the screen again to pull them to a single point.

When a photo is taken, it is automatically saved to your iPhone’s Photo Library. Camera Genius doesn’t save it in a area of the app so you don’t have to worry about having your photos spread across multiple locations. The basic shot results in a 2448 x 3264 image.

After the photos are taken or if you want to edit a photo taken outside of the app, just tap the icon in the lower left corner of the screen to bring up the iPhone’s Photo Library. Choose a picture, then choose the edit button in the lower right corner.

Several screens of Effects and Tuning Adjustments are all included in Camera Genius. Scroll the options up/down to view a thumbnail of the effect applied. Tapping one will show the photo with the effect applied, some have sliders to fine tune a bit. Cropping and a selection of borders is also available. Using the back button will take you to the previous screen without the filter effect being added, you must use the ‘apply’ button to set the filter in place. By Applying, the thumbnails will change to show effects/adjustments on the photo with the filter applied. This means that you can apply several effects without having to save the photo to your library and re-importing every time.

Sharing with Camera Genius has all the basics covered. Just saving the final photo creation saves it to the iPhone’s photo library. Through the app though, sharing through email, Web sites and social networks is a button tap away.

Built in is a nice how-to-use-this-app manual. It covers all the features and how to use them.

An interesting thing about that ‘help’ file in Camera Genius is that is actually a full manual too. The top topics of photography are covered, explaining what the technique is and how to get it. I will be adding this to my list of recommendations to new iPhone owners looking to get into photography.

 

Check your heart rate – another thing the iPhone camera can do

What is that little red light up thingy with the wire that the hospital folks put on your finger? They say it is what is telling the machine your heart rate. OK… that’s cool.

Maybe on this holiday, your wondering if all the family fun is getting your heart rate up. Now, you can check with your iPhone’s camera. An app I grabbed, with a proper name of Instant Heart Rate fills in the gap between your finger and what your iPhone’s camera sees. Just launch the app, aim your iPhone’s camera at your finger tip… within 10 seconds you will know your heart rate. No joke… it really works, this is NOT a comic gag app!

With my iPhone4, the LED ‘flash’ lights up to help the camera ‘see’ inside of the finger. If you have an iPhone or iPad with no flash, they suggest using the app in better light. The Instant Heard Rate app offers to keep track of your Heart Rate recordings in the app, this is nice. It also offers to store the history on the developer’s site… not sure I want my heart rate history out in the wild, thanks. I’ll keep using it as a stand along iPhone app though since it’s nice to know how I did after my walk or when a relative makes a wise crack!