I have played with a few apps that claim to help with night photography. They either hang the shutter open longer or they won’t take the photo till the camera is perfectly still. Either way, a tripod is a must.

I happened across a app today, Night Shot-Handheld, that has a different take on getting better night shots with the iPhone. It works by taking several photos very quickly, then stitching them together. It actually works very well.

The interface is similar to that of panorama iPhone photography apps. There is a grid area that the area you wish to take the picture of must be inside of. Only when the image is in the grid will the shutter button appear.

Tap the button, a bunch of snaps happen and your presented with a two image view. A darker and an amazing well lit one. At the bottom of the screen is a ‘x’ to start over and a ‘floppy’ icon to save the image to your iPhone’s photo library.

This is the part I’m not understanding… the saved photo that Night Shot-Handheld produced is just like the preview, two images in a single photo. It measures 852 x 1280. The lower photo is actually pretty impressive, but what am I supposed to do? Maybe crop out the upper part. But, then I’m left with a rather small photo.

As a comparison, this is a photo I took at the same time. It is the HDR version of what the iPhone camera would normally take. Like I said, the Night Shot-Handheld app does a nice job. Being taken with the iPhone 4s, the photo is 3264 x 2448.