Last year there was a project on Kickstarter (this post is not about a Kickstarter project) for a device that connected to a iPhone to make the photo taking experience more like a digital camera. A large grip with a shutter button and a related app that accepts the shutter button push to result in a photo being taken. I didn’t jump on board since the grip was larger for a firm group, cool, but I didn’t need anything that large.

Just released from Belkin is a similar device for the iPhone 4. It is far leaner in bulk, has two shutter buttons and wraps around the iPhone further up the body. It too has an app that must be open to do the actual photographing. If you do most of your iPhone photography through an app other than the built-in camera app, this solution may not fit your needs. If you take photos with the built-in camera, then enhance and tune from there, the Belkin LiveAction Camera Grip may add to your photography enjoyment. Rather than holding the iPhone by the outer edges, you can grip like a single purpose camera. There is something to be said about the feeling involved with taking a photo that adds to the feeling in the resulting image.

The free Belkin app that must be open to accept the physical shutter presses of the LiveAction Camera Grip allows for jumping between shooting images and recording video with a push of the shutter buttons. In fact, as your recording video, you can snap individual photos. There are comments that the sound on the iPhone has to be turned off when doing this action, otherwise the shutter sound is heard in the video.