This weekend’s discussion of the Sony a6300 got me thinking about the iPhone’s camera, and how great it can be when wielded properly. Our own Ben Lovejoy shared his tips for taking good iPhone photos a few months ago, and now I’d like to share my 10 go-to tips for snapping better iPhone pictures.
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Makers of the popular Camera+ app, a $3 third-party photography app for iPhone with around 14 million users, today launched its first free version in an attempt to attract even more users to the platform.
Dubbed simply “Camera+ Free,” the app’s creator gave us the rundown on the free experience, noting that it offers the same experience as the paid app minus some of the more advanced features like manual shooting controls and the app’s “The Lab” editing suite. Instead, the free app offers up focus, exposure and macro shooting settings, scene modes including clarity, and 3 free filter packs. Beyond that, users will be able to add-on some of the more advanced features to the free version using in-app purchases, allowing them to essentially unlock the full experience of the paid app.
We want to get the app out to as many people as possible. We currently have 14 million users, but we’d love to see more people using and falling in love with our app. We think by offering people a free version, more people who typically don’t pay for apps will give it a try. If they like it then they may buy some in-apps or just spread the word about our app. – Camera+ cofounder Lisa Bettany
The free version of the Camera+ app is available on the App Store now.
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People these days have short attention-spans, so although time-lapse videos can be very appealing, most of us would probably prefer to watch one for 30 seconds rather than ten minutes. Thanks to a clever feature which Apple simply refers to as “dynamically selected intervals,” almost any time-lapse video you shoot in the default Camera app in iOS 8 will end up as 20-40 seconds, whether you shoot for 10 minutes or two hours …
Perfect Shot by TapMedia is a new iOS 7 app that is designed to make it very easy to take the perfect pictures of their friends and family. While holding either an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, to take a picture, Perfect Shot detects how many people are in the image. The app monitors and detects everyone’s sets of eyes and their smiles. Once everyone in the group is not blinking and smiling, the app automatically snaps the photo, without the need for the user to press the shutter button.
Perfect Shot also can detect when you (yourself) are in prime position for a photo. The “selfies” I’ve taken of myself with this app are the best I’ve ever taken on an iPhone. They sometimes even look like professional head shots. My eyes are centered and straight, as opposed to being crooked or unfocused because I’m concentrating on the act of trying to take a good shot of myself.
Flickr appears to be making a play for the Instagram market with the latest update to its free iOS app adding new filters with live previews and instant editing tools which include the ability to crop photos, adjust colors and add vignettes.
It’s a little late to the party, with Instagram having already expanded into video in a big way after witnessing the popularity of Vine, and of course filters and square crops are built into the revamped Camera app in iOS 7 …
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The update should be here round 5 p.m. EST:
https://www.facebook.com/mobile/camera or in the App Store here http://itunes.apple.com/app/id525898024
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