I’ve had an iPhone for a while and the camera, while not incredibly great, is incredibly fun. The great thing about taking photographs with a cell phone is it’s not serious. I mean, reaaalllly, does anyone expect cell phone pictures to be any good?
But wait. The cool thing about my cell phone is I always have it with me. And because it’s always with me, I can photograph pretty much anything I see. But it’s worth calling it like it is: The iPhone camera is lame, Lame, LAME. But there’s an app for that. Actually more than 80 apps for that. Here are some I use:
- CameraBag. This one is my favorite. I can play around with some straightforward stylizations of images in a “no worries” kind of way. Inexpensive, fun, and … well, my favorite.
Local Beach (Using CameraBag)
- Pano. Ever want a panoramic stitched image. This simple app makes it as easy as — um — pretty much everything is on an iPhone. You shoot the first image, then line up the successive ones with an overlay of the right hand side of the preceding one. You can shoot landscape or portrait panoramas and there is no limit to the beautiful (or silly) things you can do.
Parking Lot Panorama (Using iPhone App Pano)
Camera Zoom 2. You’ll just have to pick this one up on the App Store. There are a number of apps that do this and the bottom line is they all do 4x digital zoom. That means you are giving up resolution for perceived zoom. But, again, it’s a cell phone picture! Zoom programs typically feature “anti-shake,” which means the capture won’t happen until you hold still. Brutal but effective. They also replace Apple’s rounded rectangle capture button with full-screen tap to shoot and/or volume button shutter release. Speaking of Apple: Hey, you in Cupertino! I shouldn’t have needed to pay $.99 for this dammit!
Photoshop.com Mobile. Check it out. It’s from Adobe, it’s called Photoshop, and you can tweak, crop, and apply effects right there on your iPhone. Free. What could be better?
Have a look at these, try them out and make sure to stop before your battery runs out.
