Thoughts on the iPhone Camera

Sunday, June 26th, 2011

Ever since I got my iPhone 4, I don’t carry my point and shoot with me much.  I actually don’t bring my big cameras out unless it’s for work or I know I need a big zoom lens.  I kind of feel bad that I’m neglecting my old cameras, but the iPhone seems to be able to capture most of what I need.

The portability of my all-in-one device is what makes it so convenient, but the image quality is just plain good.  It’s not professional DSLR quality, but posting images to the web or documenting my daily travels, it works great.  There are some great camera apps that I use on a daily basis:

Camera+ is a great all around app for editing photos as well as taking photos.  I originally bought it about a year ago because of one special feature;  it had a hack that let you use the volume buttons as a shutter button.  Anyone who has held an iPhone at arms length and tried to shoot a photo, knows how hard it is to line up your finger with a button that has no tactile feel.  This feature made it my go to app for shooting on my phone.  Unfortunately apple thought this feature would confuse people, so they banned the app.  Now with version 5 of Apple’s software coming out, they are adding this feature to their own camera app.  Not cool Apple, but hopefully this means Camera+ will get this feature back.

My second favorite camera app is Photosynth.  Surprisingly made by Microsoft, this (free) panoramic shooting app is unbelievable.  Just tap the screen to start and spin the camera on it’s axis and it automatically stitches the images into a seamless pano.  I’ve gotten some great results using this app.  It takes a little practice to make sure you keep the phone spinning on the axis of the lens itself, but I guess you’re not wasting any film.  While this isn’t perfect, the results are impressive, and it can give you the effect of having a wide angle lens.

Finally, an app that is not necessarily for photography, but uses the camera, Genius Scan.  This app has replaced my scanner for quick document scanning.  I use it to convert documents into pdf files for emails.  You take the photo of the document you need scanned (usually black text on white paper), set the edges of the document on the screen and that’s it.  It will enhance the contrast on  the image to make them true B&W so it’s easier to read.  I’ve compared this to scanning the sheets on a flatbed scanner and Photoshopping them, and the quality is very close.

For someone who’s not a professional photographer, there’s not much more you can ask your camera to do.  While I often miss the feel and sound shutter clicking away, I think I take more photos now just because it’s my camera is always in my pocket.

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