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Wonder when all us non-Jail-broken iphowners will get this. Probably sooner now that the cat's out of the bag.
Panorama iphone app developers are bumming.
Panorama photograph taken with an iPhone running iOS 5 We previously reported that Apple was working on bringing a panorama camera mode to the iPhone, and now some jailbreakers have figured out how to enable it. The interface for the feature is not too fancy, but is certainly usable. The user simply turns on panorama mode by clicking the panorama button on the camera options popover, then moves their phone in their air as shown in the on-screen diagram. The final product will be what you see above, a sample taken with the iOS 5 panorama feature. Screenshots of the panorama interface are after the break! (Thanks Conrad, Chpwn)
Everyone loves iPhone photo apps, right? Well heres another one for you, specializing in the retro square format that is oh-so-popular these days.
Batch is the simplest way to share an album, or batch of photos directly from your phone. In seconds, you can share a batch, and relive that night out partying with friends, dinner with family, or the concert where you tweeted your batch for anyone to see.
Jen Goode asks...
The best part thing the iPhone is not it's quality for taking photos, especially not the 2G, which lacks the resolution and auto-focus that the 3G has.
The best thing is that it is always in your pocket. If you embrace it for what it is and learn what it does do well, you can take some really fun photos, especially by leveraging some of the apps that are available.
Since Jen also asked if these apps will work on a 2G iPhone, I tested them all out this morning on my old phone (now owned by my 3 year old). That means boring non-artsy pictures of my me and my kids. Sorry. :)
Here are my current favorites:
I think this is my favorite app. It is very simple in that it applies a depth-creating blur in the shape and size that you want in your photo. (iPhone pictures are very flat with everything in focus.) When applied to a landscape photo, or a far-away photo of a busy scene, it looks like a miniature model of the subject. This "Tilt Shift" effect is a trick done with camera lenses with real camera equipment, but can be simulated with some blurring effects.
See how the blurring effect (along with some vignette) gives this picture depth and focuses on the subject. I've also saturated the colors.
Here's a better example of the miniaturization effect you get from this app applied to photos: Old Riverton Inn
Tilt Shift Generator: $0.99 at iTunes
This app does one thing and does it well. It allows you to desaturate a picture to black and white and color in only what you want. Same picture as above with just Jason's shirt colored.
Colorsplash: $1.99 at iTunes
Hipstamatic and Format126 are both apps that simulate some vintage cameras, the Hipstamatic and Kodak Instamatic 126 format respectively. Format126 allow you to load existing photos as well (which I strongly prefer). Hipstamatic takes the pictures only in a single format, so you need to choose your format ahead of time and take a chance. Just like the real thing! (I'm not that much of a purist. I'd rather be able to experiment with the effects.)
Here's a self portrait taken with Format126 and its MonoHi style. Blur is the photographer, not the app, but it works no?. This is just one of several effects. You can see them all in my review of the Format126 app.
Here's the Hipstamatic camera with the default lens. There are several lenses and film effects. many of which you must purchase as add-ons.
Format126: Free at iTunes
Hipstamatic: $1.99 at the itunes store.
Last but not least, Camerabag is a great post-processing app. Again, I prefer to take photos just with the standard iphone camera with no effects and then process it afterwards. That way I can play with the dozens of effects available. CameraBag has some great effects for creating toy camera effects (such as Holga and Lomo) as well some great color, brightness, and saturation manipulation.
Here's the picture already edited with the tilt-shift generator with the 1972 effect added. What's also great is that you can apply more than one effect from more than one app.
Camerabag: $1.99 at iTunes.
You can simply email these pictures to the various services, but since I don't have email configured on the old 2G iphone (it's the kid's movie watching, game playing device now), I used the Mobile Fotos app. It's a great app for connecting to Flickr and gives good control over titles, descriptions, tags, sets, etc. It just works.
Mobile Fotos: $4.99 on iTunes
I hope you agree, these are some pretty fun pictures that would have otherwise been very, very average and not even worth looking at. I might order a print of that Hipstamatic shot of Jason and try to pass it off as a 40 year old picture of me.
I love the Hipstamatic app, but had no idea of it's amazing history. I just thought it was among the ranks of LoFi cameras that have inspired some of the great effects that we see in iPhone and Android photography apps like the Holga and Lomo.
Thanks to Marty at Life in LoFi, now we do...
"Hipstamatic is one of the most popular photography apps in the App Store at the moment. It’s in the Top 5 in multiple countries. Flickr groups have popped up. The #hipstamatic hashtag is all over Twitter. The app has universally gotten rave reviews, and deservedly so. The environment, the sounds, the photos — it’s fun to shoot with."
While I love the app and the effects that it produces, it falls into the category of apps that modify the picture before saving it. To some this is probably part of the fun -- you get what you get just like the real thing.
To me, it is squandering the power of the iPhone. Why not store the original photo and allow me to apply any of the effects the camera offers? That would have me in this app all the time to see what it does to any photo I take.
It sounds like the developers are keeping things close to the vest on the future enhancements, but I'm glad to see that that they're addressing this. From the interview...
We are also working on an app to change the way users manipulate images taken outside of the Hipstamatic. That’s really all we can say at the moment.
I think this enhancement is key and gives them a shot at making this a number one photography app.
If you have an iPhone and haven't checked out this app, you're missing out. You can get it at the iTunes store here.
Much like the Hipstamatic app, the Format126 iPhone app brings back the charm of an old school camera, this time in the form of the Kodak Instamatic of the 1960's. Format126 was developed by Glyn Evans (of iphonegography.com) and Chris Comair.
Being born in the late 60's myself, I can remember seeing many pictures of this era taken by my family, mostly of me in a snow suit, blowing out birthday candles, or some other mundane activity sporting turtleneck shirts and a bad bowl cut.
The first camera I remember actually using as a child was the Pocket Instamatic, which used 110 film, but there were certainly many stacks of photos around in the square format of the decade-earlier 120 film.
This app hit home so much more than the Helga and Lomo formats available in other Camera Apps neither of which I've ever had my hands on the original cameras.
I spent some quality time with the Format126 App today. Instead of finding some artsy photos, I decided to take a picture of what my mom would have taken in 1966. Our recent snowfall here in New England. Here is a sample of each of the effects that Format126 includes.
All have the Vignette effect applied as well, and of course the square and border option. (Gray background applied here so you can see the white border on these photos.)
PolaColor
MonoPlus
Mono
ColorHint
LOFI
MonoHi
Using the app was intuitive (short a few gotchas which I'll cover below). Once you start up the app, you're faced with two choices: take a picture or load an image from the iPhone's Album.
I really like when camera replacement apps allow me to load an image that I took with the iPhone's native camera app. (Thanks guys!)
Honestly, I'm yet to find a camera app that makes me want to ditch the snappy and easy to use camera app that comes with the iPhone. I'm glad to be able to apply the unique effects from Format126 to the shots that I've taken previously.
Taking a photo with Format126 camera is identical to the native iPhone app, after which you're presented with the formatting screens. From there, you choose one of the above formats.
All very easy. The transparent menu does obscure the picture, so I did find that I had to go in and out of the effects menu to see what I was getting.
The app did crash on me a few times, one of which caused me to lose a photo. This might have happened when I was working with the larger photo settings. For this reason, and just because, I think it would be nice if the app saved an original format picture before editing (at least optionally).
I was also thrown by the "done" button. It actually quits out to the main screen and if you haven't saved a picture, it is gone. Now I know the difference between "done" and "hide", but it cost me a picture.
The app does have some settings hidden in the iPhone settings app. Be sure to check there for any app. These are frequently missed!
The default (Regular) saves square images in 686x678 pixels. I suppose when the original print sizes were only a few inches square, this resolution more than covers it if you want to print the photos. You can configure Large and Original size images to be saved instead. Warning, this will add significant processing time when you save the pictures. I timed the saves on the larger sizes between 15 and 30 seconds depending on the added effects.
This is a really fun camera app that brought back some memories for me.
And the price is right: Free (though it's good enough that I would have happily paid cash money for this.)
Get it! (now)
ShiningWorks brought us for Christmas exactly what we weren't looking for. A way to turn our beautiful iPhone into Vintage plain ol' point and shoot camera: The G700-1st Soft Camera.
Here's what you see when you start up the app. First thing you have to do after you start the app is, uh, turn it on.
Once you do that, you'll see that you've got a fully functional point and shoot camera right there inside your iPhone.
The app does have some features that are generally wished for, such as flash (software), zoom, anti-shake, timer, burst mode. You can also set the date and geographic location to appear on the picture itself.
The problem with a zoom feature on an iPhone is that it is digital zoom (no matter what app). You can't expect great results from that. The flash simply brightens the shot. Anti-shake wasn't really what I was expecting. It simply gives you an indicator that tells you that you're moving the camera and won't take the picture until you keep it still, like Night Camera does. Here I'm shaking the camera violently, sending the strangely high-resolution, multi-color, shake-o-meter into redline for demonstration purposes...
The Gold Member skin on the phone is not the default. I chose it out of a selection of 4 different appearances for the camera:
Once you've taken your pictures, you can browse then and apply a number of different effects, like a vignette, Candy, Movie, Vintage, Sepia, etc. It also has some basic sharing functionality.
Some important limitations are that it only shoots in 800x600 mode on an iPhone 3G and 1024x768 on a 3Gs. For those of you wondering, thats .5 and .8 megapixel vs. the 3.1 Megapixels you get from the regular camera on the iPhone 3Gs. Frankly, this puzzles me.
Taking a picture with this app on my phone took 5 seconds to process (vs a second or two on the standard iPhone Camera. I'm not sure what it is doing for 5 seconds.
The $2.99 G700 app is a fun toy that does a great job at simulating the appearance of point and shoot camera.
I have three of those already. I like my iPhone camera the way it is.
© 2012 http://www.phonetography.com/
