Camera+

Camera+
Version: 2.2.3
Compatible: iPhone, iPod, iPad - iOS 3.1
Price: $2

When I upgraded from the iPhone 3G to the 4, it was a tremendously satisfying jump on so many levels. One of those was the combination of screen clarity and a 5 megapixel camera that made the photographer in me want to piss about and take photos of everything imaginable. At first I was worried when I took pics with it because it stored them within the App and would release them to the Photo Album when I said so. So how did it stack up in the field test?

At first when I played with it, this App crashed. A lot. I would be taking pictures or looking through what I did take and it would be too much for it to take apparently despite being used by a freshly activated iPhone 4. It took a bit of time loading up and taking pictures with a 5-10 second burst started off okay but it took longer and longer to be able to take another picture. Needless to say there were some bugs but I put it through its paces when I made it the main photo taker on my New York weekend and I was pleasantly surprised.

If you take the picture saving limitation in mind and take longer bursts you’ll be fine. Slowing down and moving at a steady pace offers a better experience and more satisfying pictures. In the immediate menu you have the option to have a stabilizer, timer, burst, zoom in/out, flash options and a clicker. Additional menus as well as the photo album are also available from here. Initially you start off with an auto focus but pressing the screen gives a customized focus.

Where this App shines however is the options in the light box (album) menu. After a day of taking pictures and you’re ready to go through them, you have a ton of post production options. You can add borders, crop, add effects, rotate and adjust the lighting to a wide set of options. I found this particularly useful since it saved me the time of doing it myself in another App and makes it more worthwhile than the native iPhone Camera App. It has the standard sharing options as well, nothing hugely fancy over the usual Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, SMS or e-mail.

There were times when it crashed still when I was in the heat of taking pics on vacation and had to say ‘Well I got a few’. It was lucky it saved the ones prior to crashing otherwise it would be entirely useless. Saving grace is that it works with older iPhones but with obvious picture taking features lost. Do I recommend? Certainly if you don’t mind spending the money for convenient features, however you can easily use the free Photoshop App to pictures taken with the native Camera App. Its the long way round but thats what Camera+ is, convenient. It does a lot of really neat stuff while being beautiful and productive. The big problem are annoying bugs that cause it to crash. Go easy on it and it’ll be a loyal friend to you.