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Stephanie Chu: Flicking for an App to replace your basic default iPhone camera you've got several options and I'll tell you which ones are the best.
App Judgment
Stephanie Chu: Hello, and welcome to App Judgment Revision3's mobile phone application review show. I am Stephanie and today we are looking into options for replacing your iPhone need of camera app.
The best thing that's happen to iPhone's camera lately is touch focus and video. Our native app can get the job done when taking photos but there is definitely more to be desired based on the many apps that exist for image enhancement. Some of you simply want a camera that has other basic functions like zoom, taking multiple photos and bursts, level aids and image depolarization. Duncan Slothers wrote in there are many apps in the app store that claim to be improved camera apps but there are hundreds to chose from and I was wondering if you could check out something to find the best.
Duncan listed some possible apps to do the job which include the Snapture, Camera Genius, and Camera Plus Pro. These apps are strangers to the app market and have been quite reputable, so I thought we'd share a findings. First step is Snapture a widely covered app seen in Gizmodo, Macworld and on New York Times. The first thing I notice is that you can tap any where on the screen to take a photo, this is an attractive feature for those who intent on taking self-portraits for your Facebook page.
You can also take a single photo or a burst of three photos which then save into your local queue storage within the app. This queue can be accessed by touching your corner of your screen and drag to see options for sharing via e-mail, social networks or deleting. Press save right here to put Snapture photos in your camera roll. I should know that saving does take some time and there is no indicator progress or confirmation of the save aside from the queue number decreasing.
Other features of Snapture include resolution preference touch focus and simple color settings such as black and white, sepia, or inverted colors. But most notable is the zoom feature this is exciting because it is clearly something missing from the native iPhone app. The example on Snapture's iTune store front looks great and Snapture does nicely with the zoom, this was deceiving at first because the preview looks super blurry.
Snapture says photos can be magnified up to four times according to the iTunes preview but you won't know how good or bad the image really is until you check at the full-size image in your camera roll. The more you zoom the more careful you have to be about moving the lens since moving will create blur they shouldn't be surprise in giving the digital zoom which enlarges existing pixels. Sometimes image where a little bit grainy for my taste. Snapture has a touch zone which should help but I didn't find it to make a huge difference.
The Camera Genius does have an effective feature to keep your images clear, check out the anti shake feature, pair this with the zoom and you get a pretty decent photo. Camera Genius also has a timer in case you have popped up your iPhone and want to been to share with your friends. You can also show that the end time being time stamped on your image along with city base locations on that watermark. This may or may not be useful depending on how much you care about metadata. Another unique feature of Camera Genius is the ability to capture photos by sound, it can truly capture the moment when you are subject says --
Female Speaker: Cheese.
Stephanie Chu: All other features are comparable with Snapture such as the whole screen being the capture button basic sharing guides for a straight photo and burst mode.
We have another contender that my level of the competition well Camera Plus Pro come out on top. Take the best futures from Camera Genius and Snapture then add some new forward thinking features and you get Camera Plus Pro, at the time of this review Camera Plus Pro is the same price as the other two previous apps and this app gives you additional features that are really useful.
First, you can add at existing images and Camera Plus Pro local quick roll or even from your iPhone made of camera roll. At flash simulation, crop to any size, fix saturation, contrast, soft focus, copyright watermark or you can apply fancy preset filters but this gets better. Camera Plus Pro allows to add tags to your photos and you can search with in the app to quickly find images with those tags. This is nice because you otherwise searching through your thumbnails. And finally when you share photos to Facebook or Twitter, you can also take advantage of Camera Plus Pro GEOTagging capabilities.
The zoom is nicely comparable to Camera Genius with this entire shake setting and I think very good shape for an iPhone camera replacement with hour shots. But what if you don't want to pay for your new camera, there is a free camera app from GorillaCam and these are the same folks who gave you that flexible tripod we all loved so much.
Just updated recently in the iTune store the newest version of GorillaCam includes comparable features to the other apps we reviewed today. This app has tap to focus for the iPhone 3GS and resolution preferences to manage speed. Like the other apps GorillaCam include the zoom feature but it works extra well with the anti shake setting and the unique bubble level. GorillaCam offers basic camera features that the native iPhone app doesn't have such its timer, rapid-fire shooting, and a big button but there is also small differences that are pretty cool. The images auto save in the background so can keep snapping away with out having the app idle. You will also get a time lap shoot setting, so it won't make a movie for you like those other dedicated time laps apps. Sharing features only include e-mailing and there are no posture image editing capabilities but I think that we can let that slide as the images look pretty decent in the end and that's the goal.
Now let's take a look back at the four apps reviewed on this episode. If you are still thinking about downloading Snapture, the app is nice and easy to use after reading the lengthy instructions but be warn that your burst shots are limited and saving photos is slow since you have to delete them one by one. I personally recommend to hold that and don't download Snapture. As for Camera Genius if you don't care about GEOTagging, editing photos and enjoy capturing photos by sound, this is the app for you but for me I'd recommend to not download Camera Genius and instead consider Camera Plus Pro because you get the added features of editing, tagging and GEOTagging which are bundled with every thing Snapture and Camera Genius have to offer.
There are tons of features and there's a tons of previous apps, you are in for a bonus with Camera Plus Pro, did you felt pretty showed of a significant update to the app that includes videos support doing Macworld and this feature has just arrived in the iTunes app store, download Camera Plus Pro.
GorillaCam is a small it has a lot of punch not to mention that the price is right you won't get social network sharing and editing capabilities but the rest of the features are strong enough for me to recommend that you download GorillaCam for the iPhone.
My name is Stephanie and I hope you've enjoyed hearing about the best options for an alternate to your iPhone's need of camera app. If you have any feedback for me, hit me up on twitter@marilee and we always welcome you to give us your $0.02 through the app judgment Facebook fan page or Twitter, YouTube channel or home on revision3.com where you can also subscribe. Thanks for watching.
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