Since the v3.0 operating system allowed applications to access the iPhone’s hardware, iPhone photo applications have switched from being after-the-fact processors to full-on camera suites, letting you do everything from capturing images to post processing to (in some cases) uploading to FaceBook and the Twitter.
The latest is the rather appropriately professional-looking Pro-Camera, which can be yours for $3. Pro-Camera offers the self-timer and digital zoom found in other applications, but it brings some rather nice new features, usually found in proper, standalone cameras.
Most successful will probably be the anti-shake, which uses the accelerometer to detect your jitters and stabilize the image. Using a similar method, you can also overlay a horizon line to keep the pictures straight, or display a grid overlay.
Some other “features” are hardly more than padding: if you have Griffin’s Clarifi, you can take close up shots (the Clarifi is an add-on lens for the older 3G which allows macro shots in any application), for example.
We are interested, though, in the “Night Images” mode, which promises to clean up low-light shots. Our guess is that this relies heavily on image processing using information form the accelerometer, or just some fancy noise-reduction algorithms.
These kinds of camera apps are exciting in a different way, too. Effectively, it has turned the iPhone into a camera development kit. How else could you buy a single camera and then be able to easily switch between various control methods and feature-sets depending on subject matter or just personal preference? We’re looking forward to a lot more of these, especially when people start making special hardware to complement them.
Product page [Pro Camera]
Product page [iTunes]
See Also:
- Best Camera: 'Like Photoshop for The iPhone'
- The Dev That Came in From the Cold: iPhone Camera App Goes Legit …
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