Last week, Greg Scoblette shared his favorite iPhone photo apps, but which ones are the most popular and useful? Here’s our top ten list.
Adorama on Light
If you’re serious about photography, there are some very useful tools that you can load onto your iPhone or iPod Touch. These can help you calculate exposure, do some basic image editing, and figure out how to light a scene, and more. Based on my conversations with working pros and serious hobbyists, these ten apps kept on coming up as popular favorites. But with all the seriousness of this paragraph, you’ll be surprised at how many of these apps are just plain fun that photographers can appreciate!
f/8 DoF Calculator
All the parameters and values needed to calculate exposures are shown on a single screen, and calculations are performed in real time. A “camera bag” holds different camera models and lenses so the app knows, for instance, the maximum or minimum shutter speeds of any given camera or the smallest and largest apertures of a selected lens. Different film formats let you calculate things like circle of confusion or depth of field on the fly. $3.99
Best Camera
Best Camera, developed by photographer Chase Jarvis, lets you select and apply a variety of effects to images you shot with your iPhone, and then lets you share the results on Facebook, Twitter, email, or the Best Camera online community. Effects include high saturation color, high-contrast black-and-white, nighttime effects, warming and cooling filters, a vignette effect, cropping, and other filters. $2.99
Camera Bag
Nevercenter’s Camera Bag is a set of filters emulate film emulsions and can be applied to iPhone photos. Filters include: Helga (toy camera effect), Instant (looks like it was shot with a Polaroid SX-70), low and high contrast black-and-white, Infrared, Colorcross (cross processing effect) and even a kinda-sorta fisheye effect. $1.99. It’s also available now for desktop computers as a $19 stand-alone program.
DSLR Camera Remote Professional Edition
OnOne’s DSLR Camera Remote lets you set up your iPod Touch or iPhone to remotely preview and fire your Canon EOS or Nikon DSLR, via a shared wi-fi connection and your computer. You can control shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance and other settings. A portion of the screen displays a preview of the image just shot. Currently 26 DSLRs are supported. It’s gotten rave reviews, and is a bargain (compared to buying a dedicated remote control) for $19.99. (A “lite” version, $1.99, offers more limited remote camera controls).
PhotoBuddy
In addition to many of the camera setting calculations found on f8 DoF Calculator, Photo Buddy will tell you sunrise and sunset times, the next full moon, your current longitude and latitude, and a “Grey Wedge” which provides different neutral tones that emulate a Grey Card and might help you color-calibrate images. There’s bellows correction for macro photography, flash controls, and even a timer that will count down if you’re in Bulb. $1.99
Daylight Camera Flash
Imaging Luminary’s Daylight Camera Flash is essentially an HDR emulator. By lightening shadow detail in photos shot with an iPhone, Imaging Luminary gives the effect of a flash on underexposed objects photographed in daylight. $1.99
PhotoGene
Is a simple-to-use way to adjust color levels, exposure, contrast, saturation or manipulate RGB. You can apply filters such as sharpin or pencil, rotate or crop an image, and add special effects such as text balloons or frames. Special filters include blur, B&W, night vision, heatmap, sepia, or posterize. $1.99
Pixcetera
Pixcetera is a display-print-on-demand online gallery with a variety of photos that can be ordered framed and matted as wall art, and this free app puts the entire collection at your fingertips. Many of the images are by well-known photographers (like Ansel Adams) while others come courtesy major stock agencies and wire services. Others are by, well, anyone. An interesting marketing idea; if nothing else, it lets you show off Ansel shots on your iPhone—and who wouldn’t pass up that opportunity? $Free!
Quad Camera
Art&Mobile’s Quad Camera turns the iPhone into a multi-lens toy camera (think Lomo), shooting 4 or 8 shots in quick succession and putting together on a single screen. Pictures are shot in sequence, and you can choose crop and layout including an option that only displays properly on a desktop or laptop computer. There’s also a Quad Animator, which turns your sequence into a flip-book effect.
Strobox
“How do I light this?” is a question studio photographers often ponder, and just as often, they consult diagrams showing light placement. Strobox lets you choose the combination of lights, backdrops, softboxes, umbrellas, hairlights, diffusion panels and more and lets you record your layouts as diagrams that you can call up again when you want to duplicate the effect. Very handy! $Free!
Did we miss one? Let us know your favorite in the comments!
