Pocket Plastic

Settings: Auto (Scene/Lighting), Hipster (Filter), Thin Black (Border)

Here's a quick shot I took as I was leaving the house this afternoon. Used Camera+ for the digital zoom, but none of the built-in filters were adequate for what I wanted, so I exported it to the Camera Roll and put it through Nick Campbell's Cross Process (Basic), and then applied a circular blur with Takayuki Fukatsu's TiltShift Generator (plus some contrast/brightness/saturation adjustments).

(download)

Click here to download:

Dog_in_garden_BeforeAfter_tag_.zip (1.15 MB)

Four photos from the site of an upcoming bar/club in Singapore.

(download)

Click here to download:

Under_Construction_tag_iPhone_.zip (8.88 MB)

Camera+ by taptaptap (aka CamPlus, CameraPlus)

Price: $2.99 (purportedly an introductory offer)
Website: http://campl.us

Go to the URL above and one of the first things you see is a chesty young woman in a low-cut tank top being promoted as the professional photographer who contributed to the design of this new photography app. It gives a cheap GoDaddy.com feel to an otherwise nicely done website and product. Watch the promotional video and the opening 20 seconds alone, with gratuitous shots of Miss Lisa Bettany bending down, leaning forward, and selling the hell out of iPhone photography, and you'll probably agree the use of sex was an intentional decision. If not on her part at the time of shooting, then at least in the process of directing and editing the piece. I don't have a problem with cleavage, but it seemed a very odd choice for a camera app ad.

What it replaces

Camera+ falls into the category of camera replacement apps on the iPhone, while also stepping into the territory of all-in-one workflow apps. The first part means that you could theoretically use Camera+ as your main means of capturing images, and not Apple's barebones "Camera" app; the name itself makes so much clear. Included are some convenient niceties such as a Rule of Thirds composition grid, a 5x digital zoom slider, and a stabilized capture mode that only shoots when your hand is perfectly still. If that's all you want to do, the best app for the job is Gorillacam, which adds a burst capture mode for action scenes and a self-timer, whilst being available for the low price of free.

The second part refers to apps that act like a complete hub for the amateur photographer, and this is where Camera+ excels. It takes the photo, crops, applies lighting corrections, slaps on stylish color treatments, and adds borders before finally sending the result to Facebook/Twitter/Flickr, or an email address. Other apps in this category include Best Camera and Pro Camera. These two other options offer varying but generally superior levels of control over the editing process, but I believe Camera+ is the better choice for most people. For one thing, it takes photos really well, with barely any downtime between shots. In that regard, Best Camera is a poor camera replacement, plus it's extremely easy to ruin a good photo with its editing tools, which tend to blow out highlights and render muted scenes in garish colors. In contrast, Camera+'s post-processing effects are quite well-behaved. There's nothing you haven't seen before, eg. HDR-style lighting, "lomography" saturation and contrast, blue cross-processing tones, but they get the job done quickly and that helps reduce the temptation to fiddle, moving you on to the last step: sharing.

Good looks

It's also modeled on a visual and functional analogy that most photographers will immediately understand: the modern SLR camera. From the moment it's started up, Camera+ presents itself as a physical camera interface. There's a viewfinder, a monochromatic greenish LCD display, and a selection of "Scene" modes to choose from. Employing the latter as a means of choosing quick contrast and lighting fixes is a stroke of genius. It puts casual photographers at ease. The fake camera crudely beeps and bloops like the instrument it emulates. As a result, navigating the user interface is fun and painless, and no feature is hidden more than a few taps away (quite the improvement on some P&S camera menus, actually). Skimming through the shots you've taken (which are stored in the app itself until you decide to export them to the Camera Roll) is done by interacting with a light table metaphor. One nice touch has unedited photos sporting a sprocketed film border, while finalized shots have a clean print border.

All this fancy UI work should come as no surprise to followers of development company taptaptap. Their previous projects include the Classics ebook reader app many credit as the inspiration for iBooks' visual bookshelf (the honor actually goes to Delicious Library) and page flip animations, and a very pretty unit convertor named Convert. If there's a line between form and function, Camera+ probably overstepped it onto the form side in the name of fun. Some minor niggles: the shooting interface is geared for use in a portrait orientation, effects never vary (the Toycamera filter applies the same light leak edge to all photos, uniformly), and they can't be 'stacked' to create new variations.

A matter of trust

As one commenter over at iPhoneography.com observed, taptaptap doesn't have a stellar track record of supporting or improving their apps after launch, for example: Classics hasn't had new books added to its library for about a year. With the launch of iOS 4.0 looming, it would be bad for customers if Camera+ encounters compatibility problems and isn't updated for months. In fact, the new iPhone 4 itself will make two of Camera+'s features obsolete. 5x digital zoom will be in the new OS, while the physical flash unit and better low-light sensitivity will eliminate the need for artificial brightening.

As for that $2.99 special launch price? Take it with a pinch of salt. When Classics launched, it too went for an introductory price of $2.99, and was meant to go up to $4.99. What eventually happened was that the price varied wildly, going as low as 99c on several occasions, as the company tried out different sales tactics and experimented with the market. It's not a big deal in terms of the money, but promising early adopters a special price and then turning around to burn them can make a brand look pretty bad.

Conclusions

So, do you buy it? That depends. Can you make do with the free Gorillacam? If you're getting the new iPhone, does it seem wise to bet that the developer will update Camera+ in a timely manner to work with 5-megapixel images? Do you want fine-grained control over your editing instead of working with presets? I hate nothing more than buying an app on impulse and having it sit there on my screen, unused, taunting me and my lack of self-restraint. Thankfully, I'm so far finding Camera+ to be one I'd be happy to use on a daily basis in place of the standard Camera app. I expect to tire of it in a couple of months when I start to hit up against the ceiling of its presets; when too many photos start to look the same. Taptaptap can get around this by adding a hint of randomness to each application, the way Camerabag Desktop does with its "Reprocessing", or by simply adding new effects on a regular basis. Again, given their track record, this seems unlikely. But in the meantime I'd recommend it as a new toy to play with and maybe get some good shots out of. After all, a healthy set of limitations is sometimes the best catalyst for creativity.

Verdict: Recommended

Buy Camera+ in the iTunes App Store.