Eleven iPhone Apps for Photographers

1. Torch

Flashlight – a free app by John Haney software – has a set of coloured screens accessible by scrolling, plus a screen you can customise. Increase your phone’s brightness in Settings for a brighter torch. The red makes a really useful darkroom safelight, and the bright white is handy for dark nights on lonely clifftops, and saved at least one photographer from stumbling at midnight on a deserted jetty.

There are a half dozen other torch apps including another free one from Savvy Soda but as yet they’re untried. Can’t see what could be improved. This is simple, effective. A must.

10/10

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2. Spirit Level

iHandy Level is a free app, part of iHandysoft’s magnificent carpentry suite which also contains a plumbob and rule. It’s useful for gallery hangings when someone else has nabbed your big spirit level, and great for outdoor landscape shoots with your very big camera. It’s also rather pretty, and does exactly what it says on the tin. I’d give it full marks if the level used the whole width of the iPhone, sacrificing that pretty graphic in the process, but it is magnificent.

9/10

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3. Bokeh

Free app which calculates two things: the depth of field for a particular focal length & aperture combination, over a specific distance, and the hyperfocal distance. In the example above, with a 50mm lens set at an aperture of 1.4 (the biggest readily available), at 13metres, there will be a depth of field of only about 3 metres.

At a distance of one metre (above), the depth of field will be as little as 0.02 of a metre, a mere 2cm. The app’s second screen calculates hyperfocal distance (at which everything is in focus) for a given lens and aperture.

Admittedly I haven’t used this much, but I’m not currently using the kind of camera exactitude that requires measuring the ground between camera and subject with a tape measure. As a learning tool, or for helping estimate effects, and indeed with LF photography and manual cameras where there is no DOF preview button, this is superb. It’s definitely worth getting to accustom the mind to lens capabilities in general and more fun to play with on the Metro than the average game of scrabble.

Another 9/10

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4. FND (Film is Not Dead)

Black & white film data: format and ISO for 15 types from Agfa APX to Rollei R3 plus the facility to add your own. Tap on one and the app scrolls right to the next screen with a comprehensive list of available developers, dilutions and dev times at 20˚ and tap again for a countdown clock. Great! Works, but so far I haven’t found myself adding film or developer types manually, so it would be useful if these could be added as regular updates.  There’s no Diafine for example, and no Fomapan or Lucky.

Big drawback: it’s quite easy to delete a film with a stroke to scroll right instead of a tap on the screen. It would be annoying to have to dig out paper datasheets again for a film accidentally deleted.

7/10

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5. Mixical

Wonderful application. Extremely simple mathematical calculation for the times when your mind goes completely blank and you can’t remember how to work out quantities for 1:19 or 1:4. Or for those knotty moments when only a 385ml single roll dev tank will do.Costs 59p and worth every last penny.

An unreserved 10/10

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6. The Massive Dev Chart

The iPhone version of every darkroom photographer’s favourite search result, this will need no introduction. The sound functions on the timer are fabulous: even the animation is fun. But the sound makes it possible to use even in full blackout conditions. It’s £3.49. If you use a darkroom, or if you dev the odd roll at your kitchen sink, buy it. With this and Mixical, you’re sorted for little over £4.

Essential: 10/10

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Now four applications to use with your iPhone’s camera. Even if  your main camera is a Leica, a Hasselblad or a Sinar much fun is to be had with snapshots, and since the iPhone’s camera has its detractors there are increasing numbers of applications out there to make it better. Here are my picks.

7. Darkroom (formerly Steadycam)

Why is this app called darkroom? Nothing to do with film developing, I’m assuming it’s because it’s harder for the iPhone’s camera to find focus in a dark room. Ha. So the shutter doesn’t get depressed until your hand stops shaking or the subject stops shaking, or both. If the charm of your phonecamera photos are their slight blurriness, this may not be your thing since it simply won’t take the photo if there’s any movement. No good at all for your small child’s sports day, a northern beach, photos from train windows, in fact anything with anything in movement, even slightly. And if you only like sharp as a tack, the iPhone camera isn’t going to be for you anyway. Use with caution, because you can come away thinking you have the shot when the the vibration sensor is still seeking.

It’s free, so do try it. Might suit your cameraphone style.

6/10

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8. Time Lapse

Haven’t had time to try this yet properly, but when I do I’ll upload the results. There’s a superb user-driven support forum with suggestions about making videos and sources of iPhone tripods and whatnot. It’s only £1.19 but an inbuilt ability to create a movie from the stills, and export to email or a social networking site are notably absent: the photos are simply stored in sequence in your camera roll. Could definitely be improved.

5/10

If you’ve tried it, let me know and I’ll post a link to your slideshow or movie.

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9. Polarize by Christopher Comair

Disappointing that the developer only uses Flickr as their web presence, so there’s no clickthrough here. But this is a free app, and works very well. If your heart aches for a sweet pack of 600, this might just assuage some of your pain until the Impossible Project comes up trumps.

Here are a few I made earlier:

Like a true Polaroid, focus is tricky to get right, and colours are loud and there’s bleed and fringing. But these are great for Twitpic, avatars and online comic books. And as you can see, you can magic marker a title. Get this one, it’s free.

9/10 (point deducted for reliance on Flickr)

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10. Camerabag

This has been described as the best camera around if you’re not carrying a camera, and it’s looking very good so far. Jon Madison has been testing this on his Posterus site, with some stunning results.

The Helga setting produces the heavy vignetting common with a lot of Holga and Diana cameras, and the square format is a nice additional touch.

There are 11 modes d’emploi including Lolo (heh), Instant (very popular), Infrared (not all that satisfactory but worth trying again), 1962:

1974:

and Fisheye. All the fun you never had with your old mobile phone camera. And you can email a photo or save to your iPhone’s camera roll for tweeting. At this point, and after double and triple checking username etc, I cannot fathom why my email settings haven’t been accepted by this app, so gave up trying  for far better things to do with my time. Deduction of un point for that minor but irritating detail; this one is a definite winner.

9/10

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And finally…

11. Exposure Calc

The sunny 16 rule in your pocket, marvelous. Everything about it is the one app you probably cannot do without if you’re a fan of all manual cameras, and you left your lightmeter at home on the kitchen table. Only £1.19, the dev annoyed customers by putting ads on this paid-for app but he took note of customer feedback stopped that soon enough.

10/10

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Other suggestions? Essential for the darkroom are the LastFM (free) and RadioBox (59p) apps, and for microblogging simplicity I can highly and unreservedly recommend Audioboo and the Tumblr app, both completely free.

There are a whole host of other useful and non-useful photography and related iPhone applications out there, more being designed all the time. If your favourite isn’t here, please add in the comments.

If you’ve seen or can make a countdown or count-up stopwatch timer application that beeps in the dark when time’s up and saves that setting so it can be used as a repeat, it’ll be very useful for the lith printing. Thanks.

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