I’ve recently become obsessed with probably the lamest feature on the iPhone – the camera.

Its no real mystery that this is one of the weaker links of the phone from a technical perspective. Being a photographer I own a lot of cameras, good bad AND ugly. I even used to be notorious for telling people that “I don’t have a phone in my camera why would I want a camera on my phone.” I went several years and never saw the point. But recently I’ve had a big change of heart. Its not the camera I got excited about as much as it is all the things that go around the camera.

For example lets look at a major event in the not so distant history of photography. In the 1950′s when 35mm became popular, photography was changed forever. The 35mm size was considered an amateur format much inferior to larger sizes of roll and sheet film used at the time. But the size of the camera made it possible to get photographs that had never been taken before. Henri Cartier-Bresson called this “the decisive moment”. You didn’t have to miss intimate images because it took you 10 minutes to set up a tripod or measure light. The camera could now be taken places where it would have been too cumbersome before. It could now capture from angles that were previously difficult if not impossible. Photography became more personal, improvisational, intimate and prolific. 36 images on a roll – you didnt’ have to spend time changing the film as much.

Jump forward to the 21st century and we are now well in the midst of a second wave that is changing the way we share photos. You can now with a smart phone: make an image, edit the image and share it with your friends just about anywhere in the world in under 5 minutes. This is a game changer.

This technology has been around for a while actually. Sports publishers and news agencies have invested in all kinds of expensive equipment to get photos from their photographers in the field – the winning home run is on the website 2 minutes after it happened.

One of the reasons I like the iPhone so much is the 3rd party apps sold in the app store. The magic of using apps is in the ability to edit images right from the phone. You’re not going to improve the quality of the photographs as much as you are going to be able to change the quality to get more interesting results.

Some apps I use…

Photoshop.com

Released by Adobe, you can think of this as Photoshop-super-extra-light for the iPhone. No where near the power of Photoshop, but extremely useful. Excellent for simple exposure, color and toning adjustments, they’ve taken most of the meat and potatoes features of Photoshop and put them in the iPhone app. There is a companion site for sharing photos which looks beautiful but misses the boat being built entirely in Flash. But the app is completely worth having despite the useless sharing feature.
Get it on iTunes

CameraBag

CameraBag offers a simple, no frills interface that gets straight to the point. The app simply offers different vintage camera “looks” (with copyrighted names changed for legal reasons). There’s no fine tuning or editing, but if you want the quick look of a Holga, Lomo or Polaroid camera – this is the app for you. I use it for the simplicity and speed.
Get it on iTunes

QuadCamera

QuadCamera takes a series of images that are user configured for either 4 or 8 photos that are sewn together. You can adjust the interval setting between shots as well which is nice. You can also split up these small images to make old school animated gif files. I documented an entire day with this app and technique a few weeks ago.
Get it on iTunes

Mill Colour

Mill Colour is one of the best apps I’ve seen for fine tuning color, gamma, gain and lift on images. Its free and beats just about every paid app I’ve seen for what it does. You can start with preset “looks” and fine tune using those as your starting point.
Get it on iTunes

Photogene

Photogene has to be the worst in terms of interface and the cartoonish look to the app, but its extremely useful – I’d even say essential for an “all in one” app. Features cropping, rotation, simple color correction – all the standard stuff… but what’s great is the levels slider and the sharpening feature – not found in most photo apps I’ve tried…
Get it on iTunes