Filed under: App Review
Camera Zoom 1.1 app released for OS 3.0
When I tried to take fourth of July fireworks pictures at Jones Beach on Long Island, I was too far away from the action to get anything really good. My iPhone 3GS turned the spectacular flashes of color into small colorful specks and I realized that what this camera needed was a zoom function. I looked for one and found Camera Zoom from Kenditech which we covered last April. The problem was that it wouldn't work with OS 3.0. I did find a few apps that I thought would help like Zipix Lite, which purported to zoom, but really only enlarged and cropped the picture giving me less than acceptable results.
Picture taking on the iPhone has just gotten better with the release of Camera Zoom 1.1 which plays very nicely with OS 3.0. It provides up to a 4X digital zoom; not as good as an optical zoom, but not bad at all.
The app gives you a slider bar that zooms in and out, or optionally uses the whole screen to zoom by sliding your finger across the screen. The same goes for the shutter, which allows you to tap anywhere to take the picture. This can get in the way of the autofocus box, but can be turned off. Camera Zoom 1.1 also gives you the option to reduce the size of pictures to 320X480, the native resolution of the iPhone screen. I recommend this setting since the improvement is dramatic.
If you have an iPhone 3GS, you will get more functionality out of your camera with Camera Zoom 1.1. I haven't tested earlier cameras, but I can't see why it wouldn't be great for those as well. Spending 99 cents for this app is a no-brainer. It's one of those things that just should have been built into the system.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so take a look at this gallery and see for yourself.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Schell said 10:51PM on 7-21-2009
"In" Long Island?
Not from around there, are you?
How does this app compare to the other zoom apps?
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David Winograd said 11:08PM on 7-21-2009
You're absolutely right. I changed it. Then again, are you on an airplane or in an airplane?
The other apps I tried did nothing more than enlarge the picture and crop out what is too big for the screen. This results in a blurry picture.
This thingy does a real zoom. It's not perfect but it's the only thing I've seen that does it.
John B. said 11:24PM on 7-21-2009
I'm confused. Lacking any physical zooming mechanism, how does this app differ from the others that enlarge and crop in the software? I would think it would be the same.
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Greg said 11:54PM on 7-21-2009
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Digital zoom isn't all that useful. I mean, you can just crop it, and blow it up, making your photo look more pixelated is hardly a good thing
gotsmart said 11:39PM on 7-21-2009
I don't get it... all "digital zoom" does is crop and interpolate. How is this app better than any other?
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David Winograd said 11:48PM on 7-21-2009
I really don't know how it does it. Possibly a really optimized combination of reduction of pixel count and stabilization. When you take a picture it takes a few beats for the shutter to click. I know that Night Camera uses this method to wait until the camera is stable enough to click the shutter.
worm said 11:47PM on 7-21-2009
"Digital zoom", which is what this app does, is literally exactly the same as cropping a normal image. Not sure why anyone would pay even $1 for that.
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Rafael Bugajewski said 3:30AM on 7-22-2009
I second the other comments. “Digital zoom” means that the picture gets sized up and cropped.
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malte said 4:06AM on 7-22-2009
....and you always get better results by cropping and enlarging with e.g. photoshop and a specialized plugin. or just do the cropping with photogene and if you want to enlarge the picture use a good ps-plugin not this useless piece of software.
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DrWho said 6:49AM on 7-22-2009
Sure yeah I'll just copy my photos to my mac, run out and buy photoshop, install it, run it, edit the picture, and then upload my picture to facebook or tweet it. That won't take long will it?
malte said 7:03AM on 7-22-2009
you don't get it: this is an useless app because it basically just crops your pictures. get any other app with more funcionality like e.g. photogene and you can do the same. take a picture crop out the detail in ugly 320x480 pixels and upload it to facebook. on the other hand: if you want to buy an app for cropping and one for color adjustments and one for contrast and one for any other basic photo-function i bet there are apps for that. ;)
Mischa Coster said 6:44AM on 7-22-2009
For me, the $1 'investment' is not about having better picture quality (I doubt if this is the case, like other readers point out) but more about convenience. Not having to open the image in another app, cropping, resizing etc. Just a time-saver :-)
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RS said 10:28AM on 7-22-2009
Exactly!!! For $0.99, I downloaded it and its great to just be able to inch in a bit when you are taking a photo that would otherwise be so small in the frame. Yes, I realize you can take a shot then stretch it closer when you preview it, but this app seems to work better than that.
robogobo said 9:28AM on 7-22-2009
So, it's a cropping tool. And maybe it does a better job at cropping and optimizing. Maybe it adds sharpening, or some other trick. Maybe you could compare the crop in Camera Zoom to cropping in another iPhone app, to cropping in photoshop and reimporting. That's what I'd like to see.
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soxneon said 10:33AM on 7-22-2009
It's about time they fixed it although it seems like it was more of a delay on Apple's part than anything. It was getting killed in the reviews for the longest time simply because the old version wouldn't launch in v3. Glad to have it back on my phone.
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Andy said 11:20AM on 7-22-2009
More less than complimentary reviews at Yappler. You would think people understood digital zoom by now.
http://www.yappler.com/App/35049/Camera-Zoom-v1-1.aspx
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alansky said 2:06PM on 7-22-2009
As others have pointed out, all digital zooms do exactly the same thing: they enlarge and crop the existing image. Some interpolation algorithms may be more intelligent than others, but it is impossible to digitally zoom a photo without losing sharpness and detail.
@DrWho: iPhoto, which comes with every Mac, can crop your photos with ease.
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scarabic said 3:15PM on 7-22-2009
I agree that the time savings of being able to do the resize/crop right there in the camera are worth something, at least.
But please don't post nonsense like this:
"The other apps I tried did nothing more than enlarge the picture and crop out what is too big for the screen. This results in a blurry picture.
This thingy does a real zoom. It's not perfect but it's the only thing I've seen that does it."
especially when...
"I really don't know how it does it."
Ordinary consumers who don't know the difference between optical and digital zoom get screwed, IMHO. Like I said, the time saver is worth something. But if you don't even know that what you're getting is a resize/crop then you're going to be disappointed with the quality. I would go so far as to say that the term "digital zoom" itself is misleading.
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Byrdman said 7:38PM on 7-22-2009
Those images look like crap
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Ray said 11:16AM on 7-23-2009
OMG.. If you really think you can take nice fireworks pictures with a cellphone, zoom app or not, you can't be helped.. Are you one of those guys who flash the iPhone on a safari in Africa as well, "putting to shame" all those with an SLR and 400 zoom lens? :)
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