If you were one of the brave few to begin jailbreaking your iPhones back in early 2008, you probably came across what I considered the best app available at that point: Snapture. I always wanted to get more out of my iPhone camera and this jailbreak app helped me accomplish that.

Fast forward a year and a half and you'll finally find Snapture [iTunes Link] in Apple's App Store. This is primarily due to the fact that Apple has opened up more and more of the iPhone OS with each new release of the SDK. Is it perfect? No, but with the given access to the Camera APIs, applications like Snapture and Best Camera can finally exist in a world of harmony with the big wigs at Apple.

In regards to functionality, I've always been a huge fan of Snapture. It's simple, but it works. I don't have to touch a button on the screen to take a picture, I can tap the screen anywhere I'd like and it will work just fine. My biggest pet peeve about the built-in camera app is that I have to press a tiny button in order to take a picture. That's not very conducive for self portraits or any other situation where you're not looking right at the device.

The first thing I normally do when someone names their application "The Best..." is roll my eyes and delete the PR email. However, when I saw a press release about the Best Camera app for iPhone, I decided to take a look and I'm glad I did.

Best Camera [iTunes link] is a collaboration between professional photographer Chase Jarvis and iPhone dev firm Übermind. The app gets its name from Jarvis's book "The Best Camera is The One That's With You," a collection of photos taken all over the world by Jarvis with his iPhone.

The US$2.99 app features 14 useful filters and effects that can be stacked; in other words, you can take a photo with the iPhone camera, then apply several filters and/or effects before sharing your handiwork. The filters and effects are on a side-scrolling "dock" at the bottom of the screen, and you apply them by simply tapping on the icons. Sharing includes saving the photo on your iPhone camera roll, sending it out via email, or blasting it to your Facebook or Twitter account.

There's also one more place to share your photo. While filters and effects are nothing new, Jarvis has created a community at thebestcamera.com where photos that have been submitted are displayed on a constantly changing photo wall. These photos are also viewable in the app itself, and by tapping a photo in either location, you can view information about the photographer. On the website, the information also includes a list of the filers or effects that were used on the original photo so you can re-create photos that you find fascinating.

Check out the gallery below for some screenshots of the Best Camera app in action.

The iPhone has made photography fun for me again. I frankly hated the cameras I had in some of my other, older phones, and I don't like carrying around my big Canon digicam all the time, so having a fairly capable camera in my pocket has opened up my photo-taking horizons again.

When I got the 3GS this summer, one of my first tests was to take some macro pictures using the camera. Sure, the 3GS is better at macro photos than the original or 3G models, but it still isn't a "real" macro camera. What if I wanted to take close up pictures of a tiny insect or a detail of a flower stamen?

The Apple Press has a great little tutorial today on how to take better macro photos with the iPhone using alternative lenses. I'll leave reading the post as an exercise for our readers, but let it suffice to say that you can do a lot of really cool macro shots with an iPhone by putting a small drop of water onto the lens. The Apple Press also provides a link to Amazon for an inexpensive magnifier that can fit in your wallet, perfect for those who are a bit queasy about putting even a drop of agua on their iPhones.

Meanwhile, the geniuses at Mobile Mechatronics are now selling an inexpensive product designed to help you take better photos with your iPhone. The Blur Tripod ($US14.99) consists of an iPhone tripod adapter, a mini tripod, and an upcoming companion app called Blur Software that provides an adjustable delay to your iPhotography so that all vibrations in the iPhone / tripod combo are damped out before the photo is snapped. The app is going through the labyrinthine approval process right now, and will hopefully be approved by Apple in the near future.
In the meantime, I'm going to go out and take some more pictures and video with my iPhone. What's your biggest wish for iPhone photography? A telephoto lens? A flash? Leave your comments below.

The Eye-Fi Memory Card sends photos wirelessly from your camera to the destination of your choice, like a computer or the web. Back in January of '08, the product gained Mac and iPhoto support, and support for MobileMe was added in September '08.

This week, Eye-Fi announced the Eye-Fi 2GB Geo, which is currently exclusive to Apple retail, both online and brick-and-mortar stores. As you've probably guessed, the Geo adds geotagging to the mix. Once snapped and tagged, photos will be sent to a folder on your Mac or directly to iPhoto, all tagged and ready to go. This makes great use of iPhoto '09's Places feature.

It's $60 for a 2GB card, which is cheaper that most of the geotagging add-on hardware we listed a couple months back. If you pick one of these up, let us know how it goes.

Additionally, there's a Eye-Fi app for the iPhone [App Store link] that lets you send photos to your Mac or certain online services direct from your phone.

[via MacDailyNews]

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.

Shooting photographs of fireworks can be a real challenge. The good shots happen quickly, cameras don't always get the focus right, and there is a lot of movement that can make for blurry pictures. The iPhone is not the best camera in the world for demanding photo jobs -- that's true for all cell phone cams, with the possible exception of digital cameras that happen to include phones as a bonus feature.

Nevertheless, we asked our readers around the U.S. to send us their fireworks images, and that they did. Actually, the iPhone acquitted itself pretty well, both with still images and in movies done with the new 3G (plus one movie done with a jailbroken 2G and Cycorder).

Look below for a gallery of some of my favorite stills. Many were sent anonymously, so we can't always credit the photographer. Some were uploaded directly from their phones to MobileMe and YouTube.

Thanks to all who participated and made our 4th of July sparking and colorful. Visit this link to see the full collection of entries, check out comments in our request for pictures article yesterday for more YouTube links, and view the gallery below for our selection of some great images from around the country.

Pix Remix isn't yet on the App Store, but I'm hoping it lands soon. If you've ever tried the Ken Burns effect in iPhoto to move photos around during a slideshow, you know how frustrating it is when the effect chops off the faces or other important parts of your photo while moving. Pix Remix does this better, plus more, all on your iPhone with your photos.

With Pix Remix you choose the photos you want (on your iPhone or iPod touch), put them in order, then create a slideshow using a path for the camera. You control the zoom as well, so instead of cutting off faces you can zoom into them instead. As you can see in the video, it's quite simple. This is the "pan and zoom" type of slideshow.

Pix Remix features a collage mode that reminds me of Microsoft's Surface technology -- a set of photos sit on a virtual table, and you can zoom, move and rotate them with your fingers. It looks like someone placing photos on a flat surface, except you can animate them.

Those are a couple of the slideshow options, and there's the option to add captions as well, or you can create a simple slideshow with nothing but transitions and captions. The final piece of the puzzle: export. You can send your slideshows to Twitter or Facebook or via email. I noticed the other day there were inactive links for a "reader" app, presumably to watch Remix slideshows on another iPhone without the full app, but that has been removed.

We'll keep an eye out for when Pix Remix hits the store, so check our Twitter feed for the latest updates.

iPhone Savior featured this short video clip this morning by Scott Patrick showing how to use an inexpensive Contour iPhone case and some common hardware to make an iPhone tripod mount.

There are two impressive points about this mount; first, by using the Contour case, you know that the iPhone is going to be held securely (my wife used one for over a year and never had it inadvertently open up), and second, Scott made it so it will work with any standard tripod camera mount head.

With the tripod Scott is using, it would be simple to flip the camera 90° to put it into a landscape configuration. This should work well for both still photography with any iPhone or video work with the iPhone 3GS.

[Thanks to TUAW reader Michael for pointing us to this video]

Not too long ago we told you about an artist creating a cover for the New Yorker magazine using a paint program on the iPhone. Now an Australian photographer has won an award for a photo he took on his iPhone.

Steve Turner created a rather striking collection of images he put together, and manipulated to create a print that caught the eye of the judges at the Photo Marketing Association show in Sydney.

I tried to contact the photographer, and we had a brief email back and forth. He's traveling so I don't have too many details and the time difference between us has made communications spotty. His messages, of course, are all coming via iPhone. Steve says he has about $200,000 worth of camera equipment but loves shooting on the iPhone. He used CameraBag for the effects, and scaled the photos up on his Mac at his studio. If you go to Steve's web site you'll see the photo pop up. It's the photo with 9 small images and a larger image of a car. His non- iPhone work is pretty impressive as well. My guess is the image was taken with the older 2MP camera, allowing for time to submit his photo for consideration, but it is impressive.

There's just no predicting how creative people can be even if the equipment is not top notch. As I remember learning some years ago from an instructor in a photography course when I was complaining about my little camera, 'If Ansel Adams uses my camera, he gets great pictures. If I get his camera, not so much.' Great lesson for us all, and congrats Steve.

Thanks to photographer Gavin Blue for the tip

There are quite a few programs that allow you to create panoramas on the iPhone. I've reviewed some of them, and they all get pretty good reviews. The differences are often in how much work you have to do versus letting the software do the alignments of the various images. Since iPhone photos are almost always hand held, there are going to be issues of the camera not always being level.

AutoStitch [App Store] is a US$1.99 app that gets most of the process just right. When you run it, it asks you to import images from your camera roll, as many as you like. They can be horizontal for a wide panorama, or stacked vertically. As an experiment I shot both vertically and horizontally, and rocked the camera significantly out of level by tilting it up to about 45 degrees. I took 10 images, and the software assembled the images in the proper order. There were a couple of gaps, where there was no image, but that was my fault, not the application's. The result was pretty impressive: not as a great image, but that AutoStitch could make sense out of the jumble of shots. You can see this image in the gallery I've created.

No panorama software I've seen is perfect. When I look closely at the full resolution images I see a bit of ghosting in the distant mountains, but overall AutoStitch is an excellent program that lets you take the pictures while it does the work. All panoramas need some cropping cleanup, and iPhoto can do this when you import from the camera. If you want to do all the post-processing on the iPhone itself, I suggest Photogene, [App Store] which will straighten and crop your photos, plus lots of other functions if you want them. It's a great US$2.99 investment. I'll be reviewing this app in a future post.

Here are some sample panos taken assembled with AutoStitcher. I've reduced the size of these images so they will load faster. You can find more on the developer's web site.

Image Examples:

CameraBag [App Store link] joins the club of iPhone apps that offers filters for your photos to change the style or color balance of what you have snapped. The app sells for US$2.99.

This app offers filters that mimic old film emulsions of the past, as well as offering fish eye views and infrared simulation.

Here's the complete list:

Helga - A square-format toy camera with washed-out highlights and old-school vignetting.
1974 - This is your father's camera. Faded, tinted, and hip.
Magazine - Emulates effects used in fashion magazines
Lolo - Shoot from the hip and take life as it comes with vibrant, colorful shots.
Cinema - Dramatic, moody, wide-screen stills from the movie of your life.
1962 - Dynamic black and whites from the photojournalists of a bygone era.
Mono - Smooth gradation from black to white.
Infrared - Simulation of the popular landscape photography technique.
Fisheye - Popular fish eye lens effect - try it in combination with other filters.
Instant-emulates the old Polaroid look
Original - The unaltered image.

Some of the filters are subtle. Some are pretty dramatic. I didn't find any of them to be horrible. The app gets good reviews from users, except due to some legal issues from Polaroid, the borders of the images were changed and don't really look like the old Polaroid prints, so users are unhappy with the new filter. The developer is working that out, and is referring users to the US$0.99 version of the app, CameraBag Lite retro, [App Store] which still has the older filter.

The app was stable in my use, and allows you to email the finished images, or save them to your camera roll. The developer is also working on a desktop version of the app for both the Mac and PC. There are lots of apps offered that do similar effects. Ultimately, you need to choose the one that best fits your needs. I think the CameraBag filters do a nice job, and are easy to use. They are certainly worth a look.

Here are filters I applied on a landscape photo, along with the original for comparison:

There are few times I have used software that really caused my jaw to drop. Photomatix Pro did just that. It's a Mac OS X utility that allows you to create what are called High Dynamic Range (HDR) images from separate digital exposures taken at different shutter speeds (exposure levels). These pictures are far more colorful and impressive in their tonal range and saturation.

Many digital cameras have something called AEB, or Automatic Exposure Bracketing. You click the shutter once, and the camera takes 3 pictures instead of just one. In my case I usually shoot a normally exposed image, then one 2 stops under, and another one 2 stops over. If your camera doesn't have AEB you can do this manually.

Photomatix Pro combines the three exposures you've taken into one, and tone maps the image into a JPEG or TIFF that displays a really wide dynamic range. The result is often a stunning picture, with little loss in the shadowy areas, and no blown-out highlights. It's hard to do if you are shooting people because they will move between the 3 exposures, but works great with landscapes. A tripod is recommended, but I've done just fine handheld and Photomatix Pro will automatically line up (register) the 3 images.

Words can't describe the difference, so I've included a few examples to look at. There are other Mac apps that do similar things, but I've had the best luck with Photomatix Pro. They also make a Photoshop plug-in and one for Aperture, but I think the full program is the best. Newer versions of Photoshop also support the creation of these HDR images, but the results are not as spectacular in my view. There is also a free, basic version of the program that lets you combine 2 images, but it is simply not as effective.

You can search for a lot of information on HDR photography on the web. I have found this site to be very good, and it reviews the different software that is available. It's very easy to overdo the look of HDR images, and Photomatix Pro gives you lots of control. You can make your images really good, or outlandish. The control is in the hands of the photographer. To many, HDR will be old hat, but a lot of photographers haven't tried it, and will be pleasantly shocked at the results.

Since you can download Photomatix Pro for free, if you are serious about digital imaging, I'd give it a tryout. If you buy the full version it is US$99.00.

Here are some examples of how HDR imaging works. Of course these images are reduced in quality and resolution, so they only hint at the differences.

The iPhone's built-in camera is a prime target for improvements. We've seen iPhone cases with built-in wide-angle lenses, iPhone cases with zoom lenses, and a plethora of apps to manipulate photos. Camera Zoom (click opens iTunes) is a new US$0.99 app from KendiTech that provides a 4x digital zoom for your iPhone camera.
Camera Zoom displays a preview in real time, just like the regular camera app. You use a slider to adjust the level of zoom. After taking the photo, Camera Zoom tweaks it for the best possible quality.

For those of us with "real" digital cameras, the ability to zoom the iPhone's camera is nice. However, the picture quality of a digital zoom is never as good as you'll get with an optical zoom lens. As you can see with the example photos above, the zoomed image tends to be grainy. This is particularly true in low-light conditions. If you can put up with the degraded picture quality, Camera Zoom is an inexpensive way to add zoom capabilities to your iPhone.

I'm surprised that Apple approved this app, since the icon is titled "Camera" just like the real Camera app, and it duplicates the functionality of the Photos app as well. The latter isn't done very well, since you can't flick the screen to move between pictures in the camera roll.

This is version 1.0 of this app, however, and it's a good start to what could be an easy-to-use photo manipulation tool for the iPhone platform.

Pano, a fun iPhone app for taking panoramic photos, has been around since last fall and the developers at Debacle Software have been hard at work improving the app ever since. While the first iteration stitched together a maximum of 4 photos, the 2.0 version of the app upped the limit to 6 photos.

Now Pano 3 (click opens iTunes) rewrites the rules for taking panoramas with your iPhone. The new version can automatically meld up to 16 photos, providing 360 degree panoramas. The team at Debacle added a way to resume interrupted panoramas, so if Mom called right as you were taking the fifth shot in your series of sixteen, you can pop back into Pano 3 and start right back up.

While the capabilities of Pano have increased, the price remains the same low $2.99US. I use this app a lot, and it's just about the most fun that you can buy for $3. If you have an iPhone and love to take photos, Pano's deserving of a place on your home screen.

After you've shot a few panoramas with Pano 3, take part in Debacle's I Love Pano Pano Panorama Contest. A group of TUAW bloggers are judges, and there are some great prizes.

As Macworld notes, this is it for the ol' Firewire 400. With the introduction of the new Mac mini the other day and the refresh of the Mac Pro and iMac lines, the old version of Firewire is left only on the white MacBook. It's evolution at its finest, and our good friend Nilay Patel over at Engadget put together this perfect video showing just how hard it is to say goodbye to yesterday.

As I said on the Talkcast a long time ago when this was first hinted at, it's not a huge loss in my eyes. This is an outdated standard, and if you've got anything sitting around that absolutely requires a FireWire 400 port (and you've already upgraded completely to a computer that doesn't have one), then it's time for an upgrade. Those happen, you know -- there's a reason they're not selling Polaroid film any more. Besides, FW800 ports can easily drive your FW400 gear with a $8 cable.

Nostalgia, however, is a powerful force. So it's with a damp hankerchief and wet eyes that some of us will bid farewell to FireWire 400. Long live FireWire 800!