Little too slow to be a Genius, by Martin Aggett

So many apps in the appstore are only there because they fill some gap in functionality that the developer believes was overlooked by Apple. Many times these “gapfiller” applications are little more than a single feature touted as a full blown app, or a replacement for an existing Apple-provided application with claims of superiority over the original. The folks at CodeGoo claim that “Camera Genius is the camera app you wished your iPhone shipped with”, according to their appstore description – we’ll be the judge of that.

I used Camera Genius on a recent trip to Colorado Springs and tried to find some uses for the app’s various picture taking features. I’m not going to give you the sales pitch and list all of the features of this app – you can read about all that in the iTunes description. I’m just going to hit the high and low points from my experience.

I typically travel by myself, and even though I’m a photographer, there are times where I don’t want to drag a tripod or tons of high-end camera gear around. That’s why I like using my iPhone camera for casual shooting and easy sharing on the web. When I’m out and about with just my iPhone there are times where I’d like to get a self portrait that’s a little better composed than the typical “arms-length toothy grin”. The timer feature in Camera Genius worked great for self portraits as long as I could find a good spot to prop up the iPhone. The timer, which can be set at various intervals between two and thirty seconds, was the feature I found most useful and just plain worked well.

The most ingenious feature award goes to… (opening envelope) sound activated shutter release! The idea behind this one is that a picture is taken when the iPhone’s microphone detects a spike in the ambient noise volume. The CodeGoo guys suggest using this feature for group shots where everyone says “cheese” to get that perfect shot when everyone is ready. I’m not sure how well this works in practice, or how useful this is in everyday situations. Personally, I felt silly yelling at the camera to take my picture because I was standing a little too far away for the microphone to hear me say “cheese.”

The single biggest thing that prevents me from recommending this application is that it takes way too long to take and save the picture. If you are going to claim that your camera is the app you “wished was shipped with the iPhone” then you need to make the basic functionality match that of the original camera app. When this app was first released it took a full forty seconds to take a picture. To give the developers some credit, they recognized this as a reoccurring negative theme in their appstore reviews and released an update that improves the speed to about 14 seconds. However, when you compare that to the native iPhone camera app, it is about ten seconds slower, which is just too much to ignore.

If I were an appstore reviewer, this app would probably get three stars for the good attempt at replacing the existing camera. I’ll keep it on my phone and only use the timer function until they can get it to save an image under five to seven seconds.

Martin is a freelance photojournalist based out of Seattle – to see some more iPhone pictures from his trip to Colorado Springs you can check out his photostream on Flickr.

Price: £1.19 ($1.99)

Comments

[Martin Aggett]

No one ever comments on my articles except Glyn...

[thescw]

I will comment.... Great article yet I dislike CodeGoo very much for all they do is spam the app store & rip off buyers with endless amounts of 1 function apps instead of trying to make a useful packaged camera app with a bundle of features that would make a person buy their products. I have yet to ever buy one & less likely to even accept a freebie unless they had a worthy package or an innovative wow factor. As well an an impressive interface which they lack. Your article was great & one more reason for me to not purchase their products.

=)

[Martin Aggett]

Thanks for the comment! I'm glad you thought the article was useful. I still have the app on my phone and am waiting for a few more updates before I ditch it completely.