New iPhone Photo App: MonotoriCamera - easy depth of field effect

With “Monotori Camera” everybody can easily enjoy pictures that look as if taken with a real SLR camera. It is most suitable for taking pictures of motives like small objects or food.

Description from the AppStore: “Monotori Camera” is extremely easy to use: just touch the desired object in the picture on the screen of your iPhone. It will set only the desired object in focus and result in a beautiful picture just as if taken with a real SLR camera. When pictures are taken from slightly above, it can also be used to create currently very popular miniature fake photos.

With “Monotori Camera” you can enjoy pictures with that special feel that cannot be captured with just the iPhone itself.

You don't know about photography but still want to take beautiful pictures?
Then “Monotori Camera” is just right for you!

Characteristics:

• Areas outside the chosen area are beautifully blurred just like when taken with a SLR camera or a macro lens
• Pseudo lens blur effect that is rare among iPhone applications

Functions:

• Pictures can be directly taken with the iPhone or imported from a photo album of choice
• Pictures can be saved in six different sizes (320x427, 480x640, 600x800, 768x1024, 900x1200, 1200x1600)
• Colorful mode (increased saturation)
• Sharpening mode (increased contrast)
• Eight different aperture shapes including hexagon, star, and circle
• Export function for twitter (via twitpic, yfrog, twitgoo.)
• Support for portrait and landscape mode

Additional functionality that will be delivered with updates:

• Email function to send pictures
• Export function for facebook
• Direct camera start-up setting

AppStore Link: MonotoriCamera - Price: £0.59/$0.99/€0.79

Editors comments: MonotoriCamera is a simple app that adds depth of field to your iPhone photos.

The App

Simply launch the app, and from the home screen either select "Take Photo", to take a photo, or "Select Photo" to load one from the camera roll.

Haven taken or loaded a photo you do nothing more than touch the screen where you want the point of focus to be, and release.  Releasing your finger from the iPhone screen initiates the apps function, and that is to produce a photo with a sharp point of focus with a shallow depth of field.  When the app has finished processing the image, either save to the camera roll or share via Twitter using twitpic, twitgoo or yfrog.

There are some extra features found in the apps settings, which you access from the home screen, and these include an output size, which was up to 1200 x 1600, and your Twitter account settings for sharing, in addition to 3 image effect options.  The first 2 image effects are an auto contrast and saturation filter, which you can simply turn on or off, and then you have the choice of 8 aperture shapes.

What do I think of MonotoriCamera?

Over all this is a nice app that works really well, producing realistic looking depth of field photos on your iPhone, and at the introductory price of £0.59/$0.99/€0.79 this is a good app which is worth considering if you can accept the low'ish resolution.

I did find one bug with this app, and that was on my iPhone 3G the app crashed when processing photos at 1200 x 1600, so I had to drop them back to 900 x 1200; so for this reason, the low'ish res, and the fact that this app will increase in price to £1.79/$2.99/€2.39 after the introductory period, I am going to give this app 3 stars.

Comments

[Len]

I really like this app, too.

I'm also waiting for my iPhone 4 to arrive, so I had to try it on my 3G. Same results and a little slow, but really nice! I managed to get full-resolution processing without crashing, but I won't hold my breath.

I'm on the TiltshiftGen app kick still, but this is nice for less "toy" effect and more balance in saturation and contrast. It's also nice to "touch-n-go"...the app just does it well for you.

Thanks for the heads-up, Glyn.

[Tania]

Okay, for the intro price of $0.99 I was willing to pick it up and give it a shot. The first time I tried to use it, it got almost all the way through rendering at full res and then crashed. After I rebooted my phone it successfully rendered a photo for me. I really need to get rid of some ... stuff, for want of a more family friendly term ... off my phone so I have more available space and memory. Especially games and unused photo apps. :D

[psikat]

Bought it out of curiosity. Can't say I'm impressed with the effects or control (or rather the lack of). Maybe I have yet to find the hidden gems.

[arthur]

hi, I really like your website and your review. I got focal lab for depth of field app, and was not satisfied with it. how does this app compare to tiltshift generator? or perhaps even blur FX and Focusoid?

[Jennyland]

I bought this app and I thought it was really easy to use and produced pretty great results!