Since the iPhone 4, Apple has been leading the charge with the cameras in its phones. The iPhone 5 has a stunning 8-megapixel camera that, in my opinion, makes owning a point-and-shoot almost pointless. By most people’s standards, the camera in an iPhone is more than enough for their daily needs: They get great photos with minimal frustration.
I’ve always wanted a little bit more control over the camera functionality in my iPhone, though. It’s great that I can focus the camera in the stock app, but why can’t I make other minor adjustments? I’d love to be able to choose to shoot in RAW or change the shutter speed, even a little. Apple isn’t willing to give me those features though, likely because it would compromise the ease of use of their stock app.
That’s where PureShot comes in.
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In Between Point and Shoot and dSLR
NOTE: For a selection of photos taken with PureShot, visit my folder on Flickr: PureShot pictures.
PureShot is basically the little sibling to pro photo app 645 Pro. Where 645 Pro offers practically every setting under the sun to fiddle with, PureShot tries to capture the essence of what aspiring photographers want or need from an iPhone app without losing the simplicity of the stock app. That being said, simple isn’t a word I’ve heard tossed around a lot when it comes to advanced camera functionalities, so you can’t blame the developer (Michael Hardaker) for including a 28-page manual in the app.
Most of the settings in PureShot can be manipulated without ever opening a menu.
The manual is actually a good barometer for the app’s capabilities. While Apple’s stock Camera app doesn’t require a manual, my Nikon dSLR came with an instruction booklet that’s over 100 pages. PureShot is somewhere in between the two.
It’s almost easier to talk about what PureShot doesn’t do. PureShot allows easy access to ISO, white balance, exposure and shutter speed settings. Manually changing these is out, though. There’s no way to set change the exposure or adjust the white balance. You can’t fine-tune the camera to shoot at an ISO of 200. By default, PureShot will adjust these settings in real time.
Thank God for the instruction manual. The app is universal and this is much easier to read through on an iPad.
With a single tap you can lock exposure or focus. One tap puts you in Night Mode, which slows shutter speed down to one second in order to capture more light. This specialized Night Mode obviously won’t handle motion well, so don’t expect to take pictures with it at a concert, but it should do well with scenery at night. One-tap locks for exposure and focus are as useful as you could imagine, particularly if you have shaky hands while holding an iPhone in the air like me.
TIP: If your hands shake while taking photo with your iPhone, move your elbows closer together and towards your chest. Bring the screen closer to eye level and a few inches away from your face. And always use the Volume up button as your shutter.
Getting Raw
The app’s biggest perk though, to me, is dRAW output. The biggest flaw with Apple’s stock Camera app is that it only shoots in .jpg. It’s a terrible format: on the iPhone, it will automatically slightly crop photos, compress them to the point where depth has been irrevocably damaged, crush shadow detail until it is black and adjust colours (often in ways that are not pleasing to the eye). The other big downer with jpeg is that the format is non-editable — although the pictures can be altered, they are altered with further damage done to the images themselves. This is why many professional photographers are unable to replace their dSLR with an iPhone (among other reasons).
PureShot captured the colours of this fruit much more accurately than the stock Camera app would.
PureShot shoots dRAW (digital RAW) files, which are basically TIFF images that you’re likely to be at least slightly familiar with. These are not the same as the RAW files that a Nikon or Canon dSLR will shoot in, but they are highly editable. Programs like Photoshop and Pixelmator are designed with TIFF in mind because they work well with layers. This means that, if you turn it on in the app’s settings, you can take pictures with much better shadow detail, stronger lighting and improved detail with PureShot compared to the iPhone camera.
This comes with its own faults, most of which I believe are excusable. The biggest fault is simply that the file size is much larger. An unedited photo taken with PureShot weighs in at about 22.8 megabytes on average, while a photo taken with the stock Camera app will come in at anywhere from 1.5 to 3 megabytes. Although that’ll suck up space on your iPhone faster, the difference in depth, definition and even that all-too-mysterious “pop” is alarming. I’m not sure I’d want to take pictures with the Camera app ever again after looking at PureShot (actually, the Camera app has disappeared into a folder titled Uselessness on my last home screen).
Setting up a grid is handy for those who like to play within the rule of thirds.
I’m a huge user of Aperture. My workflow at home uses Aperture as a library solution and Pixelmator (which is the best deal going in photo editing on OS X) as an in-depth picture editor to correct blemishes and other unsightly digital artifacts. I’m really used to experimenting with both, and understanding that PureShot is out to woo people like me who want more flexibility with their iPhone photos, I felt it was necessary to really dive into the capabilities of PureShot’s photos.
Again, it seems best to note the limitations of the photos I shot. Fixing the exposure definitely made it obvious the differences between TIFF and RAW. While RAW allows me to noodle as much as I want with a setting like that, increasing the exposure in a TIFF photo immediately started to boost whites to a level where the photo became unusable. Darkening the photo showed similar effects. That being said, brightening or darkening a photo with tools in Aperture or Pixelmator (truthfully, I don’t use Photoshop — sue me) worked out just fine (albeit not as well as it could have given RAW’s capabilities).
Adjusting shadow detail is a thrill. Using Aperture’s built-in editor allowed me to get a great deal more detail from the shadows than a .jpg ever would. This speaks volumes of TIFF’s higher bit rate and layering compared to the weak mechanical control over details like this in a .jpg.
Wrapping It Up
The end result of fine comparison is that, even after only minor tweaking, the differences in photo based on nothing other than file format becomes exceedingly obvious. It’s like comparing a DVD to a Blu-ray: Some people won’t see obvious differences right away, but once you do, you can’t un-see them. Photos taken with the stock app frequently crushed blacks instead of offering shadow detail and were always too judicious with in-app processing. The TIFF photos taken in PureShot ended up looking much better every time, without fail.
The interface, although admittedly a little clunky compared to where it should be thanks to its old-school design machinations, is merely a vessel towards getting great photos. If you’re looking to step up your game with iPhone photography, PureShot is a reasonably-priced way to do it that will definitely help fine-tune your skills.