Description
** Featured in Mike Perlman's Top 5 Best iPhone Camera Apps on technobuffalo.com - "Thanks to that one-second shutter, I was able to capture images that were significantly brighter without using the flash" **
NightCap is a camera app designed for low light and night photography. It uses much longer exposure times than the standard camera app giving brighter, clearer photos - even without flash! It's simple and easy to use, just hit the shutter button to take fully automatic photos or if you prefer you can manually limit exposure or set the focus point and flash.
NightCap can capture up to 15x more light than the built-in app, making your night time or indoor photos much brighter and more detailed with less graininess - just take a look at the screenshots for some examples. We took the same shots using an iPhone 4s with both NightCap and the iPhone's built-in app, getting the best results possible with both.
These photos are genuine examples of how much better NightCap is and have not been faked, edited or enhanced in any way.
Features:
• True long exposure (up to 1s) photography on the iPhone! No tricks, no software enhancement.
• When the built-in camera app struggles, NightCap can take up to 15 times more light. That means up to 15x brighter!
• Full resolution photos
• Automatic or Manual modes - Automatic works in all conditions, Manual lets you limit the maximum exposure time* from 1/20s to 1s
• Photos are saved automatically to the iPhone camera roll with full metadata
• Supports front and rear cameras and flash (on devices that have them)
• Supports tap-to-focus/expose
• Sometimes the built-in app can produce bright but grainy photos. NightCap can fix this too! More exposure time means lower ISO levels and lower image noise.
• Built-in viewer for the last photo
* Manual Mode: This sets the exposure time, but the iPhone camera may still override this if it decides that the photo is over-exposed.
Tips:
• Photography in very dark conditions isn't possible without using the flash. NightCap will generally work much better than the built-in camera app (and will often work well when the built-in app fails completely), but results depend on the amount of light available.
• The camera needs time to focus, and focussing can be slow in very low light. We're working on improvements to this.
• Longer exposure times mean the camera is more susceptible to shaking. It's important to hold the camera still when shooting in low light! For best results stabilise yourself against a solid surface, take several shots and pick the best one, or use a tripod or stand.
• Fast moving objects will blur with longer exposures! With experience you can take amazing photos this way - try following a moving object with the camera while shooting, get it right and you'll have a clear subject against a motion blurred background creating a real sense of movement.
What's New in Version 1.1
Important:
NightCap needs access to you photo library. Because photos can contain location (GPS) information, you will be asked to allow access to your location when you first take a photo. It's important that you allow this, otherwise the in-app photo viewer will not work!
If you have previously denied access to NightCap, please allow access by opening the Settings app, then opening the Location Services section and turning NightCap on. The app does not access your location at all except for GPS tagging of photos and photo library access.
Improvements:
Much faster photo taking when the camera is adjusting focus
Reduced lag when adjusting manual exposure
Added warning when location services are disabled (this prevents the photo view from working)
Flash is now initially turned off
Fixes:
Fixed an issue on iPhone 4/3GS that could cause photos to save in low resolution
Removed flash button for front camera
Fixed low-res preview photo bug (in some situations photos could be saved at full resolution, but appear as very low resolution in the photo view)
Fixed incorrect exposure settings when switching from manual back to automatic
The shortest exposure time has been adjusted, and is now 1/15s on iPhone 3GS/4 and 1/20s on iPhone 4S
iPhone Screenshots
Customer Reviews
Good, but could use some polish
The app works as advertised but would benefit from from a little refinement in the UI.
1. Would like the option to change the shutter speed while in camera mode instead of going into settings everytime.
2. Would be helpful for the app to tell you the shutter speed while in camera mode. just a simple text overlay at the bottom would be great.
3. A visual indicator like the one in the standard app after a photo has been taken would be helpful in noisy areas.
Needs some touch ups
It's a good app and has some great results but here are a few recommendations:
1. Enable the Volume + button as shutter button so that people with volume control buttons on their headphones can use the volume control as remote shutter button so that you can take a photo without even touching the phone. What you do is set the phone on a solid surface or use a tripod, then plug in headphones and just press the Volume + button and it works as a remote shutter. Many other photography apps have this feature including the native camera app and the Camera+ app. (I use this method with the regular camera app and it works really great to prevent blur.)
2. White balance & Focus Lock
3. If possible, even longer exposure like 5, 10, or 15 seconds for night time landscape shots
4. Maybe, ability to manually set ISO. I have taken pictures with the regular camera app on the iPhone 4 and have gotten ISOs as low as 80.
Overall, this is a REALLY good app on my iPhone 4. The difference in quality you get its amazing, no longer do night shots have immense amounts of grain. I highly recommend this app.
manual mode troublesome
this app has a good idea to bring up the capability of exposure to 1 second. however, when set at the manual mode, i can't purposely overexpose the picture because the iPhone overrides it when it thinks the exposure is overexposed. This is a little confusing in use and also kind beats the feature itself.
secondly, when at the manual mode, the focusing capability gets lost.
in addition to these two, i'd more like to see a comprehensive app, e.g. the focusing point and exposure point selection (as in Camera+) with this manual setting exposure time. Right now, I have to stay either one to sacrifice another.
- $0.99
- Category: Photo & Video
- Updated: Jan 06, 2012
- Version: 1.1
- Size: 0.3 MB
- Language: English
- Seller: Chris Wood
- © 2011 Interealtime
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (4th generation), iPad 2 Wi-Fi and iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G.Requires iOS 5.0 or later.
