back to article Slow Shutter Cam

I’m not the best photographer in the world, so I’ve tended to eye the many photographic apps for iDevices with wary suspicion. Slow Shutter Cam    Slow Shutter Cam Slow Shutter Cam is so easy to use However, Slow Shutter Cam is both cheap and simple enough for my limited skills to cope with - and that simplicity is the …

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  1. Jon Double Nice
    Thumb Up

    Awesome!

    And miles cheaper than a Holga camera + film + processing and stuff. If only it could do colour infra red...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Easy to do colour infrared

      Just stick a Hoya R72 in front of the lens as you're taking the photo. You can get great results.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    As with all long exposures...

    ...how do you compensate for movement, without a tripod?

    I foresee lots of unintended blurring...

  3. jake Silver badge

    "more experienced photographers should pick it up in no time at all."

    In my experience, no real photographers use iFads for photography ... not even for taking snapshots at parties & the like.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      @jake

      Just like no real phone use uses a smartphone either?

      Or an audiophile never listens to mp3s, or cds, or... or...

      Dumbass

      1. jake Silver badge

        @AC 11:03; dz-015; johnnymotel

        AC 11:03 "Just like no real phone use uses a smartphone either?"

        My 'phone is a Nokia 3158. It makes and receives 'phone calls, even in Sonoma and Napa's so-called "dead zones". It's just a phone, it works everywhere, and I like it that way.

        "Or an audiophile never listens to mp3s, or cds, or... or..."

        Most of my preferred audio was recorded to half inch tape from the original vinyl before being digitized in a non-lossy format. YMMV ... and I hope you enjoy your "ear buds", which have absolutely zero sound quality.

        "Dumbass"

        I prefer "Smart, and anal about quality".

        dz-015: "I've been a photographer for 25 years."

        I grew up in a darkroom. I'm 50-ish.

        "I've used all sorts of kit including SLRs.

        Whatever. My go-to "photography" kit is a Hasselblad with a CF-39 back (unless I'm teaching my nieces & nephews the fine art of B&W photography, in which case I use the B&W back) ... At parties, we mostly use old Canon A-series digital ... Works like an Instamatic if you like, but allows a little fine-tuning if you know how. With white flashes, and glass lenses. Unlike iFads.

        "For the last couple of years I've almost exclusively used my iPhones for photography."

        I think you mispleled "snapshots".

        "iPhoneography is a very active subgenre now,"

        So is twitting. Doesn't make it useful.

        "even among some professional photographers."

        Name a couple.

        "It's exciting, fun, and gets great results."

        Sounds like web cams ...

        johnnymotel contributes: "bollocks*%@^*!£^%$"

        Uh ... yeah. I couldn't have put it better. But who, exactly, were you replying to?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Jolly good, Jake

          You stick with your anal, expensive, time-consuming approach, and I'll keep enjoying my iPhoneography. If we're both enjoying what we're doing and getting pleasing results then I don't really see a problem with either approach.

          The only problem here, really, is your utter arrogance and false belief that you need to spend lots of money on expensive kit to get worthwhile results. I think we can all do without that, to be honest.

          Just google 'professional iphone photographers', or something along those lines, to find examples of pros using iPhones for photography.

          1. jake Silver badge

            @dz-015

            Whatever, dude/tte.

            There is a rather large difference between snapshots & photographs.

            I can take a snapshot with high-end gear. I seriously doubt you can take a photograph with your iFad-thingie. Your lack of naming names of Pros gives me further cause to pause ...

            There is a reason I have low-end Canon kit (with glass lenses & white flashes) for the occasions that I want to take a snapshot.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              'Whatever'

              I think your arrogant and patronising use of terms such as 'whatever', 'iFad-thingie' and 'snapshots' suggests that your closed-mindedness prevents you from appreciating art for the sake of art, regardless of what was used to create it.

              I feel quite sorry for you, TBH.

              1. jake Silver badge

                @dz-015

                The irony is positively oozing out of your post. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that you've been told that you have to enjoy Warhol's kitsch as "Fine Art" ... and, sadly, another tuppence says you actually believe it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Nonsense

      I've been a photographer for 25 years. I've used all sorts of kit including SLRs. For the last couple of years I've almost exclusively used my iPhones for photography. iPhoneography is a very active subgenre now, even among some professional photographers. It's exciting, fun, and gets great results.

    3. johnnymotel
      FAIL

      absolute....

      bollocks*%@^*!£^%$

    4. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      @jake, Shut up, you snob!

      I have used SLRs for nearly 17 years and DSLRs for last 6 years, I love playing with phone cameras! They are cheap and cheerful due to the limited options you really have to work hard to get interesting pictures, composition is everything, you cannot hide mistakes behind a multitude of options. Next to no DOF, aperature or shutter control, you have to try much harder to get the picture to work. Gives you a new perspective and it's a pleasure to come back to a full featured camera with more options, but with the experience of composing shots much more finely. When I'm not out playing with "real cameras", love just trying to snap something odd with a phone camera.

      Sounds like if you had your way we'd all still be sitting still for 10 mins, "watching the birdie" and trying not to blink when the huge smokey flash went up!

      1. jake Silver badge

        @AC 16:06

        Snob; n.

        A person who understands the difference between snapshots and photographs, the tools used to produce them, and the tools who use the tools.

        I can live with that ;-)

        As a side-note, my Grandfather's Sanderson (c.1900) 8X10 still takes great B&W ... and now that I've managed to sell my colo(u)r film processor to an idiot in South Africa (who was actually happy to pay shipping from California!), I have room for a large Beseler enlarger in my darkroom ... Does double duty, making negs for my newly purchased Heidelberg KORD :-)

  4. drmexico
    WTF?

    Tripod?

    I don't get it - what use is a slow shutter speed on a phone that you hold in your shaking hand? Were those screenshots real? I'm very dubious.

    Happy to be learned up though...

    1. Sean Baggaley 1

      "Tripod?"

      A tripod's purpose is to hold a device steady.

      There are ways of duplicating this apparently highly complicated effect involving such tricks as "resting the device on a wall" and "putting it on the ground" and even "resting the device on a car's roof with a book behind it to keep it upright".

      Do feel free to stop me if I'm getting too technical for you.

    2. ChrisC Silver badge

      Re: Tripod?

      The screenshot of the tube station exhibits the sort of blurriness you'd expect from a handheld shot taken by someone with an averagely-steady hand - note the indistinct edges to the platform tiles - whereas the other two screenshots suggest they were taken with the iPhone held steady against something (e.g. a convenient rock/tree trunk for the water photo, the railing of the bridge on which the photographer was standing to get the traffic photo).

      Bear in mind that, unless your hands are really unsteady, with just a little bit of practice and the right technique it's possible to achieve pretty good results with hand-held/partially-supported long duration exposures even on cameras without any image stabilisation features.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I use a gorillapod tripod for my iPhone

      It works very well. I also use it when I'm watching video on it.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    sample full res please

    It would be nice if a photo app review contained a sample photo.

    Thanks

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I love this app

    I'm a very active iPhoneographer and I've done some of my best shots using Slow Shutter Cam. My most popular (or 'interesting') photo on Flickr (203 views, 35 comments, 30 faves, 2 galleries) was done using this.

  7. Rick Brasche
    Thumb Down

    oops maybe not

    reading the reviews, it says that no app actually can control the shutter speed of the iPhone. Apparently it processes multiple shots and mixes them together. Reviews on iPhonography mention file output isn't so impressive when viewed elsewhere than on the iphone screen. Quite a downer.

  8. Rick Brasche
    Thumb Up

    too bad work has blocked iTunes

    this looks like fun. I'll get it when i get home. It'll go with the sepia app and tilt/shift one.

  9. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    @oops maybe no

    It would also be inconvenient to have to cryogencially cool the CMOS imager to stop the dark current you would get in a 30s exposure.

    Since the software is adding images together it could at least do a simple shift+add algorithm to take out some of the camera shake.

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