I’m pleased to introduce my newest app, called Technical Camera. It is a still camera app for the conscious image maker. Why another camera app? Well, the main image from the app’s site may contain some clues.
Motivation
The story of Technical Camera began in the fall of 2015 (in a post I briefly mentioned that I’m working on a photo app). In the following years I did experiment a lot with different apps and photo taking features of iOS, and to say that I was frustrated is an understatement.
While I saw that the phones themselves has potential, each and every app fell short in one or more ways. Let me list the most problematic points:
1) Cluttered screens. The image (both the live view and the ones during playback) on a camera is a sacred area. Putting buttons, icons, sliders and other distracting ornaments on the image itself is a cardinal sin in my book. Especially since the iPhone display is so large with wast empty spaces around the camera’s 4:3 aspect ratio image.
2) Photos stores everything in bulk, you have to manually move every image into its album (in a rather twisted and backward way). Organizing your stuff is a royal pain this way.
3) Nobody needs 12 megapixel images when taking a picture of an electricity or gas meter. Large images when a low resolution would be sufficient are just a waste of time and network bandwidth (that is, money) and en masse has unnecessary environmental impact.
4) Apps made by developers who aren’t working photographers. This results in all kind of clumsy to downright misleading solutions and user interfaces.
These aren’t just from a photographer’s perspective. My better half Agnes complained about 2) and 3) for a very long time, and her most frequent use case is visual note-taking.
Technical Camera solves all these problems and also borrows technologies from our other professional apps (like real-time distortion correction for wide converter lenses from the Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder), to make something rather unique.
I’m going to explain how these things are accomplished and how to utilize Technical Camera to its maximum potential in posts coming. So it’s worth keeping an eye on my blog if you are looking for an app that transforms the mobile photography experience.
What it isn’t
I feel it important to discuss upfront what’s not included. This is a still photography app. No videos. No selfies. No digital processing in-camera, like automatically stitched panoramas, or lighting simulation. No AI. These are left out because we either have opposing views, or because the main focus of the app is making great still images.
Availability
Technical Camera is available for pre-oreder now on the App Store, at a 30% discounted price. It will be released on June 12.
