Review: Analog Camera, a fun and fast camera app with personality

Analog Camera for iPhone and iPod touch

As promised, Analog Camera for iPhone and iPod touch has hit the App Store to fulfill your filtered photo taking needs. I had a chance to spend some time with the app over the Memorial Day weekend and quickly decided it’s a keeper.

Analog Camera is a seriously fun and fast camera app with personality, as we would expect from the makers of Clear for iPhone and Mac (and soon iPad), that features eight different photo filters and all the social network sharing you could ever need.

Analog Camera’s easy sharing features allow you to open photos you shoot or edit within the app in other apps including Instagram. This feature is especially cool if you’re feeling spunky and want toexperiment with double filters or blurring features offered with Instagram.

Capture and process an image in Analog Camera, then jump right over to Instagram or similar apps to share.

As previously mentioned in our Analog Camera preview, the app features prominent share buttons for Facebook and Twitter. We’ve learned that these buttons are connected to your iOS settings and will disappear if these accounts are set up. This is a nice feature as it doesn’t shove Facebook or Twitter in your face if you don’t use either of the services.

Tapping the action button allows you to open your photo in other apps that are willing to accept it. This included apps ranging from Camera+ and Instagram to Tumblr,Dropbox, and Google Drive in my experience, but you may see different apps including Evernote and Instashare depending on what apps you have installed.

This is a smart and popular method because it builds support for a plethora of third party apps without overcomplicating the app itself, but I found myself wanting Copy and Messages here as well. Maybe in a future update? In the meantime, saving a processed photo to Camera Roll and jumping over to Messages or Photos is the fastest way to share an Analog Camera photo over iMessage. No big deal.

Taking photos in Analog Camera is as much of a pleasure as I expected, especially with its whimsical, progressive chime borrowed from Clear (that tone progression always makes me smile; maybe my brain associates it with accomplishing tasks?), but its quick access to Camera Roll and Photo Stream makes it particularly useful. The photo in my screenshot was taken with my Nikon 1 camera (I’m a completely amateur camera user; photographer is too strong a word to describe me) and imported to iPhoto on my Mac, but Photo Stream automatically moved the photos over iCloud making it available in Analog Camera for processing and sharing.

A dashed line for leveling and controls for focus and exposure (and aBig Jambox)

While Analog Camera delivers on simplicity and avoids packing in an abundance of features found it other apps, its camera does include a handy feature set including a dashed line for lining up a horizon and manual controls for focus and exposure.

Tapping with a single finger allows for controlling focus and exposure, and tapping with two fingers enables separate controls for the two settings. Anytime you want to return to autofocus and autoexposure, which is of course the default photo taking mode, simply double tap with a single finger.

Analog Camera’s counterpart for the Mac known simply as Analog will be updated next month to include the eight filters from Analog Camera which include Camden, Superior, Marble Arch, Pavilion, Inky, 1978, Honeycomb, and Brunswick.

Just like Tapbots created its own signature style with apps like Tweetbot and Calcbot, the folks at Realmac Software exhibit a proven ability to create fun and useful iOS apps with a balance of playfulness and simplicity. Following the success of Clear and my time spent with Analog Camera, I’m left curiously wondering what the team’s approach to a Twitter client would be like. Hmm…

While I found Analog Camera to offer a more than satisfactory experience, it could pick up front-facing camera support for even more fun (we all love selfies, admit it!). The team says it looks forward to hearing about feature requests to build into Analog Camera for future updates, but emphasizes its respect for the simplicity of the gesture-based app.

As I mentioned in my preview of the app, Analog Camera isn’t a clone of Instagram centered around its own social network, but rather a standalone camera and filtering app with spunk that can enhance Instagram or any other photo sharing platform for that matter.

I highly recommend picking up Analog Camera if you enjoy experimenting with iPhone photography and appreciate well designed, upbeat apps. It’s a lot of fun for just a buck.

Analog Camera for iPhone and iPod touch is now available for $0.99 in the App Store.