During the course of owning two Android phones, I've experimented with several different camera apps:
Ultimately, all of them have had problems that made end up looking for something else. The stock app lacks features, and generally just doesn't take very nice photos. The FX Camera and Retro Camera are focussed on effects, and don't have enough basic functionality to completely replace the stock app. Retro Camera has an annoyingly small viewfinder. Camera 360 has lots of features, but the interface is unwieldly. FX, Retro Camera and Camera 360 have this annoying system where you have to pick your filter before you take a picture, and you can't change it afterwards. Vignette has lots of filters and good basic functionality, but applying filters is annoying because it only gives you a text description of what the filter actually does, rather than a visual preview. Little Photo is decent all-round, but it doesn't seem to play well in landscape mode, which is really weird or a camera app. Magic Hour is a decent Instagram clone for Android, which manages to bring some novel ideas of its own to the table, but the app itself is huge and the interface is a bit crashy.
The most recent one I'm trying out is Lightbox. So far, I'm actually quite positive. It has a nice, simplified viewfinder, with only control toggle (the flash). Apparently the designers were trying to build something that could replace the stock camera app completely, which is exactly what I want. It doesn't have as many filters as Magic Hour, but it seems more flexible in other aspects. And much like Instagram, it has photo-sharing built in. My brief impression is that it does a lot of things things fairly well, rather than doing one or two things very well. That said, I am a bit confused about how I get my photos off my phone.
- The stock camera app
- The HTC Sense camera app
- FX Camera
- Retro Camera
- Vignette
- Camera 360
- Vignette
- Little Photo
- Magic Hour
- Lightbox
Ultimately, all of them have had problems that made end up looking for something else. The stock app lacks features, and generally just doesn't take very nice photos. The FX Camera and Retro Camera are focussed on effects, and don't have enough basic functionality to completely replace the stock app. Retro Camera has an annoyingly small viewfinder. Camera 360 has lots of features, but the interface is unwieldly. FX, Retro Camera and Camera 360 have this annoying system where you have to pick your filter before you take a picture, and you can't change it afterwards. Vignette has lots of filters and good basic functionality, but applying filters is annoying because it only gives you a text description of what the filter actually does, rather than a visual preview. Little Photo is decent all-round, but it doesn't seem to play well in landscape mode, which is really weird or a camera app. Magic Hour is a decent Instagram clone for Android, which manages to bring some novel ideas of its own to the table, but the app itself is huge and the interface is a bit crashy.
The most recent one I'm trying out is Lightbox. So far, I'm actually quite positive. It has a nice, simplified viewfinder, with only control toggle (the flash). Apparently the designers were trying to build something that could replace the stock camera app completely, which is exactly what I want. It doesn't have as many filters as Magic Hour, but it seems more flexible in other aspects. And much like Instagram, it has photo-sharing built in. My brief impression is that it does a lot of things things fairly well, rather than doing one or two things very well. That said, I am a bit confused about how I get my photos off my phone.
