By Steve Casimiro

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Camera Mic
$.99
In theory, the iPhone desperately needs Camera Mic — at my last search, this was the only option you have for snapping a picture without pressing the central shutter button. With Camera Mic, you snap your fingers or even speaking loudly into the phone’s microphone and the camera snaps. In practice, though, it doesn’t always capture the moment you want, and it’s impossible not to feel like a nerd going, “Yo! Yo!”

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CinemaFX Video
$2.99
This is the only robust, stable app for applying effects, exposure changes, and color correction after you’ve shot your video clips, and as such seems like a mandatory purchase if you’re going to do any post-production work at all. You can export to HD 720 rez and exercise control over many of the effects, like vignetting. The only complaint? The more effects you apply, the longer it takes to process — just as with your desktop processing, rendering can take a looong time.

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8mm Vintage Camera
$1.99
The retro effects popularized by Hipstamatic are beginning to come into videos, too, and 8mm Vintage Camera is the best of the early bunch. It’s the most stable and offers the most control, whether you’re applying 1970s warmth or 1920s black and white, providing four film types and five lenses. There’s no limit on how long your clips are — but there is on resolution. Processing demands have restricted your output video to 480×260 pixels. And you can’t apply the retro effects to videos you’ve already shot.

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Gorillacam
Free
Thank you, Joby, for not trying to bite off too much. Gorillacam is a like a Swiss Army knife for shooting (not post), with almost all the tools you need for greater manual control and nothing more. Everything functions perfectly: self timer, time lapse, level indicator, touch anywhere to shoot, viewfinder grid, and more. Missing? Just the ability for ultra-long exposures and to snap the photo with sound.

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Hipstamatic
$1.99
I can’t stand Hipstamatic and have only included it in this list because I’m curious what you think. In my opinion, it’s awkward to use, overly commercial, and limited in function. All of its effects can be found via other processing apps, most of them free. Other than the catchy name, I don’t get it.

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iMovie
$4.99
If you’re going to edit movies on your iPhone or iPad, iMovie is your pick. The state of the art for on-phone editing, it’s simple to use, reasonably full featured, and extremely well documented with in-app how-tos (the best I’ve seen, actually). I’d like more control over inserting blank screens for titles and transition effects, but for a phone…amazing.

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iSupr8
$1.99
iSupr8 is far from perfect, but when it comes to adding retro effects to video, it has two important selling points: You can add 8mm effects to videos you’ve already shot and you can export at 720, unlike 8mm Vintage, which restricts you to 480. The downsides? You have little control over the intensity of the effect and the app crashes a lot. However, it often shuts down when it’s finishing processing a video and returns to the home screen — technically a crash, but it doesn’t affect rendering. Other than CinemaFX, it’s your only real option for adding retro in post.

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Lo-Mob
$1.99
Lo-Mob is what Hipstamatic wants to be, and if you’re an old-school film photographer, it’s also more readily understood. It comes with nearly 40 filters, almost all of them old school and film based, and perhaps my favorite of all, the tweaker apps. Rendering your effect to the selected image takes about five to seven seconds — an eternity when you’re experimenting — but Lo-Mob provides a menu of all effects showing your target image processed as a thumbnail with each effect.

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Pano
$1.99
Very, very impressive. Technology has gotten to the point where we expect perfection, but we do. And while Pano isn’t flawless — its seams aren’t always seamless — it succeeds most of the time. With most landscapes, Pano is spot on. Street scenes and interiors with hard edges and 90-degree angles, less so. But the natural world…bingo!

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Photoshop Express
Free
There’s nothing playful about Photoshop Express, and that’s both praise and a lament. If you want to adjust the exposure, saturation, etc., of your images, this free app is your best bet: It offers more control over tweaks than just about another app. A must-have utilitarian tool. So why the less than exuberant praise? PE offer just seven filter effects. And one’s a rainbow effect. Huh? Adobe is totally missing the opportunity for the retro fun.

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PhotoSync
$1.99
Apple could learn something about wireless transfer from the folks at PhotoSync (hello, Steve: iTunes? really?): Fire up this little app, open up a web browser like Firefox on your desktop or laptop, enter the address PhotoSync provides, and select the image you want from the computer screen. PhotoSync packages them in a zip file and seconds later they’re on your hard drive. It’s easy, fast, and wire-free.

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Quad Camera
$1.99
Camera phones and processing apps that mimic the effect of plastic toy cameras are cool, but they don’t mimic the spontaneity and surprise of an actual toy camera. QuadCamera brings that joy of creative surprise back: It shoots sequences of four or eight images, then stitches them together in a grid or row. A great party app and one of my all-time faves.

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RetroCamera
$1.99
RetroCamera (no space between the words) has the widest selection of retro filters, film grain overlays, textures, frames, and more, but it has one fatal flaw: No matter what size the image you start with, it exports to 320×480 pixels. Huh? It’s fine for Facebook, but for anything else, nyet. As soon as they change the rez, this is a must-buy app. Until then, it just depends on how high you want your res. Or how low.

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Sun Seeker
$4.99
Oolala, this is a sexy app for photographers and anyone else who needs or wants to know where the sun will be when. It has two extremely cool functions: The 2D map pegs your current location via Google Maps and then shows the sun’s locations throughout the day. The 3D orientation is the same idea, but it show you where the sun will be in the sky. Well planned, well executed, a must-have for any photographer.

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360 Panorama
$1.99
This panorama app is getting a lot of buzz, and it’s easy to see why. It creates 360-degree linear or spherical panoramas and is fun to shoot — just point your camera at the scene and “paint” the image by moving it around and watch what you’ve captured on screen. There’s no shutter to snap. As you might expect, making it seamless is a challenge not always met. 360 Panorama struggles to keep color and exposure consistent across the photo, to put it mildly. And then there are the seams. But still, it offers more coverage than traditional panos and is worth experimenting with.

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Tilt Shift Generator
$.99
This is the best app for creating the blurred depth of field that comes from a tilt-shift lens, hands down. You control the range that’s kept sharp, plus the amount of blur and whether the blurred field is round or linear, and it also gives you quick access to exposure adjustments and vignetting, too. Even if you’ve never heard of tilt-shift, you’ll be making such images in seconds. This should be on your must-get list.

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Want more? See the entire list of 107 awesome outdoor apps.

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