Darkroom Pro: Get Rid of Motion Blur

by Pu on January 7, 2011

There are times when using your iPhone camera becomes a pain: situations of low light are some of these. Although the iPhone 4 represents an improvement, it still has serious issues when it comes to motion blur that can make your potentially best shots truly impossible to use even after serious attempts at salvaging them with photo editing. The truth is the iPhone’s camera isn’t especially designed to take pictures in extreme conditions, and low light can be very detrimental even for full-fledged cameras without a tripod or the right lens. But all these considerations don’t really matter when you want to take a picture at night time and you cannot manage to keep the hand holding your iPhone still: what to do then?

Darkroom Pro by Stepcase is an app that helps you with taking pictures that could be subjected to motion blur, thanks to a handful of useful features as stabilizer, self-timer and fullscreen shutter button.

Main Features

  • Full resolution available;
  • Steady mode;
  • Self-timer mode;
  • Fullscreen shutter button mode;
  • Grid on/off;
  • Autosave on/off;
  • Share via email or upload to Steply.

Appotography Opinion

Darkroom Pro contains a series of tools which can be of use when you absolutely want to end with a decent-looking picture even if the iPhone native camera shows clear signs it’s not likely to achieve that. The timer and full screen button for example are useful if you want to take a self-portrait; the stabilizer will come in handy in situations of poor lighting.

Here is an example of a picture with very clear detail in evidence. Both panels show a detail of the same subject at full resolution in the same light conditions (book page under dim table light): the first one is taken with iPhone native camera, the second with Darkroom Pro for the iPhone. As you can see, in the second there’s significantly less blur.

Darkroom Pro iPhone

Darkroom Pro is very good to achieve better results in difficult conditions, but it’s obvious you have to help it. This means you shall try in any case to keep the iPhone as still as possible, otherwise the app will be unable to perform properly its duty. However, when taking pictures in the dark, expect noise to increase proportionally.

A free version of the app is available in the App Store as well. Although the free version has only very basic features —  steady mode only –, it will help you have an idea, so I suggest to check it out.

Of course, it goes without saying that you shouldn’t expect miracles from this or from any similar app: there are cases in which iPhone limitations can’t be overcome in any way and whatever app you use, taking a good shot is impossible. A sensible user should be able to recognize the limitations and make use of the available tools without expecting to rely on hocuspocus.

Overall

Name: Darkroom Pro
Developer: Stepcase
Compatibility: iPhone. iOS 3.1 or later.
Price: £0.59||$0.99||€0.79
Vote: 4/5

Darkroom Pro - Stepcase

Astrid January 12, 2011 at 1:46 am

Thanks for explaining difference between paid app and free app!

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