BACKPACKER Photo School: Best Camera for iPhone

This week, editorial and commercial photographer Chase Jarvis launched a new photo app for the iPhone called Best Camera. Like a lot of people, Chase has been snapping photos with the iPhone since its debut—so who better to design a photo app than a real, live pro photographer?

Here’s the deal: For $2.99, you get 14 filters that can enhance your iPhone images in a number of ways. Over the past few months, I’ve purchased and tried several iPhone camera apps (Photogene, Photo Flexlab, Photonasis, Photo Daily, and Camera Bag, to name a few) in an attempt to beef up my iPhone photos. All these apps are great, but to achieve the look I wanted, I had to combine several of them. The beauty of Best Camera is that it has some of the essential filters you want like a contrast, lightening, crop, warming, and vignette all in one package.

Here’s an example photo from a hike in Boulder this summer. This is the unaltered image:

This is the image after applying jewel, warming filter, vignette, square, and framing effects.





Why am I addicted to purchasing camera apps? Quickness and convenience: I like the ability to work on a photo on my phone rather than going through the extra steps of downloading it to my computer and using photoshop. After a hike, I can immediately work on an image and post directly to Facebook, Twitter, or Chase’s online sharing site, thebestcamera.com.

You can visit Chase’s blog here or watch the tutorial for Best Camera below, which quickly runs you through the ins and outs of the program:

—Julia Vandenoever