Snap Pro Camera App

Key Features

• Raw (with compatible camera phone), TIFF, HEIF and JPEG shooting

• Choice of aspect ratios

• Live creative filters

• ISO, WB, and shutter speed control in M mode

• Creative features include Timelapse, Motion Blur, Light Trail, Tilt Shift, Crowd Removal, and Portrait mode.

• Manual controls include ISO, shutter speed selection, and white-balance

• Gallery and in-phone editing

• iPhone – requires iOS 16.0 or later

• Apple Watch – requires watchOS 8.7 or later

• Apple Vision – requires visioniOS 1.0 or later

• Yearly $11.99

• Monthly $2.49

• One time purchase $49.99

• www.miops.com

Snap Pro Camera Features

Snap Pro Camera is a powerful imaging app that gives a compatible iPhone impressive imaging powers. It will appeal to those keen to explore their photography more deeply. 

What features appeal most depends on your ambitions. Snap Camera Pro has the skills to allow exploiting different imaging formats including Raw, TIFF and HEIF. To shoot Raw means setting up the iPhone, but the process is straightforward. Go into Settings>Camera>Formats and you can select Raw under the Photo Capture menu. On the iPhone 14 Pro the options are HEIF Max (up to 48MP), ProRAW Max (up to 48MP) and ProRAW 12MP, which was the format we concentrated on.

You can shoot away in the app in fully auto and I was happy to do so; the results were first-rate. However, Snap Camera Pro gives the opportunity to dig deeper into camera settings so if you want to take control of ISO, explore aperture and shutter speeds and white-balance the app gives you that power. Add focus assist features, histogram and more, you can see that the app has potential.

If you want to get creative and have fun, the app provides various options to explore. There’s a good range of creative filters to impart an individual look to your shots, and if you want to go further, there’s a good lineup of features to check out: Video, Portrait, Motion Blur, Light Trail, Timelapse, Zoom Timelapse, Low Light, Crowd Removal, and Tiltshift. Some of these are more effective than others and the result could be quite unexpected and random, but it was fun experimenting.

Snap Pro Camera Handling

Generally, the Snap Pro Camera app behaves and handles well. Mode selection is simple enough and engaging the Live Filters, choosing aspect ratio, and choosing image format is dead easy. 

Open the app, and you see the large virtual shutter release at the bottom of the interface (if you’re holding the phone upright) with three rows of icons, which we’ll discuss shortly. 

At the top of the interface is a camera icon and touching this brings up the main menu where you choose the capture mode.

Select Photo mode, and across the top you’ll see aspect ratio, image format and burst shooting controls and finally top right is the settings icon.

There are seven image aspect options (1:1, 6:7, 3:2, 4:3, 16:9, 21:9 and Full) and four image formats: HEIF, JPG, TIFF, and Live.

At the bottom of the app, there are three rows of controls.

The very bottom row is where you will find the creative filters; there are nine settings for colour and mono capture. The creative filters are worth using for images with an individual look (there are images taken with each filter below). My personal favourites were Instant and Process because they are different. Mono and Noir modes are similar in that they are monochrome, but the latter is contrasty and gritty, which is right up my street. I enjoyed having these tools for out of phone results.

Next to filter control is a button to call up features such as grid where the options are Rule of Thirds and Golden Triangle, Zebra Stripes and live histogram with RGB and Luminance the options.

What you’ll find useful in the set-up menu obviously depends. The Rule of Thirds grid and histogram I found useful, Focus Peaking and Zebra Stripes less so.

The next row is where you can shoot fully A or get into M. With the Snap Prop app in A mode you basically get point and shoot simplicity and the shutter speed  ISO, WB and focus control are greyed out. Hit M and that changes and controls go white so you know they are active.

The controls are different from what you would expect to see on a traditional camera. There are no virtual dials or buttons, just sliders which are a tad more tricky to adjust precisely. The ISO control has marked settings at 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000, and 3000 but with the slider, the ISO can be 361 or 998 or anything within the range. Whether you want to be precise is another matter, but I’d personally prefer having presets for ISO setting rather than a tricky-to-control slider.

The shutter speed range (denoted by an iris icon) is 1sec to 1/12,000sec, and as with ISO, the speed is set by a slider. Adjust ISO and aperture, and the image preview is updated pretty quickly but not instantly to reflect the impact of the settings.

There is a lot of data on the default interface so if you prefer using a data-free view to compose your masterpieces touch the padlock icon and everything vanishes except that icon and the shutter button. 

A negative I found was the use of orange which was not very visible when using the phone out in bright sun and the touch controls sometimes lacked responsiveness. This might be due to finger grease on the phone fascia or an inaccurate touch, and sometimes multiple attempts were needed to call up a feature.

Images taken in Snap Pro Camera and shown in the Gallery, where there are three views. In-app editing is possible where key parameters can be fine-tuned and images cropped to taste.

[SECTION]PERFORMANCE[/SECTION]

There are many imaging apps around for all sorts of tasks and their usefulness and value obviously depend on your needs. 

Snap Camera Pro has three buying options. Go monthly and the cost is $2.49; commit to $11.99 for a year, and monthly costs drop to under $1, and if you take the outright purchase option, the price is $49.99. 

For me, it would make sense to try it for a month and give the app a good test on your iPhone and see how you get on with it before taking the next step. With the summer ahead, it’d make sense to check it out sooner rather than later.

[REVIEW_FOOTER]R_features=4|R_handling=3.5|R_performance=4|R_value=4.5|R_overall=4|A_level=4|A_text=Recommended – Snap Pro Camera is a good app with potential and definitely worth a try.|E_id=8016[/REVIEW_FOOTER]