6 Best Camera Apps For iPhone (Video)

Ever see those shot on iPhone billboards? You know, the ones that are showing some beautiful scene from around the world that looks remarkably beautiful for being shot on a phone? There are a few ways that photographers get these photos to look so good, and it’s more a testament to the phone’s software than just the camera lens.

iPhone photographers use a ton of editing apps (ones on their phone even) and also most even use different camera apps on their iPhone to get more control over the shot than the standard camera app provides.

After scouring the web for you guys (and deciding a “camera app” needs to be able to take photos to count), it became clear that there were at least 6 best camera apps for iPhone that kept coming up in every recommendation. And while the photographer using these apps greatly effects the outcome of the shot, these camera apps are a good place to start.

VSCO

Mentioned at least once on every best camera app round up around the web, VSCO isn’t just good at photo editing, it’s a good camera replacement for your iPhone as well.

VSCO has a ton of manual controls for your more professional iPhone photographer – from white balance, to ISO, to shutter speed. You can get to all of these settings by tapping the white dots at the top left to get white balance, tap the ADV for a slider to control exposure, and tap the sun at the bottom to get to ISO, shutter speed, and more.

All in all it gives you a ton of manual controls that your average photographer can use to get the exact shot and, unlike some of the other camera apps on this list, it’s totally free.  Beyond that, VSCO also has the ability to give you some inspiration in the form of a curated photos from it’s huge international user base.

Manual

As the name suggests, this camera app is all about giving you the most control over the settings of the camera as possible. With full control over shutter, white balance, ISO, focus, and exposure composition it gives you a much more hands-on approach to taking photos on your iPhone. It can also give you a live histogram and automatically monitor exposure values for those more data-intensive photographers out there.

ProCamera 9

As of iOS 9, ProCamera took it’s original camera app and scraped it in favor of starting from scratch for their aptly-named ProCamera 9 app.

With a super slick and minimalist UI, it too give you control over all the manual settings of the camera from shutter speed to exposure and more. It adds to this a ton of unique filters and effects as well as a night-mode that works relatively well and a full-resolution preview mode.

Camera+

Some advanced editing tools, scene modes, and an exposure button are some of the features that Camera+ has that some of the other camera apps on here don’t. In addition to that it also has some interesting flash modes (continuous or frontal flash, for example), touch focus adjustment, filters, and a well organized UI.

Hydra

Hydra is a great camera for any low-light situation. With a good HDR mode for images and videos, low-light mode, real-time zoom, upscaling of images to 32MP, and more it is often raved as the best “less than perfect lighting” camera app.

Hipstamatic

Probably the oldest third-party iOS camera app, Hipstamatic is sort of famous in the camera app world. It has tons of live filters, manual mode like the rest of them, and a Pro mode for manual manipulation (again, similar to the others on this list). The use of the filters in real-time is really what gave it it’s claim to fame though and if filters are your thing, definitely worth a look.

There you go, the 6 best camera apps for iPhone from around the web. VSCO seems to be the most popular from this list but some like Hydra or Hipstamatic, for example, are great to also have in case of specific scenarios or use-cases.

Let me know what other camera apps you guys love that you think others should check out and if you found this article helpful, please share it! Thanks!