ProCamera. Raw+ Manual Camera 4+

Good pictures

Meget tilfredstillende

Form over function with Alzheimer

The app has enormous potential. Settings are legio, options and use cases as well. A few ordinary, simple uses are still missing, alas...

The main problem is daily use. Especially during travel and/or reportage. In both cases you seldom have time to fiddle with impracticable settings - the situation will have been long gone.

Example: HDR option, setting selection. Defaults to Auto, but if you want to select another setting (Auto often delivers the worst results) you tap “Auto”, but instead of opening a menu with all options, the selection shows “Auto 3”. Next press leads to “Auto 5”, press again to “MEB” (manual bracketing), a new press leads to “AMEB” (Advanced Manual Exposure Bracketing - my preferred setting) a following tap gets you to “Lowlight HDR”. A pure tap-orgy, wasting maximum time.

If the app was capable of remembering the last setting(s) - at least - the problems were surmountable (by using another app for RAW photos), but the ProCamera app has a severe case of Alzheimer’s, and forgets current settings - sometimes caused by a need to look on a map - where am I, where do I want to go next - and when the app is again heaved into the foreground, it has forgotten all about AMEB (my preferred HDR mode with +/- 1.5-2 stops for exposure steps delivering results, that are seldom to barely affected by moving objects like persons - you only hear one “click”). The Default Auto settings sounds a bit like a machine gun, and any movement during exposure will mostly destroy the image. Now you have to tap-tap-tap-tap your way through the settings to again reach AMEB, and in the meantime the situation you wanted to keep for posterity is gone - forever!

Since I have found no way to save/recall any presets, I mostly use 645 for RAW, the built-in app for HDR (far better, than the settings-monster in ProCamera) and only in the very few situations, where I’m not forced to rely on any given settings and have ample time for fiddling around, ProCamera will be used.

For walkabout (travel, reportage, snapshots, street photography) ProCamera is mostly the wrong solution in my view. If you have all the time in the world, alone practicing landscape photography ProCamera probably lets you tickle the last ounce of photographic quality into the result - IF you press the exposure button before Alzheimer sets in ;-)

ProCamera is, in my eyes, not the right tool for video. Depending on needs and mood, I use FiLMiC Pro or Mavis. They both have ample opportunity to create your personalized settings for most of your day-to-day use cases. I typically use 4-5 presets. With slightly varying selections depending on local environments (like AC frequency in travel destination), accessories etc.

If ProCamera included at least 3 presets, things would be different. But why limit options to three presets? This is not a fixed Canon, Panasonic, Sony etc. camera with limited space and design intelligence. An iPhone will easily hold 10, 20 or more user defined presets, organized in user defined groups, and with three or more direct selections (on screen) defined by the user.

It would also help if the interface would allow the user to select menu’s to select the state required instead of the tap-orgies required today for even a single setting like HDR method.

The app has the potential to be really good, but the tap-orgies sometimes required cost one star, the built-in Alzheimer’s another, and the lack of the obvious solution to this mess (presets) leads to one star down also.

I have used the app for taking probably a few thousand images during travel since 2018 (not as only camera - that would have lead to too many lost “image opportunities”).
Added as response to your comment: Re. Long press. Example:

When I longpress the default setting Auto, the menu shown is of your own design (not a standard Apple UI display option), and if the camera is held in landscape mode (my preferred use case), two options are not displayed at all (can be scrolled into view). Since there are wide and blacked out columns on either side of the “menu options column”, you could easily have shown all options in one go in two columns (the underlying options menu contains more columns). To select AMEB, you have to do a longpress, scroll the menu down (the user must know, that two options are needlessly hidden from view) and then select AMEB. Fine.

The process being: long-press, scroll, tap for selection. That’s not really quicker or more logical in free hand on a walkabout. Again: Form over function (with needlessly diminished visibility)

AMEB bug example: In order to permanently modify AMEB from currently i.e. +/-2 to +/-1.5 stops, I have to enter MEB, and modify the setting there (there may be other just as non-obvious ways too). Otherwise AMEB reverts to +/-2 stops after one exposure with +/-1.5. Not logical; not even function. Eh?

Not part of the use case testing before release, you say? It only requires one setting modification and one exposure, to see the “non-effect”. It’s that simple. But you have to do it! Preferably before release...

Note: This only covers the use of the AMEB option. One of many, many options. Wow! For a paid-for app with paid-for add-ons, that’s not good enough.

Developer Response ,

Thank you very much for your detailed comment.
In the control panel in HDR mode, please tap and hold the option for Auto, Auto 3, Auto 5, MEB, AMEB, LowLight HDR, and you will get a menu of all these bracket mode settings, so that you don’t have to toggle through them.
Bracket mode settings should be persistent. If you select AMEB, this mode should be active next time you open HDR mode. What you are saying makes sense of course. Please write to us via the customer service option in the app with more detail, so that we can investigate and advise. If necessary, please let us have a screenrecording. We are looking forward to receiving your message.

Sådan !

Det er Mega Nice og det virker perfekte. Det koster lidt at opdatere det hele, men når det er gjort engang for alle er det bare Mega Nice.

Developer Response ,

Takk for dine vennlige ord, vi er veldig glade for å se din entusiasme for appen vår! Hvis du noen gang har spørsmål eller forslag til forbedringer, kan du alltid kontakte vårt supportteam gjennom støttealternativet i appen (Kontrollpanel > Support).
Med vennlig hilsen, ditt ProCamera supportteam

// Thank you for your kind words, we’re very glad to see your enthusiasm about our app! If you ever run into any questions or have suggestions for further improvement, please know you can always reach our support team through the in-app support option (Control panel > support). 
Kind regards, your ProCamera support team