Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Chase Jarvis Rocks It With His Best Camera Application

As someone who, in fact, carries his iPhone everywhere, Chase is right, with his now trademarked phrase "The Best Camera is the one with you" (yes, he did trademark it!). Chase is also right that all the apps out there are missing bits and pieces, and he brings it all together in the app, which you can learn more about at www.TheBestCamera.com.


I downloaded the app on my way to New York yesterday, and it is amazingly intuitive. I have multiple apps already, with my favorite one before this being Camera Bag, however, this one just does a great job all around, especially on the sharing front. At left is a nifty screen shot of the app in use with a photo of my speedometer as I was headed home from NYC on the NJ Turnpike, inside the Best Camera app.

(Continued after the Jump)



The app does a REALLY great job of lighting up shadows in images, and the warm/cool and candy settings are great, but watch out for an over-use of the candy setting. One application of that filter on my red rental car that replaced my Jeep that broke down in the middle of the NJ Turnpike when we were northbound to NYC had commenters criticizing the saturated reds. (As for me, I liked it - it represented my anger at the situation I had found myself in, and the clown-car size of the sub-compact I was stuck renting to get to NYC in time!) Also, playing with the app distracted me from my frustrations - my creativity with other photos actually had a bit of a calming side effect!

What don't I like? Not much. All around, it is the best application out there. One thing I wrote to Chase about was that every photo lists the photo as "Photo from Chase Jarvis' Best Camera", and he indicated that that will change in a few days with a "0.1" release, as it was coded that way by accident. Even when you input a caption in the app, it does not make it to facebook, however, you can easily edit the caption on facebook after the fact. The only other thing is that the crop tool just crops square arbitrarily. I would love to be able to select my crop and dimensions, and I suspect that will come as an enhancement very soon. the entire interface is so intuitive, with easy to understand visual cues as to what each filter does, and the fact that you can stack them.

Run, don't walk to get this app, and begin sharing your photos on Facebook and Twitter much easier than ever before. Don't have an iPhone? Too bad! Who knows if he's going to do a version for other phones, so go get an iPhone so you can use this app. Chase also has a pretty cool social networking site where you can see what other people are shooting and sharing, as well as the most popular amongst those. In addition, he has this book (at right) that is worth checking out as well!

Lastly, it wouldn't be "total Chase" without a cool video to accompany this, so check the latest from Mr. Jarvis out below. As I note, in my 1am photograph taken at the Burger King along the turnpike, using a newspaper front page, he really could deserve, in some creative realm, the title "King Chase"!




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10 comments:

James Pratt said...

I felt it was quite presumptious to claim he coined the phrase "the best camera is the one you have with you" when it has been around the photograhy business for many years. Did he also invent the Internet? I don't think the trademark will hold up an any court.

Nice app, but the marketing claims are a bit outlandish. He should just let the app speak for itself.

John Harrington said...

Chase is a pretty saavy guy when it comes to intellectual property, so I am guessing someone who tries to use the mark will end up in court, and Chase, as he has proven in the past, will go to court on principle when things are not handled fairly. The app does a great job like no other single app.

-- John

Martin Beebee said...

This is a teensy off-topic here, but I wonder about the copyright implications all of this immediate photo sharing on Facebook, Twitter, etc. It's been my policy the last couple years that nothing goes on my website until it's been registered with the US Copyright Office. It's great that it's so easy to take and share photos these days, but I wonder about the implications down the road for intellectual property rights. How many people are going to go back and register their iPhone images with the Copyright office? Or are these all just "throwaway" images? Maybe a topic for a future post, John?

John Harrington said...

Martin -

You have up to 90 days after date of first publication (and I would submit that your posting to Flickr would meet that test) to register, and recieve the same protections as if you registered it on day 1, so I can't see how you would have less protection as long as you are downloading all your images off your phone and registering them with the rest of your work.

John

Dred242 said...

Overall I think Best Camera is a pretty cool app. There are several features I would love to see added....I put up a short post on my blog about that. As it stands the Best Camera app will not replace any of my go-2 iPhone image editing apps, but the added social twist that Best Camera offers along with tight website integration...it can't be beat.

Dred242
www.BokehImage.com

worst said...

I love Camera Bag, have tried quite a few editing/filter apps and some have charms (older versions of Tiffin apps), but I always end up back with Camera Bag. Like the community idea, though.

worst said...

whoops just read above. You can change worst to EA Albritton. Sorry about that.

Rich Green said...

John, regarding the 90 days, isn't it easier to register the images as unpublished (and you can do 1000s at a time), then to register as published with a printout/copy of the image(s)? I do differentiate this from an assignment where turnaround is important, but even then, with online registration, it can possibly be done before publication. I do what Martin does, register before posting.

Jennifer Foster said...

I am nuts about Camera Bag but will happily try anything you recommend, John! Thanks for the tip.

Unknown said...

Hi all,

Ok, IPhone app is cool. But are you sure that we should take a photos all the time and share it with other people. Internet is a bit over littered already, mh...

Cheers
http://www.jaaknilson.ee

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