Camera1 - Black & White Camera

Camera 1 is an app for both very experienced photographers as well as beginners. It’s many features and capabilities more than meet the expectations of advanced photographers, as well as being an app beginners can grow into as they expand their capabilities. Camera 1 takes me back to the good old days of Tri X 35mm photography. I love BW photography and Camera 1 more than meets my expectations!

Easy to navigate and well planned!

Camera 1 is one of my favorite choices for shooting in black and white. It's simple and intuitive, and its images are crisp and stark. Do yourself a favor and give it a try.

This is an amazing app. It fits a fully functioning multi lens camera with a full set of filters shooting in black and white on to your phone. The design and execution is flawless. I am an avid black and white amateur photographer using film and I love the way this app helps me to pre-visualize the photo before I take it. I can’t recommend this app too highly!

One wants a camera app to at least take good pictures and have a sensible, attractive user interface. Camera1 is all that, but “goes to 11.” Plus it gives you manual control over a number of parameters. You can simply point and shoot and get a sophisticated, artsy, filmy photo with great resolution. But with only a wee bit more attentiveness, you can tweak the focus, exposure, and contrast right on the main screen. The controls are big and hard to miss. The switch from tele to normal to wide is there, too. The UI is only two layers deep, so it’s easy to get at a variety of file types plus a great selection of aspect ratios. The virtual color filters are as true-to-analogue-life as they come. Genius. There are additional luxuries with this Porsche of iPhone camera apps. Your response time is enhanced by full-screen shutter. Icing on the cake for us control freaks is zebra-stripe exposure warnings, so you blow out your highs only if you want to. Specialized. Elegant. Inspiring.

Have only used this for a short while but find it very good.

This is a fine app if you prefer your iPhone photos taken in black & white. Difference like night and day. Tremendous developer support as well.

Just downloaded the app. Opening for the first time pops up a simple overview that is very effective walking you through the settings on screen. Original yet intuitive layout. I hesitated buying the app because the reviews said it was tedious to switch lenses, such as to super wide, but that is no longer a problem. There’s a button to do that right up front. So far, so good.

But will be great if a timer is added

It’s a slick, beautiful interface, with the necessary, more common controls (aspect ratio, filters, exposure, contrast) as well as manual focus (when it works), and, maybe the best feature, “zen mode,” which lets you remove distracting controls (other than a large Z at the top of the screen) and see just the image you’re about to take. (Apple should note this feature for its own app — it’s terrific.) Also good, the image fills the entire screen, top to bottom (and with the right aspect ratio, side to side as well). There are cons. The most serious, for me, is the inability to zoom in and out using the standard pinch gestures. The app has wide angle, normal, and tele settings, but you have to select the mode with a couple of taps (menu/setting). It’s slow, awkward and unintuitive, and worse, these are fixed views — one wide, one normal, and one tele — with nothing in between. Also, the manual focus feature seems to work only intermittently: sometimes it’s available, sometimes it’s not; there seems to be no reason for either state, and I can find no way to turn it on or off. I’ve been using Mpro for years, and I’ll continue to use it. For the moment, though, Camera1’s slick, seductive interface has me hooked — and will until its flaws piss me off one time too many. Later: I received a developer email (thanks, Sebastien) explaining some design choices: No standard zoom because digital cropping lowers resolution (I believe that’s the correct interpretation), and manual focus isn’t supported “when using the ultra wide angle on iPhone 11 and 11 pro … .” These are both reasonable choices (the second sounds like a technical challenge). For the right kind of photographer then, or for any photographer operating within chosen constrains, Camera1 is worth a try. The image quality is high, and the interface is slick. You may find, as I did, that you miss shots you might not have missed with a manual zoom, but there other apps for that.