Get creative with Spectre
Unleash your imagination with this easy long–exposure photography app
Apple’s defAult cAmerA
app is good, but it could be better. With the hardware on iOS devices becoming ever higher-resolution, and the computational capability of devices themselves on the rise, Apple’s simple, point-and-click app means keen photographers generally have to look elsewhere if they want to wrest some control back from devices that are sometimes a little too “helpful”.
Luckily, here at Mac|Life, we regularly test and review apps that allow far more control over what your phone does when you press the shutter button.
Spectre Camera ($2.99) is one of our favorite such apps. One of the key benefits of a “proper” camera is the ability to blur motion by using a slow shutter speed. This is complicated: knowing just how long to open the shutter for, and having the equipment to hold your phone steady, make long– exposure photography a bit of a dark art. Spectre does things differently, shooting hundreds of exposures and averaging them together to produce a finished shot.
The app is really powerful, despite its simple–looking controls, and there are a few useful photographic tips and tricks you can use to produce the attractive results the developer boasts about.
The light trails effect we look at here can be applied just as creatively to things other than just light. When photographing flowing water, for instance, you can achieve a dreamlike quality to your pictures. Read on to master this excellent piece of software.