Darkroom Premium: Take pictures that DON'T suck.

Gather round lads and lasses, and let me tell you a tale.  It's a glorious tale, filled with women and debauchery, designated drivers, dancing, and a handle of whiskey.

Fine, enough with the preamble.  I went to a bar this weekend and got wasted.  In my stumbling haze with friends I became "that guy," whipping out my...phone.  To take pictures.

Yeah, I know; what kind of douche bag takes pictures at a bar, right?  Apparently me.

Usually when this happens, though, there are great karmic repercussions.  That is, bars are dark, and the iPhone can't handle it.  When I wake up the next morning and cycle through my images, I'm usually met with a series of annoyingly (almost comedically) blurry, unusable photographs.

Hmmm...I don't remember taking a picture of my own kneecap.  Odd.

This past weekend, though, I tried out a neat little app called Darkroom Premium, and it made me feel like less of a drunkard.

This one is so simple--so obvious-- I don't know why Apple hasn't incorporated the feature into its built-in camera.  When you launch the app, you're greeted with a camera view that looks strikingly like the normal camera app.  Push the picture button, though, and you'll notice that the shutter doesn't snap right away.  Instead, it waits for your hand to steady before taking the photograph.  Which results in pictures that aren't a blurry mess.

It really works well, and I have yet to get a blurry picture.  

The app also lets you look at the camera roll to preview pictures, and it gives you the option, after every snap, to keep or discard a photo.  Good ones are kept in the camera roll; bad ones disappear into the ether of "lost forever-ness."

The app isn't wildly customizable, having only a few options in its menu.  You can turn on an autosave feature, enable a fullscreen shutter touch mode, and adjust the sensitivity of the "steady mode."

In addition, you can add a timer of up to ten seconds, taking the worry and stress out of those sexy MySpace self-portrait photo sessions.  Most of these features are only available in the premium app, making it well worth the small cost of an upgrade.

It's hard to find a down side with this one.  It knows its purpose, does it well, and makes no apologies.  And for $.99 on the iTunes store, it's very reasonably priced.  Its name is a little misleading, though, as the app's function has nothing to do with photographic development or manipulation.  Ah well.

So next time you're stumbling through your favorite saloon, make sure you have this one in your pocket.  Otherwise you'll miss out on that candid photo of your girlfriend freak-dancing with that 70-year-old fly fisherman at three in the morning.

You can buy Darkroom Premium HERE.

Comments

[Vanessa Stokes]

At the time you posted this review of Darkroom you tell me that you did not know that this app is NOT compatable with the iPhone 3.0. It does not work at all now. Read the reviews on the iTunes app store. I own this app and it had not worked since the update.

[HAL9000]

Vanessa, thanks for the heads-up. When I did the update to 3.0 I got hit with quite a few app problems as well. When I did this review, I was working in 2.0, only days before the update was released. Apologies if that was at all unclear in the review.

If you ever have questions about which version of the iPhone we're using in reviews, which OS we are working under, or which version of the app we are using, feel free to email us any time (quaid@moviechopshop.com). We're working on an efficient way to keep this information updated for our readers...

Thanks for the comment, and sorry for the confusion!