A Round Up of the Best Android Camera Apps

There are many camera apps for Android, from the standard point and snap software that usually comes preinstalled on an Android device to more specialist options.

Whether you’re interested in making stop motion films, recording a time lapse scene or nature portrait, using your mobile’s digital camera as a semi-pro photography device or having a selection of Photoshop-style filters built into your phone to affect a sepia, pinhole camera or other typically classic photographic style, there is an Android camera app that is suited to the task.

Each of the Android apps listed here have been tested on an LG GW 620 Eve handset running v1.5 of the operating system - we’ll take a look at each in turn.

Stop-Motion – Lite

A veritable mobile stop-motion movie studio, Stop-Motion – Lite (and indeed the full version) can be used to create a wealth of animated film clips.

Whether you intend to record by hand, using a tripod or jury-rigging a rostrum camera, the results can be as remarkable and disparate as the works of Walt Disney, Terry Gilliam’s work on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, or even Aardman Animations’ Wallace and Gromit.

Patience is of course required, but most importantly, you need imagination. The Lite version of this software imposes a limit on the resolution, but the full version is good value for money and unlocks several configuration options.

Record Stop-Motion with Android Camera explains how to use this app.

Time-Lapse – Lite

Similar in design to Stop-Motion – Lite (and with a similar feature-unlocking upgrade), Time-Lapse – Lite allows the creation of wonderful scenes of flowers opening, fruit decaying and clouds rolling across the horizon.

Time-lapse photography seems to benefit more from nature footage than anything else, and with the right additional hardware (a tripod for your Android camera or perhaps some other form of grip and stand) you can achieve fantastic results.

Time-Lapse Photography with Android features guidelines on how to use this great app.

FX Camera

Featuring 6 modes, FX camera applies filters to the images captured by your Android camera in order to give them a more unique feel.

You can choose between

• 

  ToyCam – an emulator of a child’s camera.

• PolAndroid – this creates images that resemble the colour tone and white frame of an instant camera.

• Fisheye – the images created by this filter are spherical, resembling the view through a particularly concave lense.

• SymmetriCam – mirror images can be created with this feature.

• Warhol – this feature, probably the least satisfying among those listed here, is supposed to create an image that recalls Andy Warhol’s famous portrait of Marilyn Monroe.

• Normal – although described as “normal”, this option also offers mono, negative and sepia options, although the availability of these depends on your Android device.

RetroCamera

Although ostensibly similar to FX Camera, RetroCamera offers considerably different filters, and as a result, considerably different images.

Available free from the Android Market, RetroCamera features a pinhole camera mode in black and white or colour, to provide images that hark back to the days of homemade camera kits.

The Xolaroid 2000 mode offers a Polaroid-style filter, similar to the PolAndroid filter of FX Camera, while Little Orange Box offers a high contrast, high saturation image evocative of the type of camera used in the Soviet Union in the 1970s.

Finally, The Barbl offers a very low saturation, low colour option, intended to resemble the output of German cameras from the 1950s.

You can download and install RetroCamera via the Android Market, and find out more about this and the FX Camera app in How to Snap Old-Style Photos on Android.