Zoom Lens

by BitWink



Category: Photography
Price: $0.99

Now your iPhone is once... twice... 8x a lady

Digital zoom apps on the iPhone are a funny thing. The fact that anyone wants them at all points to some deep-rooted flaw in the human gene pool. When I see the number of people clamoring for an app that will allow them to emulate a zoom lens, on a 2-3mp cameraphone, I pray for a meteor to strike us all down. Yes, I said us because this app sits on my very first Home screen.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. "Pray tell, what is the fundamental argument against digital zoom?", goes the crying of the uneducated savages beneath my window. Well, it's like this. All digital zooming does is take the same photo you would normally have taken, and cut out the part in the middle that you have selected. So that leaves something smaller and inferior to a real, optically-zoomed picture. Some iPhone apps just leave you with that, while others blow the crop back up to the photo's original size, albeit with blurry results.

Often in life, we must perform necessary evils. If given no choice but to perform emergency brain surgery in a filthy basement with nothing but a power drill, wouldns't thou choose a quality Black & Decker instrument over nameless Chinese knockoffs made from recycled toilet roll, tupperware and dentures? Or if telephoned in the middle of the night by a Catholic priest who begged your assistance in killing a man he was convinced to be the physical incarnation of Satan, lest the world be swallowed up by madness and murder, would you not prefer to do the deed with a Taylor Made or Callaway golf club, rather than your uncle's worn-out putter? I rest my case.

I submit to you that Zoom Lens is no miracle. It does not achieve anything you could not do yourself with some experience in Photoshop. So why, then, does your humble robot reviewer* swear by it? Because this well-turned app takes the extra step of sharpening and cleaning up the artificially-inflated results. It carries its plates to the kitchen after dinner while the other loutish guests are lazing about in the living room, guzzling your expensive wine while making shameless small talk with one another before traipsing off to your bedroom! And you just changed those sheets!

Zoom Lens is simple and elegant. You pinch with two fingers to zoom smoothly in and out. Yes, you could crop and resize a photo later back home with an Image Editing for Dummies book beside you, but in the real world, being able to play with a zoomed composition and seeing if it works – right there and then – is often the difference between taking that shot and having something, and coming home from the playground empty-handed.

Positives: Thoughtful UI design, image quality can't get much better for digital zoom, supports tap-to-focus/exposure on iPhone 3GS.
Unpositives: Lacks accelerometer-based image stabilization, which would be great for low-light and 8x shots.
Rating: 4.5 / 5

Buy Zoom Lens in the iTunes App Store.

* This is a lie. I am incapable of humility.