Browsing through new apps is something I do whenever I have a spare minute, and recently a couple of iPhone photography apps have stood out for me, so I thought I’d share them with you today.

First up is Hydra. This app originally stood out for me because it offers “Super Resolution” images of up to 32MegaPixels using an iPhone 5 onwards. It does this by taking a large number of images (when I say large, it could be 50+) and, somehow, blends them into one large image. Now I thought that’d be a cool feature, and it probably is, although I’ve not had reason to use it in anger yet.
But the feature I have used a lot is the HDR mode. Whereas an iPhone can take an HDR image by blending two exposure to get a higher dynamic range, Hydra will use up to 20 exposures (in my experience, its about 8) to get a great image. I’ve long been a user of HDR Pro on my iPhone for this kind of photography, but I think that Hydra may just have the edge on it at the moment. I’ve attached an example of the same shot taken on the native Camera app, in HDR Pro and Hydra for comparison.

There’s much more to play with, including a low light mode that reduces noise in dark settings, and a zoom mode which produces images way, way better than the native camera app. Definitely worth a try at £3.99 (on 12/2/15).

Next app I’ve been playing with is Slow Shutter. Now my testing with this hasn’t really produced great results, but I think that I haven’t got steadiest hand. I have seen others get some great images of car light trails, and with a steady hand, or some way of steadying your iPhone (e.g. Tripod), I’m sure you could get some amazing images. I’d love to see your results, because I’m intrigued to how functional this app could be in the right hands. Worth a try at £1.49 at normal pricing, but what you might not realise is that Apple often feature certain apps within their own Apple Store app. Until 28/3/15, Slow Shutter is free (in the UK at least) if you download it from within the Apple Store app (scroll down the front page and you’ll see a small link).

Hope you get on well with these apps, and please feel free to share your images on any of the social media outlets (top right for links).