✏ Which camera apps do you use?

I’m trying to find the best solution for my photographic needs and tried some of the available options. None of them is satisfying me completely, so I thought some of you could share their experience.

The options:

Preinstalled

Google Camera

Comes preinstalled on the FPOS and provides a limited amount of settings.

Pros

  • very stable
  • nice UI

Cons

  • closed source
  • can’t use volume buttons for zooming

Available on F-Droid

FreeDcam

Libre Camera

Open Camera

In this forum it’s often discussed as a good alternative to Google Camera. It provides many many settings, including setting the save path of images and videos (to SD card).

Pros

  • open source
  • good HDR results

Cons

  • too many settings may confuse
  • setting scene mode or effects is quite unintuitive and complicated

Simple Camera

Vector Camera

  • applies real-time effects, such as wireframes and outlines, color shifting, and rendering with text characters

  • can also be applied to existing images

Not available on F-Droid

Camera Zoom FX

A non-free app with many settings and integrated features like a gallery and editing studio.

Pros

  • Good focus, the only app that is able to make fotos of documents etc. with my FP1
  • Able to deactivate shutter sound. When running, it also deactivates it for other camera apps (maybe only available in paid version)
  • Can save pictures on external SD card on an unrooted FP2

Cons

  • closed source
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Thanks for this thread.
2nd Cons for Google Camera is my favorite :grin: and the reason why I dont use it. I’m using Open Camera but i dont like it at all. Too many options for me. I will try Focal.

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Neat thread. I use Open Camera because I was seeking an alternative to the default camera app - I wanted to ensure I had a free and open source solution. Open Camera was the first camera I found in F-Droid.

I had the same issues as OP “huge delay between releasing the shutter and taking photo.” This was very close to a deal-breaker for me. I found a setting to fix this: “continuous focus.” I actually can’t find the setting right now, ha ha. But basically, the lens will be zooming in and out a small amount continuously, which prevents this very long (1-2 second) lag after pressing to caputre, and also improves legibility of text (not blurry).

edit: found it. On the main camera screen, click the “dot” where you have flash options. Instead of “a” for auto-focus, use “c” for continuous focus.

2 Likes

I’m moving this to software.

I don’t experience any of these problems with open camera.

I also was searching for a decent camera app some time ago. Though the most important part was not “open source” but Usability. I then found Camera Zoom FX and I’m using it now for quite a time. You can adjust a lot of stuff and edit your pictures afterwards (if you want to).Unfortunately I can not remember why I dumped all the other camera apps and preferred Camera Zoom FX. My memory is not the best :wink:

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I’m also using Open Camera without any issues regarding schütter delay.

Yes, Open camera does the trick!

I wikified the post In accordance with @Freubert . Everyone can add to it now! :slight_smile:

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You know I love wikis, but I think there could be problems with the pros & cons, as some people might consider “many many settings” a pro, others a con; some may consider an app “clear and intuitive” while others think it’s confusing; and some may even like google apps.

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For now I am also preferably using Open Camera. In particular I like that it has more settings available as the default program. With the possibility to choose the ISO settings & quick access to manually set the exposure correction it becomes easier to get better quality images. Also exposure lock is a great feature.

Though I am not happy with focusing, with none of the apps so far tested (default, Focal, Open Camera). Though, that may be an issue with the chip rather than with the software … Not sure.

Well, so quick things can change …

While I was mainly using open Camera lately, I realized today that the image quality is worse than with the default camera app. As some people have already posted, they were quite unsatisfied with (purple/violet) lines in their images.

Today I made a couple of pictures with both, Open Camera and the default camera, and with Open Camera the lines were visible as well, with the default camera not.

Now the annoying thing is, that this doesn’t really satisfy me either, since the white balance is worse with the default camera app. So I guess, I need to continue looking for a decent camera app …

I use A better Camera +
with full features

Didn’t like the default G camera. Tried Open camera but liked it less. Now using Camera MX which I really like and recommend to try!

It has some nice extras like live effects and live shot (shoot the past) options. And you can turn the shutter sound off! Also comes with own media manager which was something I was also looking for. You can edit your pics with the manager and it has nice basic options for that imo. The manager would need some improvement though as you can’t view your screenshots with it and wasn’t able to save my editings on a non-photo pic. But in its entirety I think it’s a really good package!

Thanks, this is a good thread. My main objection to the default camera is that you can’t mute the shutter, or even reduce the volume. This is annoying for me as I would like to use my phone to take images of manuscripts in libraries.

(It seems the reason you can’t mute the shutter is to deter men from secretly taking photos up the skirts of girls… If so, that’s very odd, because there is nothing to stop them taking videos…)

What is the best app where you can mute the shutter? Open Camera can’t, it seems. At the moment I’m using Z Camera, but the advertising is annoying (I suppose I could just pay for it…).

Maybe this helps: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/how-to-turn-off-the-camera-sound/11586

I try Open Camera, but every time I open the app, the flash goes off. Any idea how to stop that? I can’t find it in the settings…

Oh and another question, which photo-apps do you use? The google app doesn’t show downloaded pictures or screenshots and I can’t really find them again :smiley:

I’m using Piktures which has a nice UI, but I’m not completely happy with it as it’s not open source and sometimes the image cache is only refreshed when restarting the app.

Edit: Also, it doesn’t show the correct picture when opening it from another app. E.g. when tapping on a picture in my file manager it will be opened in Piktures. But the chosen picture isn’t shown. Piktures always shows the picture where I left off before.

Edit2: The issues I mentioned seem to be gone with the latest update.

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I use Camera ZOOM FX as standard camera. Is there a way to have this app as the camera that can be opened from the lockscreen? I think the chosen standard app should be the camera app that can be accesed from the lock screen, not the preinstalled google camera.

Seems like you set Google Camera as default app for certain actions. You can delete that through
Settings -> apps -> Google Camera
There you have to look for the button clear defaults (Aktionen auf Standard zurück setzen on my german device).
You also can achieve that by deactivating Google Camera completely.
Then, the next time you swipe from the right on the lock screen or use the camera hardware button you should be asked which action to perform. You could set another default then as well.