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VSCO cam

The best iPhone camera app by far

Story by Rupert Marlow January 20th, 2014

Who is VSCO

From their website: "Visual Supply Co (VSCO) is passionate about creating beautiful and efficient digital tools for the modern creative." They have made some of the best Lightroom presets around. They are all based on specific films from the old days and cover many of them with settings specific to camera manufacturers too to allow for the differences in the native camera output. Using their presets effectively can drastically cut down on editing time in a RAW workflow - as long as that is the look you (or your clients) are after.

However, I first heard of VSCO through the iPhone after I spotted their free app on the app store. VSCOcam is a very well designed, straightforward app. You take a shot, edit it, export it. It is non destructive so re-edits can be made to your hearts content. The images are all stored in the app until exported. This is fantastic as you can edit down in the app and then only export the best shots - keeping your camera roll free from all the 'almost' and 'nearly' shots! If I had to make one criticism, when viewing the image in the library in the app, being able to zoom in would be nice to check sharpness etc. Location data and plenty of other info is captured at the same time, including how you edit them and which filters are used. You can add your own copyright info in there too. What's possibly the best feature - and still within the free app, you get a 'Grid'. This is an online image blog effectively, like Instagram but it appears to me as if the people using it have a greater interest in imagery and art than any of the endless crappy filtered selfies or shots of food than you get on most IG feeds! The caliber is simply far higher in my opinion.

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The Filters and editing

VSCOcam comes with some filters included with packs that can be purchased if you require more flexibility. They are as good as their Lightroom plugins and can really help to enhance an iPhone image. It is worth noting that images can be imported from your devices galleries into the app and edited but the output will only be an 8MP image as that is the cameras resolution for the iPhone. I am not sure if the same rule applies to Android devices. There is some speak of an iPad app to come at some point but they are not giving anything away. I expect when it does come, it'll be fantastic! good things come to those who wait...

The available editing controls are as follows: exposure, temperature, contrast, rotate, crop, fade, vignette, tint, saturation, shadows, highlights, sharpness and grain along with highlight and shadow tinting and a skin-tone option.

There are over 40 available preset filters if you choose to buy them.

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Curated Images

In the same way that this wonderful blogging platform does with some of the posts made using Exposure, VSCO curate what they consider to be the best images onto their own feed and the images are described as "selected for the curated VSCO Grid™, a collection of the finest mobile imagery on the internet." So far, I have been fortunate enough to have 9 selected (see below). If selected, you receive and email saying they have been chosen and it is great to know that someone else appreciates what you're producing. The variation in what is chosen too is very wide. There are a lot of conceptual images up on the Grids from time to time and other images that are curated differ wildly from one another - showing that they aren't just encouraging one type of imagery but applauding variation.

Their curated grid || My grid

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iphonography

There is a bit of a trend to use Instagram and many of the photo sharing sites as a means to showcase work and it can be extremely handy in getting work out there to be seen by the masses. It is pretty obvious when a big shot (from a DSLR or similar) is posted and somehow I think that spoils the fun of such a photo-stream as it really becomes a method of broadcast and portfolio. However, I love the simplicity of the iPhone (and other mobile devices). It is point-and-shoot but that means you have to work harder on composition and consider your metering as the dynamic range of the tiny sensors in phones is generally narrower than other cameras. I cannot speak for the android devices in detail but I have used the app briefly on a Sony phone and it works well. 

One of the greatest features is the split focus and exposure options (drag two fingers apart on the screen). This really helps sort out a well balanced exposure and ensures accurate focus. With some lenses (I use Olloclip lenses), you can achieve a little depth of field so being able so specify focus and exposure independently can really come in handy. On my VSCO grid, I won‘t post an SLR image or anything else other those shot with my phones as I feel it is part of the fun to get the best from a more limiting system.

This final image was shot on the iPhone through the window of a plane, using the Olloclip polariser to reduce reflection and edited in VSCOCam.

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Footnote: All images in this post were shot using the iPhone 5 and 5s, using Olloclip lenses and edited in VSCOCam. All images remain the property of Rupert Marlow Photography