Pudding Camera on the Samsung Galaxy S2

Pudding Camera is currently one of the most popular camera apps available from the Android Market. It has an interesting, simple and user-friendly interface which makes it nice to use:

Pudding interface

I took a number of photos testing out various filters with some of the results below. What I didnt like is that 'Pudding Camera' seems to vertically stretch some photos slightly, with most settings other than 'Snap'. I'm not sure if this is only on the SGS2 phone or whether it's a univeral issue.

Using 'Fantasy' and 'Dazzle' together does make for some nice surreal shots, and I've often seen the 'Fisheye' filter used for shots at nightclub events to great effect. Pudding has features for taking more Retro
looking shots such as 'Noir', 'Vintage Brown' and my personal favourite, 'Vignetting'.

What I do like about this app is that it allows you to choose 'Flash option' with all of the filters. Something even the Galaxy S2's own internal application doesn't allow.

Unfortunately, the Free App can only take photos to a maximum resolution of  1280px.

Basic Setting

Basic Dazzle

Basic Vivid

Snap Basic

Fantasy Basic

Fisheye Basic

Fantasy Vivid

Fantasy Dazzle

Samsung Galaxy S2 HDR Photo Apps

After a week with my SGS2, I've decided to play around with filtering and photo techniques abit more. I've seen some great results with HDR photography and wanted to experiment myself. HDR or High Dynamic Range imaging, creates a greater range of luminance and contrast between shades of colour in photos. HDR photos can be achieved purely through the post processing of images, or through the combining of 3 or more photo shots with slightly different ranges into one. As the latter is the preferred option, i opted away from Android apps like the popular 'Camera 360' which uses post processing, and instead chose 'HDR Camera+' from the app market. Below are my first results. The first photo is without HDR, whereas the remaining 3 images are taken with 'HDR Camera+', whereby I've chosen 'High Contrast' in the 'Local Contrast' options of the settings menu. Click on each photo for a full resolution view.

Rosses Point (Sligo, Ireland)

Rosses Point (Sligo, Ireland) HDR Photography

Rosses Point (Sligo, Ireland) HDR Photography

Rosses Point (Sligo, Ireland) HDR Photography

Lessons learned:

As you can see, the results are dramatic. Though on reflection, i will probably opt for a subtler contrast next time, as the luminance is alittle overkill.

I'd also warn that unlike professional camera's with HDR features which take each individual SDR shot in rapid succession for combining, the 'HDR Camera+' app has approximately a .5 delay between each of the three shots, which means that unless you hold your camera incredibly still and use only static images, you will not have the same crispness to the images that you may wish for. I will research means to reduce this lapse, and test similar apps to see if this is a universal issue.

Shane