Camera Zoom review

Rob Potter

We review Camera Zoom, an app that adds zoom to your iPhone's camera

Published on Sep 21, 2009

The Camera Zoom iPhone app shouldn’t exist. Adding zoom to the iPhone’s camera, even as a software function, is a task Apple should have ticked off its to-do list months ago.

However, in leaving the job undone it’s allowed room for this iPhone app to be made, and it’s a valiant attempt at plugging the gap.

It works exactly as you’d expect: a simple slider, which can be positioned along any edge of the screen, allows smooth control of zooming.

It’s fast to snap photos once up and running, and surprisingly responsive. Tapping a shutter button captures the zoomed-in image and saves it to the iPhone’s standard camera roll.

There are options to tweak image quality, and the results are sharper than you’d expect using default settings.

However, this is software zooming. Effectively cropping in on an image and enlarging it to fill the screen. There’s always quality degradation where software zoom is used and the iPhone is not exempt.

Zoomed pictures are noticeably blurry, with a lack of detail and fuzzy borders between objects.

Sure, using Camera Zoom will give you more freedom when framing shots, but if you were hoping to get up close and personal while keeping the quality high, forget it.

There’s also a lack of any advanced features. We’d have liked to see Camera Zoom able to work its digital wizardry on pictures already in the iPhone’s library, or multi-touch controls to remove the need for a slider altogether.

And then there’s the issue of speed. While Camera Zoom takes snaps quickly once it’s loaded, it takes a while to get there. That’s not good for spur of the moment photography.

Overall, it’s a good effort. If you’re frustrated by the lack of zoom on the iPhone as standard you’ll breathe a sigh of relief after installing it. Be warned though, you’ll compromise both quality and speed at the same time.