Hello all! This weeks post is on the app I used to take the photos in the abandoned prison post from last week! I wanted to show off the app a bit because it is super cool and really makes use of some new technologies. I also want to talk about it’s intriguing platform support and more! Let’s get into it!
ProShot Overview:
ProShot is a camera app developed by a small App Studio called RiseUpGames. They have 2 apps on the Google Play Store and 3 on the Apple App Store. Android & IOS both have the free evaluator app to see if your device is compatible with the app and also the main camera app which costs $4.99 USD on Google Play Store and $5.99 USD on the Apple App Store. I got it on sale for $0.99 a while ago but still would say it’s worth $4.99 or $5.99 for quite a few reasons.
The reason you’d want this app is of course the higher quality video, manual controls & focus, etc but also RAW photos (.dng) that have more information than the Google Camera App gives in thier RAW photos.
Photos:
Since I had all of the Pixel photos in last week taken with this app, I don’t have as many in this weeks post since I took a lot more footage. Here are some of the unedited photos!
Now, since it is I’m going to show you a RAW & JPEG to compare
You’ll see the RAW image is incredibly bland but will have more information then the one on the right. It shows how much processing Pixels do to the incredibly aged IMX363. Now, let’s take a look at this photo in LightZone for processing. I just started using LightZone and even though it hasn’t been discontinued ironically because the developer now works at Google, it is still phenomenal! Anyways, let’s edit this photo!
I added the hue/saturation layer and boosted those along with the exposure!
I did a bit of relighting next:
A bit more luminosity, some sharpening…
A bit more contrast and here we are:
In this case I do prefer the one on the left and that always depends on the photo. The one on the right is a bit too blue and I probably wouldn’t use it, but hopefully I got the point accross that it is awesome to have the option. Here is a better example from last weeks post, left was the straight-out-of-camera and the right is the RAW .dng edited:
The in-camera-app processing on the left is better wihtout and with the raw photo.
More Photos!
Here are some more photos taken with ProShot š
Now, before I move on to the video, here is some tech from Google making this camera app, and all other pro camera apps on Android, possible.
History & Tech behind it:
ProShot Android was released in 2015 and I couldn’t find the release date for IOS (likely a bit before). On Android, the reason why this app is so significant is the use of Google’s CameraAPI2 which gives by far the best connection to almost any smartphone camera used in Android phones to give the absolute highest quality footage and access to full control over the camera’s shutter speed, dop, and more. If you know about camera apps on mobile, you’ll probably recognize a few (if not all) of the apps below:
– OpenCamera
– Filmic Pro
– Camera FV-5 (& FV-5 Lite)
All of these camera apps use CameraAPI2 and that is a huge reason why these apps are so popular and they’re quality is phenomenal.
So, CameraAPI2 is great right? Why doesn’t every dev use it? From what I understand, the issue is that it isn’t easy to implement and is pretty performance intensive. Moment Camera, very popular on IOS disconnected their Android version because they didn’t want to impliment CameraAPI2 likely because it’s an incredible amount of work and only works 70% of the time. For me, it will always be perfect since I am on a Google Pixel and CameraAPI2 is seamless on Pixel phones but issues arise with other phone companies that don’t implement the API perfectly or restrict the API because they don’t want all the information about their phone cameras to be given to devs. Samsung restricts a bit and I saw comments on the app saying Samsung phones aren’t great with ProShot. Huaweii phones sometimes aren’t perfect and Xiaomi is overall better than Huaweii but still isn’t perfect to my knowledge.
Another thing I didn’t mention is that ProShot is actually available on Windows? Yeah, for the rare Windows phone user ProShot is available for some strange reason giving it a total monopoly to that extremely small market.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned, not a ton of devs implement CameraAPI2 including all social medias like Snapchat & Instagram. Even with the Pixel 6 Snapchat integration and collab with Google, Snapchat didn’t implement the API or even use the Pixel Visual Core to the extent that they should. That is why Snapchat, despite being the best on the Pixel 6 right now, still works better with iPhones because of a direct feed instead of an indirect one.
Video:
This is a vid shot in ProShot and edited in Blender. I think it produces a nicer quality video than Filmic does, but let me know what you think!
The app is very close to perfect but there is a “video hack mode” that should allow higher fps shooting (like 4k 60fps), but it unfortunately doesn’t work right. 4k overall isn’t as good and I just shoot in 1080p 30 or 60 just because it doesn’t cause the phone to overheat. 4k also sometimes takes a second to start recording and glitches before recording, just a strange artifact of 4k on the IMX363 since it isn’t 4k optically (only digitally) so things like Yi cams with the same sensor have to upscale.
Conclusion:
I really love ProShot and a lot of things came in a new update that prompted me to open up the app after a while of not using it. Hope you enjoyed the post!
See you next week!
-Digital Wonders & Smiles
Digital Wonders and Smiles 