iPhone Life magazine

Qik, get this app!

John Painter 2.6.10

Jumping into the middle of the iPhone video camera fray is Qik Video Camera ($1.99) by Qik Inc.which is amazing, and has edged my other favorites iVideoCamera and ShowTime out of the lead.

Don’t get me wrong, they are all a good value for your money and really help make that old iPhone 2G or your 3G more valuable because the video and audio quality is getting decent.  But Qik is really trying to push the limits in your iPhone.

So why did Qik just jump to becoming my new favorite?  Well they added some features I was previously only dreaming about.  Let me explain.  You can now, on the fly, adjust zoom, exposure, mic and image quality on a bar along the top of the screen.  On the bottom you can now choose from shooting in straight color the following effects b/w, color correction, split image, distortion, x-ray, sepia, a picture in picture zoom, and the list goes on.  Qik gives you the option of shooting in 200 x 152 or 400 x 304 which just makes things more flexible.  You can save your video within the app, or to your camera roll, and of course you can upload to Facebook, SMS or attach as an e-mail.

Now if you want even more options, you download their Qik Live (free) and register with their web site so you can have all your video saved directly to their server and distributed even further across the web?  Take a look at my wife Kati making some focaccia.

Let me be clear, your iPhone isn’t going to shoot stunning HD video, with Qik.  While it’s digital it’s "low quality" a limitation of the iPhone's camera as compared to any digital camcorder these days.  But it's not that low for what most people will be doing with it, and what’s important here is that you’re squeezing ever more productivity out of your iPhone.

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John Painter
http://www.johnlpainter.com

Though I was born and raised in the mid coast region of Maine in the fishing village of Owls Head, I’ve traveled North America and Central Europe quite a bit. I've been married to Katalin Vecsey (a Professor at Bates College) since 1991, and in 2002 we had our first child, Kelen, we also have a Mini-Schnauzer named Spaulding.

Having grown up in rural Maine, I enjoy being outdoors, fly fishing, hunting, hiking, kayaking, snowboarding, you name it. Having been an undergraduate in Olympia Washington (just South of Seattle), and lived and worked in both Cologne, Germany and Budapest, Hungary I also have a love the metropolitan life.

Currently I’m a doctoral candidate for the Doctor of Arts degree in leadership studies at Franklin Pierce University, in Concord New Hampshire http://www.franklinpierce.edu/ my dissertation topic is on the Doctor of Arts degree itself, since it is a uniquely American degree with roots in the Great Depression as an alternative to the ubiquitous Ph.D.

My other interests include fine art and video, some of my artistic work in videography can be viewed on Vimeo at http://vimeo.com/johnpainter

You can follow along with what I’m up to on iPhone Life or Twitter http://twitter.com/johnlpainter

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Comments

Hi John, I just got

Submitted by BKatz on 2/8/10 10:45am

Hi John, I just got iVideocamera last week and have been enjoying using it. The frame rate makes the videos a bit rough though. Is this one a big improvement? Would you reccomend getting this app or do you think iVideocamer will improve with updates?

The frame rate will be choppy

Submitted by John Painter on 2/8/10 12:12pm
The frame rate will be choppy as compared to say a 3Gs or even some of the other smartphones. You can minimize choppy video by shooting at a smaller size, not panning your iPhone fast and using a stabilizer like a tripod, etc. This a great question though since for 2G and 3G video was not built in though the hardware can, to an extent handle it. Long story short, your 2G and 3G will never shoot "great" video. But it can shoot good enough video for many purposes and that it can do so with an ever expaning list of apps available for the iPhone is where the potenial is. I like Qik because of how fast I can shoot and distribute video and it's good enough for my purposes. iVideocamera will likely make improvements up to the limits of the iPhones hardware and then look at the editing and effects capabilities - sort of like Qik did. I like iVideocamera and have that on my iPhone - its simplicity is it's beauty.