14 DAY TRIAL // BitWink has announced Zoom Lens 1.0 for iPhone, a new, digital-camera zoom solution offering precise pinch-to-zoom control of the real-time camera view. An 8x digital photo zoom can be achieved with Zoom Lens with full-resolution output and automatic sharpening of the resulting photo.
Zoom Lens is said to offer a user experience that will be instantly familiar to iPhone photography enthusiasts, as it uses a minimalist interface. The user simply pinches the live preview to set the level of desired zoom, employing the familiar camera interface augmented with a retro-analog zoom indicator. As the iPhone 3GS also has the capability to zoom in on different parts of an image, users can single-tap to set the focus point at any zoom level. An automatically sharpened preview is displayed when the shutter is pressed. The user can then pan and zoom prior to saving, according to BitWink.
"Zoom is a feature that every iPhone camera user wants. It's a bit of a mystery why Apple don't include it as standard." Matt Farrugia, founder of BitWink, said. "There are alternatives available on the App Store but we could see from the reviews that users weren't satisfied with the experience being offered. We asked ourselves, if Apple did zoom, what would it look like? It seems obvious that pinch-to-zoom should be the metaphor, so that was our starting point, and we kept it very simple, very focused from there. It's not a bells and whistles app – just one thing, done really well."
BitWink mentions the following feature highlights for its Zoom Lens app:
- Offers precise pinch-to-zoom control of the real-time camera view; - Provides up to 8x digital zoom; - Saves in full-resolution output (e.g. 1536 x 2048 on the 3GS); - Automatically displays a sharpened image in the post-capture preview.
Requiring a camera-enabled iPhone (as if there were other kinds of Apple iPhones) and iPhone OS 3.1 or later, Zoom Lens 1.0 for iPhone is available at an introductory price of $0.99 (USD) in the App Store.