Do you like to record videos of life’s best moments? Or videos of interesting scenes, such as nature and landscapes?
Life has become much more enjoyable with the wide range of tech devices, such as smartphones, that allow us to record moments of our days that become recorded memories of our existence. There are many applications that are available for you to shoot moments of your life, events, special occasions and more.
Those applications also enable us to shoot photos and videos with our smartphones that have the same quality of professional cameras!
However, even though phones have a built-in camera, sometimes their cameras don’t have all the necessary features for shooting perfect videos.
Now you will discover apps that can improve the quality of your phone to record better videos and make it shoot much better images, some for Android and some for iOS. Most of them are free, but even the paid apps recommended here are super cheap (all under $16) and totally worth it.
For you who use your smartphone to record videos of your life’s best moments, videos for entertainment or even for commercial purposes: it will be totally worth it to check those apps out!
Let’s see 6 apps to improve your phone’s video camera.
1. FiLMiC Pro for Android and iOS
FilMic Pro app is a paid app (it costs around $15.00) that boosts your phone’s camera to match the quality of a professional camera. The app is available for Android and iOS. However, some advanced features are only for iOS phones.
With FilMic Pro, you will be able to record in Slow Motion, in Manual Mode and other filming styles that could never be done with the standard settings of most smartphone cameras.
The latest version of FiLMiC Pro has been enhanced with cutting edge features:
- Standard, manual and hybrid trigger modes
- Apple Watch support to start/stop remotely and view live video
- Portrait (vertical) or landscape (horizontal) shooting
- Variable zoom speed
- Synchronization of audio frame rates at 24/25/30/485/0/60 frames per second (some of those rates are for iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s only)
- Slow and fast motion effects
- Adjustable time-lapse recording
- Triple histogram with oscilloscope (A7 processor devices and newer)
- Adjust settings after recording (exposure, contrast, saturation, hue, color temperature)
- Reduce to various sizes/resolutions
- Customizable settings
- Screen ratio framing guide overlay
- Rule of thirds grid for dynamic composition
- Image stabilization
2. Lapse It for Android and iOS
Lapse It is a free app for Android and iOS, but it also has a Pro paid version. Lapse It allows you to create time-lapse videos. Time-lapse is a technique that mixes videos at different intervals.
A time-lapse video is a video of an entire process of building something that is condensed in a much shorter time. For example, you can get a video of a plant growing that lasts a few hours and shorten it to a video that lasts a few minutes.
Here are some features of Lapse It:
- Well-designed User Interface, with improved usability
- Capture resolutions up to 1080p in the Pro paid version
- Capture interval starting at one second
- Cool effects applied during capture or before rendering (“render” is saving the video after adding effects)
- Fast and powerful rendering engine
- No restrictions on duration of capture or frames
- Information on the screen during capture
- Easily adjustable settings
3. Open Camera for Android
Open Camera is a free app and is only available for Android phones. OpenCamera adds professional camera functions to your phone’s camera, such as Focus Mode, Scene Mode, White Balance, ISO and others.
Here are some features of Open Camera:
- Selfie with Screen Flash
- High Definition videos (a.k.a. HD)
- Practical remote controls: timer (with optional voice countdown), automatic repeat mode (with configurable delay)
- Configurable volume keys and user interface
- Inverted viewing option to use with attachable lenses
- Store Date & Time and location as video captions (as .SRT files)
- Panorama for front camera and back camera
- Support for HDR with automatic alignment and ghost removal and Exposure Bracketing
- Optional GPS location marking (Geotag) for photos and videos
- For photos, this includes the compass direction (GPSImgDirection and GPSImgDirectionRef)
- Apply date and time stamp, location coordinates and personalized text to photos
4. VideoCam Illusion for Android
VideoCam Illusion is a free app for Android that allows you to apply different masks, filters and effects before and during video recordings with your phone.
When you’re shooting a video, you can click on the red button (record button) to apply filters such as Black & White and X-ray.
With the option Effects of the app, you can change the shape of images, create mosaics, add tweezers or time warp effects. By making your own customization, through VideoCam Illusion you will be able to create original videos in real time.
VideoCam Illusion features are:
- Filters: Mono, Colored, Chicago, Pencil, thermal and X-ray
- Effects: Blur, Mosaic, Light Tunnel, Tweezers and Fat
- Masks: 8mm, Cork Board, Bricks and White Border
- Recording speeds: Normal and Fas
- Store 3 of your favorite combos
A deviceice with high processing power is required to function properly for some filters and effects, such as Blur.
Some phones don’t support all audio qualities set by the app, so you can change the quality of the recording in Settings. To switch between the front and back camera during a video recording, you must select the same resolution on both cameras.
5. Camera JB+ for Android
Camera JB+ is a paid app (it costs around $2.00) for Android that has many features to make your videos more interesting, it has several effects and filters that can be applied to your videos.
The app was developed based on Android Jelly Bean 4.0.3 of 2012, so it works with older models of Android phones and also with the latest models.
Camera JB+ supports 4K recording, so if your phone records in 4K, you can use the app functionality for it.
Here are some features of Camera JB+:
- 3 camera modes: video recorder, photo and panorama
- Ultra HD 4K video recording (for Samsung S5 / S6 – Note ¾)
- Quiet mode (no shutter sound, may not work on some devices)
- Live FX photos: 12 effects (Android 4.1+ only)
- Press to enlarge
- Configurable volume keys
- Wide screen images
- Image quality settings (Low / Medium / High (HD) / Ultra HD 4K)
- Configurable storage source (internal memory / SD card)
- Countdown timer
- Burst mode
- Full brightness option
- Video / audio quality setting
- Precise display configuration
- Immersive mode / Hide virtual buttons (Android 4.4 or above)
6. SloPro for iOS
SloPro is an app for iOS that allows you to shoot Slow Motion and Fast Motion videos (the scenes of the video become slower or faster). The app is free and it offers in-app purchases.
You can shoot right from the app or choose a video from your phone’s gallery to add the Slow Motion or Fast Motion effect.
With SloPro, you can choose what speed you want to add to different parts of a video. If you don’t like the result of the applied speed, it can be modified. After you’re finished customizing the Slow/Fast Motion effects, you can export the resulting video to your phone’s gallery.
Conclusion
Great! Now you know 6 apps to improve your phone’s video camera and get more professional results from it, but also add cool effects to your phone videos, such as slow motion and time-lapsing. So you can choose your favorite app to record better videos with your smartphone!
You can also share your thoughts in the comments below!
