I remember when Ben first showed me the Control Wheel at Stumptown during my December trip to NYC, just days before he moved back to Dublin. He demonstrated it with pride, even when it was a proof of concept without the rich functionality and haptic feedback it has today. It was clear he was on to something.
I’ve been on the beta for quite some time, but I didn’t truly put Obscura 2 through its paces until I went on vacation the past 2 weeks. After vacation, I wish I had put Obscura on my home screen sooner.
Designed for one hand use, the Control Wheel is a natural way to interact with your iPhone’s camera controls. I love the haptic feedback, making you feel each refinement towards a perfect shot. Obscura also remembers your settings between sessions. I shot a lot with the telephoto lens on vacation and liked that it was still on it when I would reopen. You have to check out the animations between the different grid modes. Superb.
Obscura also makes it easy to take RAWs. I really don’t know what I am doing when editing them after the fact, but this phone has 256 gigs of storage so heres to having the data later on just in case.
The photo library viewer is organized in reverse chronological order and displayed by a swipe down on the viewfinder. I like how I can swipe up in the viewfinder to see my albums, including the automatically generated Obscura album. Tapping on a thumbnail shows you the full sized image along with all the metadata you’d ever want. From there you can apply one of 19 beautiful filters. There are 16 more available; 15 through in app purchase and 1 through sharing the app.
Future app development and features are already under development and I can’t wait to try them out. Experience the joy of capturing photos with Obscura 2 for 4.99.
Here are some sample shots from Canada.
It’s a brilliant app. I liked Obscura before, but the new interface is almost magical.