Comparison

Camera1 vs Technical Camera

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Camera1

This app offers a dedicated manual camera experience for black and white photography. It provides full creative control over contrast and exposure in real-time, allowing users to develop their vision before capturing the shot. Users can also manually adjust focus and exposure for professional-quality monochrome images.

Highlights
  • Black and white photography only
  • Manual focus and exposure control
  • Real-time contrast and exposure adjustments
  • Live histogram and over-exposure warning
  • Support for RAW, ProRAW, TIFF, and JPEG formats
  • Zen mode for distraction-free shooting
  • Multiple crop formats and grid views
Read full description

Camera1 is the dedicated Black & White manual camera for iPhone. No colour, no compromise — just pure monochrome photography with full creative control. DEVELOP YOUR CREATIVITY Learn to "see" in Black & White through Camera1 unique simultaneous contrast and exposure adjustments. Explore the infinite black and white image possibilities in real-time, such as high-key/low-key right in the viewfinder, before taking the shot. Use the Zen mode to focus all your creative attention on the picture, and not the camera or technique. TAKE CONTROL Take control of the camera, with manual overrides of exposure and focus. Super easy access to focus lock using the manual focusing slider, for ultra-fast shooting - as the camera won’t need to re-focus between shots. PROFESSIONAL OUTPUT Camera1 takes full advantage of your camera hardware and saves in a variety of different file formats, including JPEG, TIFF, RAW & ProRAW / DNG, allowing for maximum editing flexibility in applications like Photoshop and Lightroom later in your workflow. Advanced iOS image processing such as Deep Fusion and Smart HDR is used on supported devices. Live histograms, flash, grid views and a range of manual controls allow you to get the perfect shot, every time. Features • Black & white photography only: commit to Black and White at shooting time. • High-quality image processing engine. Take full advantage of your device camera hardware. • Manual focus (with magnification of the center focusing area), focus lock, spot focus, auto-focus • Manual exposure compensation, or use Auto exposure • Live histogram, when adjusting exposure, optional over-exposure warning indicator (zebras) • 6 contrast/color filters for Black & White: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, infrared (simulated) • Manual contrast control • High-resolution capture (48MP) (*) • Support for multi-lens devices - standard, telephoto and ultra wide-angle (*) • ProRAW, RAW, JPEG, HEIC, TIFF file formats. DNG files contain colour information, allowing later editing. A full-resolution JPEG, processed to Black and White by Camera1 is saved alongside the DNG file, to the camera roll • Support for iOS Deep Fusion and Smart HDR (*) • Tap on the picture to take the shot • 5 crop formats: 3:2, 4:3 (native), 1:1, 16:9, 2.35:1 (panorama) • Zen mode: all controls disappear, leaving only the viewfinder on the screen for the ultimate picture-taking experience • 3 flash modes: On, Off, Torch • 2 framing grid types: Rule of Thirds and Golden Triangles • Live view of all controls above • iOS Widget - quickly launch the app from your lock or home screen • Camera Control: use hardware camera control to launch Camera1, or to take shots (iPhone 16 Pro & Pro Max) • Black and White camera roll, image viewer at full resolution "The most brilliant Camera App in recent years" -- Keisuke Takahashi "I like the results-a bit like film (Tri-X) with a slight grain pattern. Lots of latitude" -- Eric Mencher @emencher Don't forget to tag your pictures with #camera1app ! Privacy-first • Camera1 does not embed any tracking / third-party SDKs (*) Compatibility Notes Camera1 features depend on the capabilities of your iOS device: • High-resolution (48MP) capture: iPhone 14 Pro and later Pro models • ProRAW capture: iPhone 12 Pro and later Pro models • RAW capture: iPhone 6S and later, iPad Pro • Smart HDR & Deep Fusion: iPhone 11 and later • Multi-lens support (standard, telephoto, ultra wide): devices with multiple rear cameras • Ultra Wide lens may not support RAW or manual focus/exposure on some devices

About

Technical Camera

This app offers advanced controls for still photography, allowing users to customize image quality, color space, and geotagging per album. It features unique tools like a framing preview, highlight/shadow alerts, and manual exposure settings for precise image capture.

Highlights
  • Album-specific image quality and settings
  • Selectable image sizes including RAW
  • Framing Previsor for telephoto simulation
  • Highlight and shadow alerts
  • Manual ISO, shutter speed, and focus
  • Color managed capture to display
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The ultimate still photo app for the conscious image maker - works equally well for serious photography as for organized visual note taking. With a handful of unique features you'll not find anywhere else. Photos are saved to individual albums created with a specific purpose in mind. Such as different photo shoots or projects, visual shopping lists, recipes from the grandmother's cookbook, things for sale, monthly gas and electricity meter readings - the list is endless. These uses need different image qualities and sizes (you'll seldom make a large print of a meter reading, for example), so the app has: • Album specific image quality, color space (wide color capable devices only) and geotagging settings. • Selectable image quality with full, half, quarter, high color fidelity quarter HQ sizes and a super tiny 0.48 megapixel 800x600 JPG, as well as RAW and RAW+JPG on devices supporting RAW capture. The 800x600 JPG is up to 20 times smaller than a regular JPG, making it extremely gentle with your mobile plan's data allowance. • Color space can be set to Display P3, Adobe RGB or sRGB for JPG files and Adobe RGB or sRGB for RAW previews. • Home screen Quick Actions for selecting the last recently used three albums. Unique features include: • Framing Previsor for showing on the wide angle camera's image what the telephoto camera would see.* Also works with wide converters. • Highlight and shadow alerts. • Protective exposure metering. • Auto ISO with minimum, maximum and minimum shutter speed settings. • Real time distortion correction for wide angle converters via correction profiles, as well as a custom converter for other lenses.* • Selectable screen frame rate to balance between fluid experience and power saving, and to avoid flicker with lighting running on 50Hz mains frequency. • TIFF/EP compliant DNG files with support for wide color and full resolution embedded previews. * Utilizes the time-tested precise simulation and distortion correction engines of our Mark II Artist's Viewfinder app. Other notable features: • Manual control for ISO and shutter speed in 1/3 stop increments. • Manual focus with focus peaking. Selectable peaking color. • Exposure compensation up to +/-5 stops. • Exposure and focus lock. • Continuous and single AF modes. • Grid display with 2x2, 3x3 and 8x6 choices. • Luminance only Black & White mode. • Artist and copyright metadata. The copyright template supports tokens for the current year (so it's always up-to-date), artist name and the copyright symbol. • Four user-assignable Smart Function Keys to bring most-used functions to a single tap distance, with 7 functions to choose from. • Completely neutral viewing to avoid interfering with your color vision during composition. • Fully color managed, from capture to display, including color-correct display of wide color RAW images. Technical Camera only supports the back camera(s) in still photography mode. No videos or selfies. No fancy filters. The Framing Previsor requires a dual-camera device or a wide converter lens. The complete list of supported wide converter lenses can be found on the Tech Specs page: https://www.direstudio.com/technical-camera/tech-specs/ For more information we recommend to check out our Technical Camera How To's: https://www.direstudio.com/technical-camera/how-tos/

Screenshots

Camera14 screens
Technical Camera4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Camera1 at $4.99 against Technical Camera's $19.99. Camera1 also leads on ratings volume (128 vs 17). Technical Camera's advantage is review sentiment (100% vs 77%) and rating (4.9 vs 4.7). On update cadence, ads, in-app purchases and monetization model there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Camera1 costs $4.99 and Technical Camera $19.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Technical Camera holds the better App Store score, 4.9 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Camera1 has 128 ratings behind it against 17, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 77% of Camera1's written reviews are positive against 100% of Technical Camera's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Both ship on a similar rhythm, roughly every 4 months. Both last shipped on October 20, 2026.

Scorecard4 real differences · 6 level
Camera1 versus Technical Camera: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterCamera1Technical Camera
Price$4.99 — better$19.99
Rating4.7 (128 ratings)4.9 (17 ratings) — better
Positive reviews76.6% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings128 — better17
Update frequencyEvery 4 monthsEvery 4 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidPaid
DevicesiPhone, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod — better
Requires iOS15.0 — better15.6
Further details — not scored
Size27 MB4 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperSebastien ArdonDIRE Studio

Customer experience

Camera1

All ratings128 ratings
Positive91.4%
Neutral3.9%
Negative4.7%
Written reviews64 reviews
Positive76.6%
Neutral6.3%
Negative17.2%

Technical Camera

All ratings17 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews7 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

Camera1

No in-app purchases

None

Technical Camera

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Camera1 free?
Camera1 costs $4.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Technical Camera free?
Technical Camera costs $19.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Camera1 or Technical Camera?
Technical Camera is rated higher. Camera1 averages 4.7 out of 5 from 128 ratings, while Technical Camera averages 4.9 from 17 ratings.
Do Camera1 or Technical Camera have ads?
Neither Camera1 nor Technical Camera shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Camera1 or Technical Camera?
Camera1 ships an update every 4 months, and Technical Camera every 4 months. Most recently, Camera1 was updated on October 20, 2026 and Technical Camera on October 20, 2026.

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