Wide Conversion Lens vs Ancient Light
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Wide Conversion Lens
Apply a wide-angle lens effect to your videos and photos, adjusting the distortion to your liking. You can capture new content with your device's camera or edit existing media from your camera roll. The app allows for touch-based control of the distortion center and offers various output and sharing options.
- Wide-angle effect adjustment
- Touch to change distortion center
- Camera shooting (video/photo)
- Load from Camera Roll
- Aspect ratio setting
- Save and share media
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It is an app that can edit videos and photos as if shot with a wide-conversion lens camera. The size of the wide-angle effect is adjustable. It supports not only videos and photos stored on your smartphone, but also cameras. [Material] - Camera shooting: video, photo - Camera Roll: Load video and photos [Settings] - Wide-angle effect setting - Aspect ratio setting - Storage resolution: 20 to 100% of the original resolution [Touch operation] Touch on the screen image to change the center position for wide angle. The further away from the center of the image, the greater the image distortion. [Output] - Save to Camera Roll: Video, Photo - Video and photo sharing: AirDrop, LINE, Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, ... [Note] It just makes it look as if it was shot with a wide-angle lens. For example, shooting a tall building from a short distance cannot be used in the same way as a real wide-angle lens.
Ancient Light
This app transforms your iPhone into a 19th-century camera, simulating twelve authentic historic photographic processes. Apply these unique effects to new photos or import existing ones from your library.
- Simulates 12 historic photographic processes
- Apply effects to new or imported photos
- Supports ultrawide, wide, 2x, and telephoto lenses
- Save multiple historic versions of a photo
- ProRAW DNG output on iPhone Pro
- Customizable effects for Daguerreotype and Tintype
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Ancient Light transforms your iPhone into a camera of the nineteenth century. Take a new photograph or import a favourite from your photo library. Twelve authentic historic photographic processes - each faithfully simulated through the physics of tone, silver chemistry, grain, paper, emulsion, and light. Not filters. Processes. -- THE TWELVE PROCESSES -- Daguerreotype (1839) - The first successful photograph. A mirror-like silver surface with luminous shadow detail and seven scanned frame choices, plus No Frame. Tintype (1853) - The photograph of the working class. Robust, immediate, metallic, with regular or square format options and optional worn plate borders. Albumen (1850s) - Warm egg-white paper prints mounted as cabinet cards, with soft sepia-brown toning, aged cream stock, rounded corners, and a ruled inner border. Sepia - The warm brown tone of silver sulphide that preserved Victorian portraits through a century and a half. Cyanotype (1842) - Sir John Herschel's iron-based process. Deep Prussian blue. The print that gave photography the word "blueprint." Anthotype (1839) - Made from crushed plant pigments. Delicate, fugitive, botanical. The most poetic photographic process ever devised. Platinum (1873) - The process of fine art portraiture. Cool, shadow-rich, with a tonal range silver could never match. Autochrome (1907) - The Lumiere brothers' starch-grain colour process. Dreamy, pointillist, the first practical colour photography. Emulsion - A damaged instant-emulsion look with faded color, warm highlights, scorched edges, amber leaks, scratches, and oxidized surface wear. Bromoil (1907) - Oil-based ink on bleached gelatin. Painterly and stippled, with inky shadows and pale milky highlights. Lippmann (1891) - Gabriel Lippmann's Nobel Prize-winning interferential process. Warm amber ageing, long-exposure softness, and glass plate scratches from a century of handling. Infrared (1930s) - Light beyond the visible spectrum. Luminous white foliage, darkened skies, ethereal skin tones. The spectral world captured on heat-sensitive emulsion. -- WHAT ANCIENT LIGHT CAN DO -- * Import your own photos - apply historic processes to images from your photo library, even with camera access disabled * All four optical lenses - ultrawide (0.5x), wide (1x), 2x, and telephoto (5x) - selectable from the viewfinder * One photo, many processes - explore and save multiple historic versions of a captured or imported photo * On iPhone Pro: saves both a filtered JPEG and the original 48MP ProRAW DNG as a paired asset * Emulsion process with faded instant-film color, warmer highlights, lighter grain, and scanned edge damage * Albumen cabinet-card output with warm paper tone, aged stock texture, rounded card corners, and ruled border * Infrared process with glowing foliage, dark skies, and spectral black-and-white tonality * Tintype options - choose regular or square format, with period borders or no borders * Seven Daguerreotype frame styles plus No Frame, selectable directly from the viewfinder * Adjustments apply to the photograph while preserving Daguerreotype frame artwork * Full adjustment suite - exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, black point, saturation, vibrance, warmth, sharpness, and vignette * Auto enhancement with one tap * Precision crop tool with inset handles and rule-of-thirds grid * Landscape side-panel layout keeps the image large while all controls stay accessible * Photographer credit field - your name travels with every saved file in the IPTC metadata * Process, frame, and Tintype options stored between sessions * iPhone and iPad, all orientations * No subscription. No ads. No account required. Ancient Light is a single purchase. Everything in it is yours.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is rating: Ancient Light at 2.5 against Wide Conversion Lens's 1.0. Ancient Light also leads on review sentiment (50% vs 17%) and update cadence (weekly vs every 2 months). Wide Conversion Lens's advantage is iOS requirement (13.0 vs 16.0). On ratings volume, 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
Wide Conversion Lens costs $1.99 and Ancient Light $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Ancient Light holds the better App Store score, 2.5 against 1.0. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 2 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 17% of Wide Conversion Lens's written reviews are positive against 50% of Ancient Light's.
Wide Conversion Lens ships an update every 2 months, Ancient Light weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 28, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Wide Conversion Lens | Ancient Light |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 | $0.99 — better |
| Rating | 1.0 (1 ratings) | 2.5 (2 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 16.7% of reviews | 50.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 2 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 2 months | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 — better | 16.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 3 MB | 6 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Masanori Katsuta | Greg Anderson |
Customer experience
Wide Conversion Lens
Ancient Light
In-app purchases
Wide Conversion Lens
No in-app purchases
Ancient Light
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Wide Conversion Lens free?
Is Ancient Light free?
Which has better reviews, Wide Conversion Lens or Ancient Light?
Do Wide Conversion Lens or Ancient Light have ads?
Which is updated more often, Wide Conversion Lens or Ancient Light?
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