Kiwi app review: Photo Tutor Modules 1 & 2

Photo Tutor Module2

Photography has become a realistic hobby for all of us in recent years with the price of good DSLR cameras dropping every few months. Recognising the lack of a good and cheap tutorial on how to use these cameras, theDesign have created two apps to guide you through what your camera can do. Are you ready to venture away from the Auto mode of your camera? Read on if you are!

Module 1

The digital age has opened up a whole new world for people who used to be afraid of photography due to the expense of mistakes and the inability to instantly review their work. Nowadays if the shot isn’t right we just delete and try again. Recent years have seen Canon, Nikon, Sony and others make DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) photography a relatively inexpensive hobby with immediate effects.

Many people over the last few years have bought a DSLR without understanding the settings and the photographic opportunities that await them. Photography books and courses to show you how to use your camera can be expensive and instruction manuals can be, well, instruction manuals.

Thankfully, the clever people at theDesign in Wellington have come up with two apps. Under the seller iSlap101.com they have launched Photo Tutor Module 1 and Photo Tutor Module 2. Costing a total of $3.80 they will guide you through the two main functions of your DSLR – Aperture and Shutter Speed.

Photo Tutor - Home screen

Both apps work in exactly the same way. The home screen gives you two sides; one has lessons and the other has recipes. You can work through the lessons in order or jump straight to one of them if you are after a certain effect. Within each lesson you can adjust the aperture or shutter speed by dragging a bar up or down, just as you would on your camera, and see the immediate effect to the photo.

Great care has been taken in designing this app with approximately ten pictures of the same scene taken at the different settings to give you an instant idea of what effect changing the settings will have. See the pictures below for an example of how you can instantly change the picture. This is a wonderful tool to have at your disposal; imagine being out and seeing a photo but not being sure what depth of field you need or what the correct shutter speed should be. With this app, you can simply whip out your iPhone or iPod touch, identify a similar scene and find the setting that creates the effect you want for your photo, adjust your camera correspondingly and shoot. Brilliant.

The lessons build on each other and each has an info button for extra tuition and even poses some questions to challenge the user further and encourage them to think creatively about their photography. The lesson section is good and if you are scared to change from the automatic mode of your camera they will guide you nicely through the effects of aperture and shutter speed and build your confidence.

Photo Tutor - Lesson Picture 1

Photo Tutor - Lesson Picture 1a

The other half of the app has recipes. Here you are presented with a catalogue of professional photographs. Each image has a recipe button on the screen explaining how the picture was taken, what aperture/shutter speed was used and even angles, lighting and framing advice. One such recipe even tells you whether birds like the beep of the auto-focus! The recipes cover a variety of shots including wildlife, scenery, portraiture and sport. They will become an integral part of your photography as a quick look at one of the pictures and its settings allows you to set your camera and shoot away with spectacular results.

Photo Tutor - Recipe example

Both my partner and I have been using a DSLR for a few years now and enjoy photography as a hobby. We have spent time with both of these apps and, even though we both like to think we know our way round our camera, we have learnt from the apps and have already used them to try and capture new pictures. Creativity of photography is vividly explored and encouraged here in an interactive and simple way that is so effective.

So what of the future?

Well it would be great to see further apps in this series as photography can be an endless learning curve and an app as well designed as this can only help. The use of ISO and exposure are mentioned but not fully explored in these tutorials and would make an excellent third module in the series. The addition of these areas would give a complete basic teaching app in digital photography for around $5 that would represent incredible value.

If you have a DSLR, or are thinking about getting one, then get this app. You won’t be disappointed in what you get for your money. Now I just need to buy that iPad to show off these pictures….

– Photo Tutor Module 1

– Photo Tutor Module 2

Have you used the app? Let us know your thoughts.