i4software Fast Camera (for Windows Phone)

• Pros

  Burst-mode shooting. Manual-shooting mode with exposure slider. Time-lapse and stop-motion capabilities. Focus and exposure lock.

• Cons No video features. Not very intuitive. Few shooting helpers aside from continuous and manual modes.
• Bottom Line

  For less than a greenback, the i4software Fast Camera photo app gives you continuous and manual shooting modes on a Windows Phone, but its powers are limited compared with those of some competitors.

By Michael Muchmore

Windows Phones have some of the best cameras available on any smartphone, but one problem with them is the time it takes to shoot pictures. Fast Camera (99 cents) from i4software is intended to change all that. It not only lets you shoot in continuous and burst modes, but it also includes tools for time lapse, stop-motion, stealth shooting, and locking both focus and exposure. Let's take the photo app out for a spin and see whether it lives up to all this promise.

Getting Going with Fast Camera
You get Fast Camera from the Windows Phone Store. It requires access to your location for installation, although this information is not personally identifiable, according to the app's privacy statement. It's a very small 2MB download, so it won't burden your phone's storage. No signup or account it required to start using the app. I installed the app on an HTC One (M8) for Windows.

Start Shooting
When you first run Fast Camera, there's no splash screen or welcome screen. Instead, you start right out in shooting mode. The whole screen is your viewfinder, and instead of a shutter button there's a Start button with a camera icon on it. Press the button to start shooting. Press it again when you're done. You'll then see a Review button that lets you choose which of the shots you want to keep, and which to delete.

The gear button on the shooting screen offers plenty of settings, including resolution for both front and back cameras. You can also enable manual controls (with the default Windows Phone camera app, these settings are only adjustable through menus), set a timer, and enable time stamp. The OneShot app, however, offers even more adjustments during shooting, along with effect filters.

Shooting mode choices include Continuous, Burst, and four manual options for shooting 1, 5, 10, and 25 shots. With Burst, you hold your finger on the shutter button instead of using the default Start and Stop button as you do in Continuous shooting mode. One very nice option in the settings menu is the short user guide, since not all of the camera app's functions are intuitive, including things like triple-tapping the screen to call up controls.

When you enable Manual mode, you see a very cool couple of screen items—an exposure slider, and a focus/white balance lock, which you can drag around the screen. Unfortunately, Fast Camera doesn't do video at all, so you can't take advantage of these controls in moving pictures. Nor are there any filters, and it lacks some cool shooting options found in other apps, such as voice-activated shooting (available in OneShot), full-screen shutter functionality, and live filters.

Getting Stealthy
Sometimes you want to snap a picture without being obvious about it. For those times, there's Fast Camera's stealth shooting feature. You can only use this if you're in Continuous shooting mode. But there are a couple of problems in with Fast Camera's stealth shooting. It doesn't silence the shutter sound automatically, and it requires you to start shooting with the screen on just as with standard shooting. Only after you start continuous shooting does the screen go blank. You stop shooting by tapping the dark screen. For more effective stealth shooting, check out the single-purpose Stealth Camera app.

Saving and Sharing
Hitting Save in Review mode gives you the option to not only save photos, but also create a video slideshow using the selected images. The obligatory Share option lets you send the images right up to Facebook, email, and any other app capable of receiving pictures, such as Fhotoroom or PicsArt.

Do You Need This Fast Camera?
Since the default Windows Phone camera app already has a burst mode that lets you choose the best of a series of images quickly shot together, that capability in Fast Camera isn't enough to justify its steep price of nearly a dollar. And Lumia users will be better served by the excellent Lumia Camera app. What does make Fast Camera worth consideration are its manual mode with adjustable exposure and focus/white-balance locking. Before I can award the app a high score, however, it needs more shooting options and helpers.