Pro Camera - Reeflex

There’s nowhere on their website to leave reviews (how convenient) so I guess I have to do it here. The lens I ordered showed up with two scratches on the surface. Website return policy says they don’t take returns or exchanges if the lens is “used”. Well how is someone supposed to know if there’s an issue without taking the lens out of the box and looking at it or using it?? When I ordered the lens it was over $300 USD. I’m fine with this because it does take amazing photos and I like the product aside from the defects. However I started getting spammed with emails from FedEx about having to pay a $50 duty/tax fee? There was absolutely nothing to indicate that there would be extra import fees when ordering the lens. If there had been I would’ve waited a little bit before ordering. Very scummy. Finally as for reviewing this actual app, it’s awful. Using Final Cut Camera with the lens = amazing video results. Using it with this app, something is broken. The lighting in the photos always looks terrible and it washes all the colors out. I’ve been trying to take photos of brilliant fall foliage in southern Appalachia and all this app has been making the trees look gray and lifeless. It doesn’t capture the color of anything that’s in front of you. Very strange. Need to find a different app to use.

TL;DR: Not as pretty as ProCamera and not as simple yet flexible as Halide, but a darn good fit right between the two. The low purchase price is a one-off and makes ReeFlex an incredible value. I’ve been using ProCamera since 2014, and Halide for almost a year. I was always intimidated by ProCamera’s multitude of settings and never felt like I was getting the most out of the app. I often reverted to the native iOS Camera app just for ease of use. Then I found Halide as part of a re-kindling of my photographic ambitions, and a new iPhone that could take advantage of it. Halide at first seemed like a perfect solution for me, until it wasn’t. Meanwhile, ProCamera revamped its UI, the settings seemed less daunting, and I started using it a lot more. Then, through a series of happy accidents, I found ReeFlex (and ReeXpose). ReeFlex is simple and flexible, and has an intuitive and pleasing UI. The image quality for RAW and ProRAW is on a par with ProCamera, and, I think, just a touch better than Halide. Plus, there is no subscription to commit to, no in-app purchases to make, and a really reasonable purchase price. I figure ReeFlex makes their money off of their lenses (which I don’t need at this time), so they can offer their app at a significant discount. I don’t really fuss about that because the app is so useful and effective.

I like this camera app. I’ve been using it for over a month. There a lot of features to play with. It has the capability of shooting like a DSLR. The focus peaking, zebra stripes and histogram are helpful when capturing images. However, I do find that images that I thought were in focus, sometimes aren’t, even when using the focus peaking feature. I also find that the images sometimes are either too dark or blown out even though they look fine on the screen. Also, sometimes the images aren’t as crisp as the native camera app either. They tend to have a softer appearance. It doesn’t seem to take macro photos like the native camera app. You could, if you had an external lens kit. I’m going to continue to use this app to see if I can get it to work better for me. I would love for this to be my go to app for photography. I think there’s potential for this app to keep improving and adding options, like video taking and an external shutter button support. I was assured the external shutter button support was coming when I reached out to the reeflex team.