Hydra › Pro Camera, RAW + AI

Unless you have photography as a hobby / job etc., I would not recommend this app. I have an iPhone 13 pro — I got the 13 pro because I liked the idea of being able to take really high quality photos with my phone. I am by no means even an entry level photographer / have 0 photography background. I am an outdoorsman, among other things & wanted the convenience of taking nice photos with my phone, but am unlikely to buy a ‘nice’ camera outside of whatever my phone can do. I downloaded this app on a whim specifically to take some off road shots of my vehicle, & felt like the standard camera app had been lackluster recently. Needless to say, the app is going to get my $11 bc I took a bunch of photos with it, & did not realize they had a huge water mark on them, if you only have the free version. All of that being said, unless you have a photography background this app has a lot of features that a ‘rookie’ would not be aware of (ie., myself) — hence, I only see this app being worth the money if you ~really~ know what you’re doing, then I’m sure it could be useful. Overall it is not an ‘intuitive’ learn as you go type camera, & that’s my opinion as a ‘gen Z college student’.

This review is based on using the app on a 13 pro Max. This app has some very nice features. I love the Hi-Res mode. Beside the obvious processing to get to the resolution, photos do not look as over processed as it may happen in native app. One little are of improvement would be low-light. I have encountered a few cases where the low-light (equivalent to night mode as far as I can tell) would not capture a photo while the native night move would in similar conditions. I am not sure if this has to do with low light conditions as it was in every case involving extremely dark scenes. I like the simplicity of the macro mode compared to native app. Just pick the mode. Great! No wondering whether it’s “on” or not. One of my favorite feature is the ability to save in .dng I can now skip the so-so camera app in Lightroom, use this superior app instead and still have my DNGs in Lightroom. I do recommend this app.

Longtime user of original. While I appreciate power features there was a flow state in original letting one focus on capturing great moments. The update loses some of that and is a little jittery. That is taking a picture goes to editor but had to learn how best to get to other controls. Also the image seems to tile in inconsistently. Do like having control of amount of compression. Taking a photo in hdr seems faster but then spends more time processing. Finally I consistently crash in zoom and sometimes macro. Happy to revise rating when issues are resolved. Til then will continue using legacy version for expediency. Also sad to lose hdr video.