It may come as a shock to some people, the fact that I am pumping up the tyres of the iPhone camera, given my previous rants and raves on other parts of the interwebs. But rest assured, this isn’t a flip flop that Mayor Quimby  would be proud of. To me, the iPhone is the single best gadget I have ever owned. I love the gadget part of it. What it can’t do, with the help of the gazillion apps out there for it, is limited only by your imagination. But, as a mobile (cell for our US and other over seas visitors) phone, it is bloody terrible. I wont go into that here, as I have said previously, I have had many a tanty in other forums.

Onto the fun part. The camera and the amazing apps. At 3 megapixels, you aren’t going to be able to make a poster sized print out of the shots you take, but anything up to A4 will look pretty damned good. The selective auto focus is a great addition on the 3GS. But, what really makes it shine are all the apps at the iTunes App store. And there is a metric bucket load of them. Here are a few that I recommend.

Photoshop.com Mobile (Free) – Photoshop on the iPhone. It is pretty basic, but can get you out of trouble if you need to tweak exposure, saturation, contrast and many others. It also has a handy crop tool. A really great free app.

Mobile Fotos (A$5.99) – If you use Flickr and have an iPhone, this is virtually a must have. It will let you upload a photo, Geotag it, add it to groups and sets and loads more. Really worth the cost.

Gorillacam (Free) – This one is like the Swiss Army knife of camera apps. Bought to you by the people who make the Gorillapod flexible tripods.

Morelomo (Free) – If you love the Lomo look, go no further than this little app. Will take a digital imagine out of the iPhone and turn it into something from yesteryear.

Polarize (free) – Another retro type app. As the name suggests, this one turns the digital imagine into a Polaroid picture. Now shake it.

PerfectlyClear (A$3.99) – This one really surprised me. An auto correcting app, it does an amazing job on some of my photos. Sometimes, too amazing. Watch the over sharpening.

TiltShift generator (A$1.19) – No need for a tiltshift lens on the iPhone, this will do it for you. And it does a great job.

And here are but a few examples of what some of these apps can do.

So, if you have an iPhone and enjoy photography, you can certainly make some pretty snazzy images from the little pocket rocket, you just need to add steroids!