Appologic's Videography app turns iPhone into a motion-tracking video camera
With help from Motrr's Galileo 360-robotic spinning platform for iPhone/iPod, the app tracks your movements so you're always on camera.
- More than two decades experience writing about PCs and accessories, and 15 years writing about cameras of all kinds.
Few iPhone accessories -- if any -- extend the usefulness of the device's camera like Motrr's Galileo. But much of the credit for that belongs to the multiple apps developed for it, such as Appologic's new Videography app.
On its own, the $3.99 app gives you the capability to live stream 1080p video and audio to a browser on another device on the same Wi-Fi network. You can also, among other things, remotely control all camera functions such adjusting focus and exposure, turning on the video light/flash, or using the app's 16x digital zoom. And that's where the Galileo comes in.
When the app is paired with the compact motorized rotating base, you can remotely control it and the camera, letting you continuously pan, tilt, and rotate them 360 degrees.
Add to that the app's advanced face, motion, and color-tracking capabilities and you have a camera that will follow you or your subject almost anywhere, and keep them centered.
I briefly tested the Videography app with the Motrr Galileo and the performance was on par with what you see in the demo video below.
If you or your subject are close to the camera and moving quickly, the base can't keep up. Slow movement like keeping track of someone giving a presentation is no problem, and the farther you are from the camera, the easier it is for the camera to keep you centered, or at the very least in frame until it can center you.