We're really excited about this week's Meet The Developers (well let's be honest...we've been excited about all of them...) but this week is particularly great as we simply love the ProCamera app! It's by far one of the most used on the TBL iPhones, so we were pleased as punch when Jens Daemgen took the time to answer our questions about the app itself and the team of developers behind this awesome camera replacement!

<h4>How would you describe <a href="http://daemgen.net/" target="_blank">Daemgen.net</a> as a company, and what apps do you offer? </h4>

Daemgen.net is a startup that's about to become grown-up. It all started with ProCamera, which was our first big app. It was first submitted to the App Store in December 2008. At this time the App Store was a little more "difficult" than it has become today. At the time of iOS 2.x there was no camera API at all. It was only possible to make a camera app by modifying SDK components with a technique called Runtime-Reflection and working with very high-level code. Apple did not forbid this technique since I didn't make use of any private APIs, which would have been forbidden. It took three months of approval time, but finally it was released on the App Store.

[imageeffect type="frame" align="aligncenter" width="321" height="482"  alt="ProCamera" url="http://thebeginnerslens.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ProCamera1.jpg"  ]<p>&nbsp;</p>

Ali, a good friend of mine, who is a Mac-"Pro" for as long as I have known him, started helping out with Marketing and building up the product after the first success in Switzerland. One of the biggest challenges was the time when iOS 3.0 was introduced. With that release Apple officially forbid modifying the camera components and thereby had forbidden third party camera apps. Confusingly, some new camera apps were still released on the App Store. But all our updates for iOS 3 were rejected in a row because we supposedly were using private APIs. All mails to Apple stayed unanswered. We joined in with a group of more than 20 camera app developers and wrote a petition to Apple pleading for a camera API and to allow our camera apps again to save our businesses.

Luckily Apple had an open ear for us and realized the necessity for an official camera API which was then introduced with iOS 3.1 ...    
    
To make a long story short - today we are a team of 5 people on the core-team plus a professional photographer and several freelancers. Recently, we invested lots of resources and energy in "business development". We realized that we needed to grow to keep up with the demanding App Store business and to be able to satisfy our customer’s wishes - and also to realize our vision for the future.

Recently a second developer joined the ProCamera project. Soon the third will follow. Within the next few months we will have 5 developers working on ProCamera along with the rest of the team (if enough people buy ProCamera during Christmas time). Most of us work from the same location in Mannheim (Germany) or close by. Some are working remotely, e.g. from other places in Germany and one from Brisbane Australia.    

Besides ProCamera we have our iCademy project. It's about mobile eLearning. Our first public app in this area is a free iPhone user manual and also a user manual for ProCamera. (<a href="www.icademy.eu" target="_blank">www.icademy.eu</a>)

There will also be another app in the area of iPhotography coming out this year. To be announced.

[imageeffect type="frame" align="aligncenter" width="665" height="481"  alt="ProCamera" url="http://thebeginnerslens.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ProCamera2.jpg"  ]<p>&nbsp;</p>

<h4>Can you tell us about your flagship app, Pro Camera, and give us its story: when, how and why it was created? How widespread is it? </h4>

You've got most of the story above...but as for why...I started creating this app because I have loved the iPhone from the first minute I had it in my hands. But honestly, the camera of the first generation iPhone was like "giving you the idea of a camera” rather than actually “giving you a camera”. In good light situations it was producing amazing results, but as soon as it got darker the results were lousy. The Anti-Shake function was the main reason for building a camera app. It just made sense to me that the accelerometer of the iPhone could help finding the best moment for capturing sharper and blur-free photos. (In low light-situations the exposure time is way higher so shaky hands lead even more to blurry photos).

So the first ProCamera had Anti-Shake and you could tap anywhere on the screen to capture an image immediately (even if Anti-Shake was activated). Later we started calling this "big photo button" the "Full-Screen-Trigger". And version 1.0 had a self-timer. I was and am convinced that every camera needs a timer. These features are still at the core of all the functionality the app offers. Especially the option to capture an image immediately at any time - even if the self-timer or anti-shake is active - is still our "sacred cow". It made UI design a bit more challenging, but I think our UI lead designer has done a great job with the camera UI (which, by the way, we are still fine-tuning). To date, we have approximately 400,000 active users around the world.    

<h4>What's your opinion about PhotoAppLink as an opensource project? </h4>
I think PhotoAppLink is a great project! I really like the idea. We are currently evaluating the best way of integrating it in ProCamera.

[imageeffect type="frame" align="aligncenter" width="665" height="481"  alt="ProCamera" url="http://thebeginnerslens.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/ProCamera3.jpg"  ]<p>&nbsp;</p>

<h4>What improvements will you be making to the app in the next update? </h4>

The next update will improve some aspects of the UI. The following updates will bring some bigger new features along with further fine-tuning. Early 2012 we will start focusing on improving the studios for post processing. 

Sadly, we also need to invest some time and resources in finding a way to deal with app piracy. Especially in China, we have approximately 80-90% users that use a cracked version. We feel honored that so many people like and use ProCamera, but customers that pay for our product also help us to develop it further. We think it would be more fair to our paying customers if our "cracked-app" users would get on board and support us to make this app even better. Wouldn't that be better for everyone?