There’s no denying that your smartphone’s camera is getting better and better for every generation, but what’s a poor photography nerd to do about controllability? Miggo’s Kickstarter-funded Pictar is shipping soon, and might be just the thing to teach your iPhone some additional photography skills. At Photokina, I had a chance to try it myself.
“Smartphones have great cameras,” says Sean Henry, the photography industry veteran who brought Pictar to life. “But for advanced users, the functions are either hidden or hard to get to.”
Pictar is a fantastically clever solution to that precise problem. It adds a grip with a shutter button and three control wheels to the iPhone. One of the wheels controls the zoom, one is programmable to a number of different functions, and the last is an exposure compensation wheel. The shutter button includes focus / exposure lock on a half-press much like you would find on traditional cameras. And, of course, it takes a photo when you depress the button fully.

Pictar is one of those rare products that I never really knew I needed in my life until I tried it myself. Yes, it seems dumb and it is so easy to write it off as a gimmick… But you’d be wrong to do that until you’ve tried it. I’ve certainly never felt I needed a real shutter button on my phone. Having said that, the feeling of relief of being able to make adjustments by turning wheels rather than having to do complicated multi-touch or touch-and-hold maneuvers is strong. As a photographer, the product makes the iPhone feel like a much more capable piece of photographic kit, which is a remarkable accomplishment by Miggo.
All of that isn’t to say that the product is completely perfect; the button-press for the shutter button felt a bit stiff compared to what you find even on an entry-level compact camera, and it’s hard to know by feel whether or not you’ve succeeded in doing a half-press. The turn wheels also felt a bit cheap — cheaper than its $120 price tag would indicate. If there’s ever a second version of it, I hope the manufacturers either drop the price or increase the feel of the product to be more in line with the phones it is designed to contain.
“We are shipping in December,” Henry confirms. “If you want one as soon as possible, pre-order sooner rather than later!”
