My first-ever camera was a Kodak Disc, a pocketbook-size little thing that captured photos on revolutionary disc film. It was easy to use and had slick, futuristic styling similar to the gizmos in my then-favorite movie, Logan’s Run. The problem was it took awful pictures. In fact, they were so bad that by age 11 I quit my dream of being a photographer and began doing what every other quitter throughout history has done: I started writing.

It used to be that quality photographs could only be captured with a good camera and a skilled eye. That’s changed. Most people today take photos with their mobile phones, making lenses, aperture settings, and film stock suddenly irrelevant. In fact, photo-snapping phones have become so automated that you often don’t even need a skilled eye—a 2-year-old can take just as striking a shot as a 40-year-old professional. What you do need, however, is the right app.

For iPhone users, that’s a problem. There are as many camera apps as there are old tubby bearded dudes in Mork suspenders at a comic book convention. (Way too many.) There are apps from photobooth effects to Holgas, interactive sun-direction guides to HDRs, and thousands of other acronym-heavy photographic technologies you’ve never heard of.

So what are the best ones? And can any of these thousands of apps help a hopelessly awful photographer (me) take semi-decent, even good, photographs? After consulting with some iPhone-using photographer friends, I downloaded a boatload of camera apps and snapped away incessantly for a couple of weeks. My photo-nerd friends explained that no one app would have the range to accommodate every environment. I should, rather, gather a collection of apps specialized for a broad range of shots, whether I was in a dark, shadowy jail cell in Tijuana or on the bright rooftop of an office building. And I could do it all for a measly sawbuck and eight bits.

The Plan: $12 Camera Bag Experiment

Camera Genius $0.99
Best at: Stationary shots in light environments
You’d figure the geniuses behind this app could come up with a cooler name. But, luckily for us, they were apparently spending their time honing the easy-to-use 6x digital zoom, time capture, burst mode, anti-shake, and instant share functions that allow direct uploads to Facebook and Twitter. Camera Genius is a one-stop shop. After shooting, it allows you to filter and add special effects to just-snapped photos, like 70’s (which is misspelled) and the much-coveted Grunge, which makes any photo look strung out on heroin in a flannel shirt (but not really). The interface is kind of ugly, but the app works like a charm. One bummer, however, is that when using the great anti-shake function it takes about 4 seconds to snap a shot after activated. That doesn’t sound like a lot until you’re trying to capture a hobo air-guitaring on the hood of a brand-new BMW at an intersection...and find you’re 3 seconds too late.

Pro HDR $1.99
Best at: Stationary shots in the dark
Apparently HDR stands for high-dynamic range, specifically a device that allows a higher range and balance of light and dark fields in its captured photographs. The Pro HDR app does this by automatically taking two images each time you shoot—one saturated in dark fields, the other in light. These two shots are combined into one final photo, often with amazing results. The Pro includes an Auto function, which, like the integrated iPhone camera, does the work for you. But what I like is Pro HDR’s Manual function, which allows users to choose areas of dark and light focus for optimum balance. You can even adjust balance levels in your iPhone’s archived photos and create some inadvertent psychedelic effects. One minus: It can take up to 10 seconds in Auto (longer in Manual) to capture a shot and about 20 seconds to process it, meaning action shots in the dark (while drunk at a bar) are out of the question.

GyroCam $0.99
Best at: Action shots in precarious positions (this is not a sexual reference, perverts)
Most of us won’t need this app, but it costs less than those new annoyingly overpackaged packs of Trident gum. GyroCam uses the iPhone’s built-in gyro/accelerometer to keep the subject of focus right side up, no matter how much you tilt, wave, or invert your phone. That’s right, you can hold your phone 90 degrees to the left and the photo you take will still be oriented at zero degrees. It’s weird. GyroCam also includes a timer, burst, easy-to-use preset zooms, and portrait and landscape settings. Truth be told, anyone who can’t manage to hold a camera right side up to snap a photo probably has bigger problems they should address but, with that, GyroCam still does what it says and does it well.

Filters and Gimmicks

OK, now that you’ve got all the right cameras for clean shots in day, night, and drunken environments, you may want to explore some filters.

Hipstamatic $1.99 (with add ons)
As the 2010 App of the Year, Hipstamatic is probably already owned by most hipsters. For those unhipsters who don’t, here is what you are missing: Basically, the Hipstamatic makes high-resolution mobile photos look low-resolution and analog. It allows you to swap lenses and film to give your shots the appearance of everything from grizzled and shoddy to smoothly blown-out ’70s family photo album shots. You can then order real analog prints right from the camera. Camera Genius and Lo-Mob have very similar effects and a feature to adjust pics with various filters after you take them, allowing for a much broader range of choices. But I guess hipsters don’t like choices, otherwise they wouldn’t all choose to wear the same skinny jeans and Chuck Taylors.

Lo-Mob $1.99
Another hipster photo filter, Lo-Mob allows you to put photos through 39 vintage and experimental filters to create all manner of analog and lo-fi photographic styles. The advantage here is that the easy-to-use capture camera (Lo-Mob defaults to the integrated iPhone camera) allows you to save one photo in various retro-cool effects, including old emulsions, glass contact, and photocards. Again, not essential but fun to fiddle with when sitting in the back of a bus.

Pocketbooth $0.99
Simply, this app mimics a 1950s-era photobooth, allowing you to create photostrips with various effects, frames, and film stocks from antique, black and white, sepia, and color. Uses both the front- and rear-facing cameras to capture self-portraits or friend shots...and does it all easily with often pretty cool results. Nuff said.

Slow Shutter $0.99
Slow Shutter lets you set the shutter speed on your camera phone from 1/15 to 30 seconds, giving photos a dreamy quality like those early 1990s 4AD album covers of bands that, upon listening to 10 years later, really were quite pretentious and awful.

360 Panorama $1.99
This app proves that the future is awesome. 360 Panorama lets you capture 360 views of anything in real-time and then process those views into a high-resolution, emailable landscape photo. Includes various resolution settings and a really fun-to-use space-age interface that looks as though you’re caught in the freaking Matrix (sans Keanu). And who wouldn’t want that?

Check out more apps and read their reviews.