Tantalizing! Hard to get even decent constellation shots. Major GUI flaw...

Has the best reputation of the "long exposure" camera apps. Given what *some* people have been able to accomplish with it, and their strong recommendations, thats no doubt deserved.

I got it to take constellation photos. The Night Cap Pro website has an entire page devoted to photographing stars, star trails, meteors, and satellites. There are many wonderful photos there, including a fantastic shot of Orion over a tree line. The directions are clear--quite easy, in fact. Turn on Long Exposure, along with Light Boost, tap the shutter button, wait 10-15 seconds, tap it again, and Voila! You end up with a

A NOISY PIXELATED MESS!

Ive tried it two different pre-dawn mornings on Orion, spending a great deal of time and taking gobs of photos--with all sorts of different settings--and have had dismal results.

Yes, if one looks closely at *some* of the photos, one can just make out Sirius, Rigel, Betelgeuse, and Orions Belt in the midst of the noise, but just barely. They are swamped by the multicolored dots of the noise. For sure, even that is impressive out of an iPad; however, the photographs look nothing like that posted on the website.

I have tried a bunch of post-processing, too, but to no avail.

WYSINWYG

= What You See (on the website) Is NOT What You Get!

I highlight these failure as a caution to others. While the directions make it sound easy and the photograph of Orion (and others there) impressive, youre NOT going to get similar results right out of the box. Indeed, one wonders which devices the photos were taken with (iPad Mini? iPad Air 2? IPhone 6S+?) and what post-processing tricks were employed. Knowing that could help others take similarly high quality photos and avoid frustration. Is a very recent device and camera necessary?

Leaving the webpage, as is, is misleading. There should at least be strong disclaimers there explaining that such results are hard to achieve, which devices are needed, that it takes practice, post-processing, etc.

JUST USE YOUR OLD DIGICAM!

In contrast, I can pick up my very old, way out of date, Kodak digicam, with only 3 megapixels, set it to an infinity focus, ISO 400, and a 16-second exposure, and be assured--every time--of getting rich, down to 8th magnitude, colorful star and constellation photos. No tricks, no post-processing, just aim and click. (Always use delay timer, so that the act of pressing the shutter button doesnt jar the photograph.)

Youll get Orion over the tree line just as you saw it in the pre-dawn sky!

I mention this, not to disparage Night Cap Pro, which is dealing with the inherent limitations of the i-device cameras, but as a recommendation to others who have an old digicam lying around and want to take constellation photos.

INTERFACE ISSUES

To the developers credit, the graphical user interface of the app is quite good. (The app is feature rich, too.). However, I found one glaring flaw in it. While you are able to reposition the controls, sliding them up and down a narrow band on the left or right side of the screen, you are unable to reposition them elsewhere on the display. The reason this matters is because if you have a case and fold the iPad mini, for example, backwards into a stand position looking up, the folded triangular cover blocks the shutter set of controls. That means you cant tap the shutter button!

Now then, I used the remote microphone ear buds, where you have a remote button, but the GUI is still a problem because, with the iPad resting against the folded cover, there is no way of seeing the shutter button and determining whether it clicked or not; whether or not it is working (red) and still taking the photo!

2ND FLAW-- HELP NEEDS HELP

There is a second GUI flaw. If you select Help, you are forced to step through every single item, when most times, youre interested in only one. Thats just a plain nuisance.

CONCLUSION

In any event, read the reviews, look elsewhere on the web for blogs about it, and, hey, even buy the app and support the developer. Its only a couple of bucks and, if anyone besides Apples people can really make this work, itll be this developer!

AstroPaul about NightCap Camera