Professional portrait photographers love using portable flash units to get the best possible photos, but that same option hasn’t been available to iPhone photographers… until now. We’re introducing the Nova Bluetooth iPhone Flash, a portable flash unit that provides radically better-looking photos. Skin tones will look more natural, details will be richer and shadows softer.
The Nova works simply: Just load up the Nova photo app on your phone with Bluetooth turned on. You can see the Nova is connected via an icon in the lower right of the app. You can test the flash here, but the easiest thing to do is just take a photo by hitting the shutter button. The Nova flash will fire instead of the iPhone’s built-in flash, giving you a much better looking photo. You can adjust the warmth and intensity of the flash to suit your conditions within the app, including settings for gentle, warm, neutral, bright or custom.
The Nova Bluetooth iPhone Flash is constructed from 40 warm and cool LEDs, which allow it to be adjusted to suit different lighting situations. The flash unit is the size of a credit card, so you can slip it in your wallet or in your pocket without issues. As the connection is done over Bluetooth, there’s no messy setup process either – just a helpful flash whenever you need it. It’s actually a lot of fun to try out different settings and positions to get a good result, and once you’ve gotten the hang of it you’ll amazed at the quality of photos you can produce.
We gave the Nova Flash a spin, and it really works. You get a strong burst of light, warm or cold as per your settings, which is much more natural looking than the tiny unit that’s built into the iPhone 6 Plus. You do need to try different positions and angles to get the best look, but right from the start you get better results, particularly in low-light situations where you’d normally be faced with either terrible flash tones or incredibly grainy flash-free shots.
Left: with built-in flash. Right: with Nova flash, warm setting.
The Nova Flash is a brilliant piece of kit, and an essential iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus photography accessory. The case is even stronger for older iPhone models, which have worse flash units and consequently much worse low-light photography without a flash replacement like the Nova.
What do you think of the Nova Flash? Let us know in the comments below! You can also reach us on Twitter @mobilefun or on Facebook at Love Your Mobile.