Well, believe it or not, there is an app for that. It is called, rather appropriately and a little deceptively, DogCam – Dog Selfie Camera. Appropriate because well, it is designed to take pictures of dogs. Deceptively, because it is not really a selfie camera app. No, the app can use both the rear and front cameras of your iPhone (it is only available on iOS right now), but believe us, it works best with the rear cameras, because if you are using the selfie camera, it is a fair chance, you have your mutt under control and pretty much at an arm’s distance. The app really comes into its own when you use it with the main cameras. So what is so special about the app? There are no special filters or effects or anything. In fact, if you open it, you get to see pretty much the same interface you would get on the iPhone camera, with basic controls. The difference is not the photography. It is…wait for it…the sound. Yes, what makes DogCam rather special are the presence of sounds within the app. These come lined up nicely on the left of the app if you are holding the phone in vertical mode. By default, you get the sound of a dog barking, a sharp whistle and the sound of a squeaky toy. The trick is simple: you hit one of the sound buttons for the phone to emit that particular sound, the dog looks at the phone (because that is where the sound is coming from) and you hit the shutter! It is incredibly simple and surprisingly effective. We take a lot of pictures of dogs, most of whom are “indies” – just mutts sitting around somewhere. And well, getting them to look at the camera is a challenge. The squeaky toy sound did not work that well for them, the whistle had a slightly better hit rate, but the other dog barking got them looking at us with a “that’s a pathetic attempt at sounding like us, why are you doing it?” expression that made us feel sheepish but hey, gave us some decent shots.
Those three sounds are the basic ones that you get free with the app. For Rs 159 ($1.99), you can unlock lots of others (more than eighty) including Comedic Whistle, Baby Babbling, Tongue Clicking, Dog Crying, Toy Car Horn and Toy Rattle. We are sure they would give you a whole arsenal of sounds to make sure that you get lots of canines to say cheese or at least stare at you! Dog lovers will appsolutely like this one. (Note: It works with cats too.) Download from here.
