500px have finally got around to realising their much anticipated iPad app and for the past few days I’ve been checking it out.
First impressions were good as 500px have maintained the slick look and user friendly style which has made them an instant hit with professional and amateur photographers.

The app is all about the images and showcases each picture beautifully. There are a couple of menu options including Popular, Editors Choice, Upcoming and Fresh photo streams in which images are all displayed in a blocked grid.
There’s a slideshow option which is a nice touch plus it’s easy to comment, like and favourite.

But that’s about it. The app does let itself down when it comes to using other features in 500px. You can’t upload your own images or blog posts, nor can you view blog posts.
Frustratingly you can’t even view individuals profiles or collections which is a real shame.

Sure you can still tweet your favourites and the search option is pretty good but that does depend on how thorough each photographer has been with their keywords.
Thankfully the better photographers among us actually bother to include keywords so the searches bring up some good results.
Sensibly there is an adult filter for those of you bashful types or for those of you who’s kids are now claiming the iPad to be there’s 99% of the time.

All in all I hope there will be a big update soon which includes some of those missing features but for now it’s certainly a better source of visual inspiration than the StumbleUpon app, which to be fair is pretty good. There is the promise of portfolio browsing and much much more in future updates so we’ll just have to wait and see.

At the end of the day it’s free so who can complain so if you want to download it yourself and have a look then you’ll want to click here.