The specs

Well, hubby is really into photography right now so he's been buying camera equipment like crazy. I'm here to prove that my handy dandy iPhone 4 plus a few cheap/free apps are just as good, maybe better. I think prices for a couple of apps may have been sales prices so you might find them for a slightly higher price.

My equipment:
iPhone 4

Apps:
Camera+ , $0.99
Similar to Instagram but without the social feature. Features different scene lighting, rotation, cropping, effects (color, retro, cross process, etc with option to buy a few more - I haven't needed to buy anything on top of the main app), and borders.

SlowShutter Cam, $0.99
Very cool app that lets you capture pictures almost like a fancy slow shutter on an SLR. It also gives you settings for delayed shutter press so that you can wait for your set up to stabilize first.

360 Panorama, $1.99
I still have to figure some of this app out, but the pictures so far are pretty darn easy to capture and look amazing without any editing on my end.  A free alternative is Photosynth by Microsoft - rated 5 stars with 1176 ratings, but I haven't really tested this one out yet.

FX Photo Studio, $0.99
This is a nice one touch effect app. It comes with over 180+ different effects that you can adjust. It allows you to crop and do image correction as well. I tend to use this in conjunction with Camera+.

Color Effects, Free

Lets you gray everything out except whatever you want colored, which you use your finger to color. Cool but sometimes difficult if you're trying to color a tiny tiny splash on your picture. Your finger can only be so skinny, and even with zoom, there's still a minimum of affected pixels.