Here is a staggering statistic: Apple's iPhone 3G recently took the top spot as the most-used camera on photo-sharing website Flickr.com.

For a ranking typically dominated by digital SLRs, it's pretty impressive for a smart phone with a decent, but in no way spectacular, camera to make its way onto the list.

To help improve the quality of the flat, bland images the iPhone tends to produce, there are thousands of apps clamouring to improve your mobile photography‚ whether you're shooting baseball games or bar mitzvahs. Here's our recommended list to download into your virtual kit bag.

Pano

Simple, clean and elegant, Pano creates gorgeous panoramas by stitching up to 16 images together, while colour-correcting them to better blend the photos ($2.99)

CameraBag

Give your images the look of a bygone era with the touch of a button. The "Helga" effect (as shown) is amazing, emulating the fabulous medium format look with a square crop, washed out highlights and vignetting. Also try "1974" to create the faded and worn look of forgotten photo albums. ($1.99)

TiltShift Generator

Quite possibly the coolest photo effect in years, tilt-shift is yours for less than a buck. Usually, expensive lenses are needed to give life-size scenes the "toy model" look. This fun app recreates the magic of a tilt shift lens for basically free. With controls for saturation, brightness and contrast, you can fine-tune your results. ($0.99)

PhotoForge

This is the app for true camera geeks. It's packed with all the tools of an advanced desktop photo editor and manipulator, including levels, curves, brushes, clone stamp and eyedropper. ($2.99)

Mill Colour

A great tool for accurate contrast, saturation and hue. The beginner-friendly quick preset filters like "70s," "bleached" and "cross-processed" spice up even the flattest photo. (Free!)

Do you have any favourite apps for travelling? Sound off in the comments!