Life in LoFi: iPhoneography | iPhone Photo News, Showcases, App Reviews

A while back, I reviewed PolarCam, another retro, instant-style fauxlaroid camera app. While I wasn’t overly excited about the app at first, it does shoot in full resolution and has very nice color and texture. You can also shoot retro instant video with the app.

Read my entire review of PolarCam here.

I’ve got some promo codes for PolarCam to give away. To find out how to win one today, click past the jump. >>>

Read the rest of this entry →

I like instant camera apps — fake Polaroids or fauxlaroids as I call them here. Few cameras elicit such an emotional connection and warm fuzzys as an old Polaroid instant camera. The border and shape of the SX-70 prints are so iconic, they’re trademarked.

There are a lot of fauxlaroid apps and photo apps with instant camera effects. Some of them emulate instant photos better than others. New photo app PolarCam tries to, but just misses the mark for me in capturing that visceral magic of classic instant cameras.

Read the rest of this entry →

ClassicInstant film and Modern Border

One of the earliest and one of the premier fauxlaroid apps in the App Store is misskiwi’s ClassicINSTA, part of their ClassicCAMERA series which also include the excellent ClassicTOY, ClassicPAN, and Squara apps.

The ClassicINSTA 7.0.0 update was just released. In it, the app gets a makeover and a few new features. I’ll walk you through them after the jump. >>>

Read the rest of this entry →

Back in the early days of the App Store, Apple was a little more lenient with apps that looked like Polaroids — the classic square SX-70 and slightly wider Spectra films. Polarock is one of those apps.

Polarock is back. Let me save you a dollar. Avoid Polarock.

Read the rest of this entry →

ShakeItPhoto 2.0's new Polaroid border

One of the things that I love about ShakeItPhoto is the way it alters the colors of the photo. It doesn’t accurately recreate the tones of old Polaroid images. In reality, they’re often flat and washed out. ShakeItPhoto recreates the way we remember old Polaroid photos. And that, to me, is part of its magic.

ShakeItPhoto was updated today. The 2.0 update has one new feature — a real Polaroid SX-70 border.

Read the rest of this entry →

Nothing to enlarge. This is a Colaroid full res pic.

Colaroid Cam PRO
Version 1.1
Price: Free for a limited time

UPDATED 01.10.11

Colaroid Cam PRO is yet another fake Polaroid app. This one has more colored frames than you’ll ever need.

The interface is pretty clunky and needs a lot of work. It saves a fake Polaroid at a low 500×603 px resolution or a super low-res, 320×480 px screen capture of the entire screen — image, background and all. It even saves to the camera roll as a PNG file — the format of screen captures. Lazy programming.

In Edit mode — the tiny 320×480 mode, the image itself is bordered by a wrinkled brown paper background, making the effective size of the photo even smaller and the quality of the image horrible. There are a lot of other fake Polaroid apps available and they all support higher resolution, so really, how hard can it be?

Read the rest of this entry →

Polaroid Digital Camera App
Version 1.0
Price: $1.99

Bottom Line: Impressive in scope but fails in many ways to deliver an accurate, or even emotional Polaroid experience.

UPDATE: Corrected resolution. =M=

UPDATE #02: The developer has changed the minimum iOS requirements because of the instability issues. The post nw reflects the updated requirements. =M=

There are a ton of great instant camera apps available. Did we really need one more? Getting a license to use the Polaroid name and frames creates a high-profile app and sets expectations extremely high. The new photo app Polaroid Digital Camera App from LoL Software is impressive in its features, but disappoints in its execution.

Yes, I’m picky about fauxlaroid apps. Instant photography reaches people on a very emotional level and iPhoneographers especially are very passionate and particular about getting it right.

Read the rest of this entry →

ClassicINSTA's improved frames

[UPDATED]

ClassicINSTA turns you iPhone into the perfect instant camera, recreating the look and experience of the classic Polaroid, Kodak and Fuji instant cameras from the 70′s and 80′s.

Hot on the heels of the recent 4.0 update, ClassicINSTA 4.1.0 has hit the App Store. This excellent fauxlaroid app gets a revamped user interface, a colorful new icon, integrated Facebook sharing and better performance in this update. The frames have been updated with added texture giving a more authentic appearance than in previous versions. And the app now also has an onscreen switch, giving the user easier access to the two additional frames added in a previous update.

Read the rest of this entry →

.

Instant Camera
Version 1.3.1
Price: $1.99

Bottom Line: One of the more authentic-looking faux-Polaroid apps. Resolution isn’t the greatest, though.

There are a lot of fake Polaroid apps available. I notice subtle differences between them. Some are better than others. Some of them create square images similar to the old Kodak instant prints. Some have the textured, knurled frame. The vignette around the frame differs. Color saturation varies greatly. Instant Camera by bbcddc has been around for a while, but of the fake Polaroids or “fauxlaroids”, it comes awfully close to looking like the real thing.

Read the rest of this entry →