Life in LoFi: iPhoneography

ClassicPan

ClassicPan is a vintage-style panoramic camera app from misskiwi. I recently reviewed version 1.0.1 of the app. ClassicPan has been updated to version 1.0.3, currently available in the App Store, and it is a great update. Not only does it fix the two biggest issues I had with the app, but it adds two new film modes and some minor UI tweaks.

ClassicPan now supports higher resolutions. It now gives the option to save at 1530 x 680 pixels. While not full resolution for any iPhone, this is most certainly usable. The higher resolution also helps improve the details of the vintage filters.

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Recently, I wrote about The Best Free iPhoneography Apps: Camera Replacements. Now that you’ve shot your image, how are you going to process it? Here are nine great image editing apps and best of all, their price is free!

I realize that this list is not complete. There were several apps that I didn’t include for various reasons. In compiling this list, I found some apps that duplicated features of others. In those cases, I chose what I felt to be the app that did the job quickest, easiest and best. Also, there are great free apps being released all the time.

Some of these apps may be ad-supported, but none of them add a watermark to your images and all save at or really close to your iPhone’s full resolution, unlike many lite photo apps available. These are all full-featured apps and they produce good, if not outstanding effects. Again, for little more than bandwidth and real estate on your iPhone’s screen, there are some gems to be found in the photography section of the App Store. These apps should start you off with a well-rounded iPhoneography toolbox or enhance your existing iPhone “camera bag” — and all for free.

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How two brothers from Wisconsin changed iPhoneography

The original Hipstamatic camera (in white and black casings). photo by Master Donut

The case can be made that the hottest camera app in the App Store right now was created in 1982.

Hipstamatic (App Store link • link to Hipstamticapp.com) is one of the most popular photography apps in the App Store at the moment. It’s in the Top 5 in multiple countries. Flickr groups have popped up. The #hipstamatic hashtag is all over Twitter. The app has universally gotten rave reviews, and deservedly so. The environment, the sounds, the photos — it recreates the fun of shooting with an old, plastic, toy camera.

Read Life In LoFi’s full review here.

The original Hipstamatic camera is almost an urban legend. Part of the mystique of the new app is its backstory — that it’s based on the old, plastic camera that few people had heard of, let alone seen.

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Format126

Format126
Version 1.0

Bottom Line: Essential! There are apps that you’ve paid for that aren’t nearly this good. It is a fun and, especially for free, an essential app.

As a kid, growing up, my very first camera was a square frame Kodak Instamatic 100 with the peanut bulb flash and the textured plastic near the shutter release that was supposed to look like one of the old light meters. It used 126 format film, which was single perforated 35 mm film housed in a plastic cartridge. The camera was inexpensively made and was produced for the masses. It was built more solidly than the plastic “toy” cameras and didn’t produce a lot of the Lo-Fi artifacts that are the trademark of those cameras, but it was a fun camera for a kid growing up to explore the world in photos 24 square images at a time.

Format126 by Chris Comair is a new app that is the result of a collaboration between Chris Comair, who created EffectsLab, LOFI and Polarize, and Glyn Evans who writes and publishes iPhoneography.com.

Format126 makes your images look like they were shot with a number of retro cameras and films from the 1960’s and 70’s. As an Instamatic emulator, Format126 takes some liberties with the number of effects the app offers, and given the limits of the 126 format, this was an excellent choice, making the app much more interesting than the original film format.

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HipstaMatic

Hipstamatic
Version 100

Bottom Line: Recommend

True lo-fi photography is not an exact art. Primarily because of the nature of the equipment (mainly mass-produced plastic or “toy” cameras), unpredictability is an essential element. Most lo-fi cameras have cheap, plastic lenses; many of them have imprecise cases that don’t completely seal, causing light leaks, vignetting, lens distortions and other imperfections. To the lo-fi photographer, these imperfections are desirable and add to the look of the image. It’s the quest for the happy accident.

There are apps that duplicate the images taken by classic lo-fi cameras such as the Holga and the Lomo — classic cameras widely produced and still easily found. Hipstamatic by Synthetic Corp is the first app to replicate the look of one of the rarest lo-fi cameras, the Hipstamatic 100, a square-frame 35mm camera most of us probably never heard of until now. I think the images this app creates are gorgeous and even though there are flaws in this first release, I love this app!

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LOFI

LOFI
Version 1.0

Bottom line: Recommend!

With the name LOFI, I couldn’t pass this app by.

LOFI by Christopher Comair is “a celebration of imperfection.” It’s a digital lomo app. Cross processing results in unnatural color shifts. Lomography tends to be oversaturated and blurry. LOFI wraps your image in both and then turns it up to 11, kicks it around, amps it up and leaves it exhausted and sweaty on a blanket on the sofa. This is probably one of the best free photo apps in the App Store.

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