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

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. >>>

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Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make CES, the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year. Reading the recaps, though, there are two new gizmos this year that I find really intriguing. One of them is Polaroid’s new venture into instant digital photography, the SC1630. It’s basically a Polaroid-branded digital camera with an Android-based smartphone. Engadget.com had one of the best recaps of the new device that I’d read. The link and my thoughts on the SC1630 after the jump. >>>

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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.

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Photo 55 with Polaroid Type 55 framing

Polaroid Type 55 film is a black-and-white peel-apart Polaroid film that yields both a positive print and a negative image (which can be used in an enlarger). It’s got its own Wikipedia entry. It’s an interesting read for a bit of photo history.

Photo 55 is an app that recreates the look of the classic Polaroid Type 55 film. Although not the Polaroid effect most users think of, it’s a classic photo look and for the most part, Photo 55 does a good job of recreating it, but the app has a few issues that may put off some users.

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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.

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I know Marty hates rumors, but there’s evidence in the official ShakeItPhoto Facebook page and the Flickr Stream of Banana Camera Co’s Alexia Brown to support this. The latest update to popular instant camera app ShakeItPhoto, which is currently awaiting Apple approval, will feature a revised border much more reminiscent of the traditional Polaroid 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?

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ShakeItPhoto 1.4 was released today. The app still supports high resolution 1920×1876 pixel output. The good news is that the classic ShakeItPhoto look is back. The bad news is that the classic ShakeItPhoto look is back.

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Right now, there are several cool photo apps on sale in the App Store. This is probably the largest bunch of major apps on sale at the same time that I’ve ever seen.

This is an excellent chance to fill in gaps in your iPhone’s Camera Bag. We’ve listed the end dates of the sales if we have them. Others, if the dates aren’t there, they probably won’t be on sale for long — possibly only hours. Some of the prices on these apps are about as low as you’ll see — especially FX Photo Studio and AutoStitch Panorama, so if you’ve been thinking about these, grab them now before prices go back up.

Open up your iTunes, bust out the Visa card and click past the jump to check out the great sales. >>>

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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.

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