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. >>>

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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.

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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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