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

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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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.

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UPDATED 12.01.10: The post now contains info about a resolution bug in the app.

Polaroid Instant Cam is an instant camera app that gives your photos the look of an old Polaroid SX-70 print. It disappeared shortly after the last update, but two weeks later, a new update with bug fixes is now back in the App Store.

A few months ago, Pente Group released Polaroid Instant Cam, the instant camera photo app officially licensed from Polaroid. Because it was licensed, it had high expectations in the iPhone photography community because the licensing deal should have allowed Pente to have a bunch of features in the app that no other developers could have. But the first couple of versions were plagued with problems, not the least of which was unusable super low resolution.

The app is back with the new 1.2.1 update. Most of the problems with the app have been fixed.

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UPDATE 11.14.10 17:00: I just heard from Penté Group. Polaroid Instant Cam was pulled by the developer because of  “a minor bug on the old 3G handset” discovered after the app’s release. According to Penté, they “really wanted to make sure everything is perfect with every OS.”

The bug has been fixed over the weekend and the app should be resubmitted to the App Store within the next day or so. =M=

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Within hours of the release of the version 1.2 update, Polaroid Instant Cam, the app we just gave a glowing review to, has disappeared from the App Store and isn’t available at this time. We currently have little other solid information other than that.

LoFi has contacted Penté Group, the developers, but haven’t received a response yet.

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[Updated 8/29/10]

InstantCam is a new instant camera-style app that’s actually licensed by the Polaroid® holding company. I thought this would be a cool app — a fake Polaroid® app that’s licensed by Polaroid®. But there are many reasons to stay away from this app at the moment.

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Here are some random additional thoughts I had for my earlier post on printing and enlarging iPhone photos. They didn’t seem to fit smoothly in context in the earlier post, so here they all get their own bullet points in a random musing.

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ClassicINSTA 2's new UI

Within the last few days, two of the more popular apps of the ClassicCAM line from misskiwi have received great updates. Now, all four of the ClassicCAM apps are iOS4 and iPhone 4 compatible.

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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.

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Optics, created in Polarize

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[UPDATED]

One of the things that the iPhone does well (and one of the reasons, I think, that elevates iPhoneography above other mobile phone photography) is the platform’s ability to create digital images with analog and film effects — often with uncanny accuracy and sometimes even better than the film or device it mimics. Polaroid effects are among the more popular of these iPhone analog filters. There’s more, including my thoughts, after the click….

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