Hipstamatic's new Montmartre HipstaPak is a dreamy retro throwback

Time to talk about Hipstamatic. I love Hipstamatic. 10 years later it’s still the one of the absolute best approximations of the analog camera experience available on iPhone.

First Friday of the month for the past several years we’ve gotten new Hipstamatic packs. Sometimes they nicely invoke the stylistic signature of a particular photographer. Others, they’re a little off the chain. Most of the time though I think they hit it out of the park, especially when they emulate classic films and photographic styles.

Named after one of my favorite neighborhoods of Paris, the recent Montmartre HipstaPak is no exception. The new pak includes a lens and a film — no new case or flash. The Hugo lens re-creates the washed out, pastel colors of a decades old snapshot. After aging and washing out the blues and other colors, the lens adds the slightest overall tint of red, similar to the red shift of some pre-1970s snapshots. Photos look like snapshots from one of your great grandparents old photo albums. They look more like a memory of an old vacation rather than the capture of a moment.

The pak’s La Seine film adds rounded corners and a weathered paper texture that looks like the print had curled and wrinkled over the years from the heat in a box up in the attic.

Together, both add an an excellent retro look with a mid-20th-century feel.

Just when I think they are going to run out of photographic styles to emulate, once again they release something like the Montmartre HipstaPak. By App Store standards, Hipstamatic is ancient. It’s over 10 years old. Yet somehow they still keep the app fresh and exciting by releasing some of the best photographic style emulators available on the iPhone.

The new Montmartre HipstaPak is well worth a dollar. It’s available in the cart inside the Hipstamatic app. Hipstamatic itself is $2.99. You can purchase the app here.