Tag Archives: camera app

Sochi Games Are Over, Do We Still Need The iPhone HipstaPak? Sure!

During the last Winter Olympic Games, the group behind Hipstamatic released a film/lens pak named after the Sochi city. It was interesting but would it live up to staying on the iPhone after the end of the games. As I looked over a few recents shots I took, it would appear it is standing up to time.

If you are a Hipstamatic iPhone camera app user, this is a HipstaPak with a lens and film bundle. Rather than a vintage film look, it produces images that have a feel like new film in a vintage camera (I shoot a lot with new 620 film in my Kodak Hawkeye so I recognized the results pretty quickly).

01 sochi hipstamatic film and lens 03 sochi hipstamatic film and lens 04 sochi hipstamatic film and lens

The photos provided by Hipstamatic show colors are still bright, with a cool light effect.

05 sochi hipstamatic film and lens

As usual, here is a couple shots I took with the combo so you can see the Sochi HipstaPak in real life usage:

07 sochi hipstamatic film and lens
Hipstamatic Sochi

If your a subscriber to the Oggl photo sharing app/service also provided by the Hipstamatic group. You have access to the lens/film at no additional charge (within Oggl, not the Hipstamatic app). At first, the lens/film bundle on Oggl under the name of Sochi was different than the HipstaPak in the Hipstamatic app. It has been corrected now, but you can see the above shot as it looked via Oggl below.

Oggl Sochi

In other news, Hipstamatic Releases Hongdae HipstaPak

Hipstamatic, the retro film/lens/flash app for the iPhone, released a new HipstaPak. It actually showed up some time ago. I upgraded, played with it, and forgot to tell you. The new HipstaPak is called Hongdae. As you may guess from the name, there is a line “Made in Korea” everywhere the pack is mentioned. Included is a new lens and film, no case and no new flash.

01 hongdae hipstamatic

 

02 hongdae hipstamatic

 

03 hongdae hipstamatic

 

The example shots included from Hipstamatic –

04 hongdae hipstamatic

The Hongdae combination drops the quality and adds a bit of noise. As you can see, there is some detail drop off too, but I like there is enough remaining to not end up with no recognizable bits. People, signs and landmarks can still be seen. So many times, age filter effects drop off too much which vintage photography didn’t do. As I usually do, here is the HipstaPak used in a shot I took:

05 hongdae hipstamatic

ProCam iPhone Camera app with the Unique User Interface

When I say ‘unique’, I’m talking about unique on the iPhone. The ProCam interface may actually look familiar to many digital camera users as the camera app mimics real world buttons. But, with settings and adjustments that I wish my digital camera had.

The feature list is pretty familiar for most iPhone Camera apps:

– Full focus and exposure control (touch focus / touch exposure)
– White Balance lock
– Adjustable image resolution (Full / High / Medium / Low)
– Adjustable aspect ratio (4:3 / 3:2 / 16:9 / 1:1)
– Adjustable JPEG compression quality (100% / 90% / 80%)
– Adjustable video resolution (Full HD: 1080p / HD:720p / VGA: 640×480 / Low:480×360)
– 6x digital zoom
– Geo location tagging
– Alignment grids (Thirds / Trisec / Golden / Horizon)
– Front / Back camera support
– Flash settings (Auto / On / Off / Torch)

The user interface for ProCam, while very un-iPhone like, looking more like a physical camera, makes it easy to change settings quickly. When I’m doing street photography, I usually have to choose a setting and shoot for the better part of the day with it. Many ‘camera’ settings are offered in the popular app solutions, but every change are a couple taps deep. With ProCam, everything can be done with one tap or a twist of a virtual nob.

When viewing your subject, the dial on the right twists to change the ‘camera’ set up:

– Single Shot
– Anti-Shake with adjustable sensitivity (High / Medium / Low)
– Burst mode with adjustable image quality (Full / VGA)
– Self-Timer
– Interval
– Face Detection
– Big Button
– Video

The small tab out of the ‘dial’ is used for controlling the 6x zoom. Choose the arrow button on the lower left corner to expose the specifics on how you want your iPhone’s camera to work via ProCam. Tap the options to change, the single window makes it easy to change while on the go to get a specific shot quickly.

There is also several screens worth of fine tuning all of the features via the Menu button (upper right). ProCam keeps the settings simple and quick too with a tap to change On/Off or quick chooser showing in a single view rather than having to drill down for every adjustable line item.

 

Take a picture with your iPhone, add a filter, share on Facebook…. Facebook gets their own camera app

Everyone is talking today about how Facebook bought Instagram and now has a light version of the Instagram app with some filters connected to Facebook. The Facebook folks mentioned back when they were first making the purchase that they were about to release a Free Facebook camera app that had nothing to do with Instagram. I have a tendency to believe them that this new app had no Instagram employee assistance. But, everyone mixes the two to get readers.

So, what is this Facebook Camera app? It is to the Facebook app as the Facebook Messenger app is to the full Facebook app. The Facebook Camera app is for viewing your friends photos, like you can do with the full app. The difference is though that you can do a little tuning of your photos before sharing.

When you launch Facebook Camera, your taken to a scrollable list of photos your friends have posted to Facebook. You can view, comment and like the photos as your scroll through them.

From the main screen of the Facebook Camera app, you can use the camera icon in the upper left corner to take a photo, or choose the row of images to be taken to your iPhone’s photo library. If you pull down the thumbnails, you will see a list of the different libraries you have on your iPhone to choose from. Select one or many photos to upload to Facebook.

Your chosen photos appears in a new enhancement area of Facebook Camera. Buttons across the bottom will; take you back to the overview of photos on your iPhone, Crop, the magic wand brings up filter effects to apply, and the blue button will let you add text then post to Facebook.

When you post your photo, it appears with the text you added in the ‘Me’ area.