Tag Archives: vintage photography

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).

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

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

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.

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.

The example shots included from 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:

Now for something completely different, a Polaroid Film

Every day, my iPhone comes out of my pocket for a minimum of a dozen photos. Generally, many dozen images, are captured and played with with enhancement apps. The modern smartphone allows a person to take a lot of photos with near zero expense. By taking a lot of snaps of things all around, a person can learn how to judge what they see vs what will result in a photo taken. Not quite like taking photos with film. Film is pay-to-use, the roll has to be purchased, developed and printed. Which means developing photo techniques take a while. Polaroid offered a lot less of a lag between shooting and seeing a resulting image. Though, the cost of each of the instant gratification photos is considerably more.

I have mentioned before that I shoot with just about everything, all types of film in cameras across many years, for fun and profit. Last weekend was 620 and 127 films though cameras older than my dad. This weekend was a Polaroid 320 and Spectra.

Today I had a fun find, a full length movie about the last year of Polaroid. From the preview, it appears to cover the factory closure, photographers and the gent (team) that took over the equipment to produce The Impossible Project instant film. Time Zero is doing the festival rounds, with your own copy available for pre-order through iTunes. I’ll toss up a review when the movie shows up for viewing.

Copy iPhone Photographs To Actual Polaroid Prints

In the 60s and 70s, as Instant film photography got more and more popular, people started noticing the lack of film negatives. Without a negative, the image shot and instantly printed to Polaroid framed paper meant that was the only recording of the image. It wasn’t possible to run down to the photography store and have another couple copies made for friends and family. Unlike today’s digital images, the one print was all you got.

Polaroid heard the noise and produced a couple models of the Polaroid Print Copier. Models 230 and 240. These where boxes a bit bigger than a shoe box with a dial, buttons, a lens, light and a power plug. Most folks that work with me in the Instant Photography world and stumble upon the Print Copier come to me to find out what type of film they need to buy. Actually, the hardware didn’t need film. A person placed their photograph inside of the device, close the door (with a lens in it), then attached their Polaroid camera to shoot through the lens. A light inside illuminated the original print, with a few tries a person could get the setting right. Basically, it was a clean environment to take a picture of a picture. It did what people wanted though as it enabled a single Polaroid print to become multiple prints.

When a person thinks about that history, The Impossible Project’s Instant Lab doesn’t seem as strange. Of course, the company sells newly manufactured Polaroid style film so they would like us to jump on board and convert out iPhone images to Polaroid. For a person looking for the real effect of a older style photography without carrying an Instant (not exactly pocket cameras!) this is a nice solution.

With the free app installed on the iPhone, images are shown on the screen that are taken and printed via the lower Instant film camera. Producing a new impression of what analog photography was without the need for filters and ‘fake’ framed prints. While the $299 US price tag may slow many people a bit, the fun of producing a whole different view of their iPhone photos will hit home with the fan as a must have.

The Impossible Project iPhone app also allows the sharing and viewing of Instant Print images through their social network.

Note: The original Polaroid Print Copier produced the original style small border framed prints while the new Impossible Project product produces the print with the larger white lower area more recognized as a ‘Polaroid’ trademark.

Vintage Polaroid Cameras And Film In The Days Of The iPhone

I am a collector of vintage cameras. No particular year or style, the cameras in my collection are only limited by my interest in the particular tech. When it is possible to locate film that will work, I actually take some out of the collection to shoot with. The fun of film is the planning and non-instant-gratification. For those times that I want to mix vintage with a instant view of my shots, I break out one of my Polaroids. Initially, this meant using expired film, then Impossible Project started producing Polaroid style film, but it had exposure issues (well, I had problems, others where happier). Recently, Impossible Project has added a coating to their film making the final results much better.

A few of my shooters –

Results vary, but when Luna will sit still long enough, she loves when the camera comes out –

Of course, there is an app for that too. Not just one Instant Polaroid effect iPhone app, but many many… many. Most are just ‘frames’ apps to wrap a photo in a Polaroid trademarked paper frame. Instant – The Polaroid Instant Camera is an app that I tend to play with when I want to add the realistic vintage effect when shooting with my iPhone.

Along with the exposure/film type, Instant lets you add all of the particulars that make the photo deliver the message your looking for. Color the frame ‘paper’, and add wear via blotches, wrinkles and even finger prints. Then a bit of handwriting text for a final touch.

If the fun of vintage film photography is something you enjoy, narrowed down to Polaroid particularly, you may enjoy Polanoid.net . A site that has Polaroid camera users all over the world submitting their snapshots for you to enjoy.

The Polanoid.net site has what seems like an endless list of Polaroid film captures. The images are grouped by camera type as well as photographer. Fun to see new and old photos and the creative work people do with instant photography.

Buenos Aires Square Format Photos Like My Instant Film Camera Takes

When out at the Antique Malls, there is almost always someone offering little square photos. They are fun to browse through, handy if you don’t have any family history, build your own for a couple bucks.

Interesting that many of the small square photos are actually from early Polaroid cameras. Before the iconic SX-70 and the auto developing photos buzzing out the square photos on a large lower lip print, there was the two part instant film. The early Polaroid cameras opened with an expanding front lens, the exposed film was pulled out the back, waved around for a bit then the two parts where separated to show a small lipped square photo. Fujifilm is now offering film for these early cameras so an older 180 model pulls in $700+. If you want to see the different cameras and film options, take a look at the The Land List.

There are a few iPhone filter apps that make an attempt to match the real look of film photography. That is, film photography of yesteryear with 1940/50s or lomo cameras with simple lenses. Having a collection of those early cameras that actually work, it is fun at times to compare a filter to a shot I took with film. This week, Hipstamatic rolled out a new Buenos Aires film and lens pack.

The HipstaPak is a single lens, Diego and two films, Uchitel 20 and Blanko C16.

As a reminder, Hipstamatic has you choose a lens, film and a flash (turn on/off) that you use to take a photo. Like early cameras and film, you can’t change that choice after you snap the photo. You tune the photo ‘later’. I have my selection of filter/enhancement apps I use, with Hipstamatic having it’s own place in my daily shooting… the fun of planning ahead instead of bulk snapping and tuning later.

Here are a few shots of the lens/film options in the Buenos Aires Hipstapak, real world stuff:

Lens: Diego – Film: Uchitel 20

Lens: Diego – Film: Blanko C16

Lens: Diego – Film: Uchitel 20

For something to compare, here is a shot using the Diego lens and the Sussex film

Lens: Diego – Film: Uchitel 20

Lens: Diego – Film: Blanko C16

Canon SELPHY CP900 Wireless Printer and an iPhone is my modern Polaroid

Why did we love our Polaroid cameras? It was the experience and the instant gratification of seeing the photo in a time that everyone else had to go to the local shop to get their film developed and printed. The ability to share a printed version of a photo just taken. While the sharing of a print with others quickly following the taking of the photo, the Polaroid experience has the limitation of there being only one copy of the photo… and you just gave it away!!

Trying to mimic some of the fun, I have been playing with a variety of printers. There are a lot of ink printers available on the market. Many are very inexpensive, until it comes time to buy the ink cartridges. Most printers also use a single cartridge for all colors (Black gets it’s own cartridge). This means that you have to buy a cartridge if any of the colors gets used completely. This drives up the ‘per print’ cost when partially used cartridges are getting thrown away. Also, printers are generally for printing a 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper so they are much larger than needed for a small photo print.

Over the recent holidays, a new smaller square printer appeared all of the gadget stores. It came with a 30 pin connector on top so a person can print their iPhone stored photos. After playing with one at a store, I could see the value, except I have no interest is having to dock my iPhone to the printer. It’s a wireless world!

Enter, the Canon SELPHY CP900. A wireless printer that prints to 4 x 6 paper that lasts for 100 years… and the prints are water resistant too! Printing with a iOS or Android device requires the use of a free Canon app which does have some limitations but gets the job done in under a minute.

The CP900 is pretty small, just 7″ x 5″ x 2.7″. Along with connecting to wireless network, there is a SD card slot and a USB plug. Power is provided by an included wall plug, or an upgrade external battery power supply. A small pop up LCD screen allows for managing of printing from the SD card, the USB is handy for mobile or desktop connections. I’m only using via the wireless capability.

The printer has some uniqueness in it’s paper and ‘ink’. The paper comes from Canon where the front and back edges are removable via perforated lines. The extra paper is for the printer to pull the paper in. The reason for there being the extra on both ends is because of the printing method Canon has chosen to use. The ‘ink’ is a canister of ‘film’. The CP900 pulls in the paper from the front and pushes out the back. The print paper is pulled towards the front, where a single color (starts with Yellow) is applied to the paper. The page is returned automatically to the back of the printer then fed to the front to have another color applied, happening 4 times, all in about 40 seconds. Since the multi color film in the cartridge has to advance at a rate to handle each pass of the paper, this means there is an exact amount of the film to print each page. The card paper comes with ‘Canon’ printed on the back or a specialized version that has been printed to use as a postcard. A bulk pack has three color film cartridges and 108 4×6 papers for less than $30… which means there is a cost of 28 cents per print, no more, no less.

So, I am mobile with my iPhone, and I can print quickly to share with those that like paper photo prints. Just for fun, there is always apps like ‘Instant’ that lets me frame my print to look just like a Polaroid snapshot.

Retro Polaroid fun comes to the iPhone with Instant

There are many vintage filters available to add to a photo after shooting the shot. And, there are camera apps that change the way the photo is initially shot to change the experience of iPhone photography. Basically, the second one is just applying a filter to an image from the start since we aren’t really changing anything hardware based on our iPhones. But, the change in the action of taking a photo can be part of the fun too. This is where Instant comes in, it’s all about the retro experience.

Instant first appeared on the iPad where I don’t do much with the camera so the fun was getting lost a bit. Even with the iPad Mini, when it comes time to shoot a photo, I still dig my iPhone out of my pocket. Instant on the iPhone starts off with the option to import a photo or snap a new shot. The viewfinder is similar in look to that of the ‘One Step’ camera. This is not a universal app so you have to buy a copy for your iPhone and another for your iPad if you want to use on both.

Instant offers a variety of filters to apply to mimic the wide variety of Polaroid photos came out of a camera. Some over exposed, others too dark, some film got a bit old so it was grainy, etc… “30 unique vintage style photo filters, with 10 of them closely mimicking the effects of various classic Polaroid films.”

Age and highlights are adjusted with a slider, each option is adjusted individually.

Writing on your Instant iPhone photos are not as limiting as the originals. If you didn’t get the writing exactly right on the old paper Polaroids, the photo was damaged with no way to re-print the photo. Now, Instant lets you use different fonts, formats and ink color till you get it right or completely remove without any damage to your snapshot.

Unlike the original Polaroid film, Instant allows for the paper frame to be colorized. Along with the new feature comes the ability to add the wear and tear of a well shared photo with spots, wrinkles and finger smudges.

05 Instant iPhone

Instant offers ‘export’ to many of the popular social services as well to the iPhone’s photo library. In the settings, you can choose to save a copy of the original photo prior to edits or save only the final edited result.

Toss a bunch of the features at a photo to get the look like the old snap shot found between some old papers in the bottom drawer of that desk you never use. Finger prints, wrinkled paper, faded in the classic Polaroid Instant frame.

Worn photos effect with ScratchCam FX on the iPhone – 50% off this weekend only

I mentioned in an earlier post how I will age iPhone photos using PictureShow (The fun of film toy cameras on the iPhone). The effect is actually a grouping of many effects to get the final result. If you want to jump straight to a variety of worn film/paper effects, this weekend’s special for ScratchCam FX is good timing.

ScratchCam FX does more than age your iPhone photos. There is more to a old picture in a drawer than roughing up the image so the app offers several worn effects, each adjustable to get the aged effect your looking for.

✔ Scratched & damaged film
✔ Vintage black & whites
✔ Down and dirty grunge effects
✔ Poster & folded paper effects
✔ Awesome colour shifts and combos
✔ Full range of subtle to extreme textures

Americana Hipstamatic Pak on the iPhone Gets Two New Films

Earlier this month, during Fashion Week, Hipstamatic offered a lens and camera body called Americana for free. Now, Americana Pak has grown to include two new films. The ‘new’ Americana is available to purchase through the in-app cart inside of Hipstamatic.

The films have a rather light, ‘creative’ description that I thought requires a bit more info if your considering making the purchase. Below, I snapped a couple photos using the Tejas lens with one of the Hipstamatic included films, then the two new films. For examples of the American lens, see the post I did when it first came out (Hipstamatic Americana Lens and Case for Fashion Week).

‘Ina’s 1969‘ – note the border:

Americana Hipstamatic film US1776 with Teja lens:

Americana Blanko Freedom 13 film with Tejas lens (similar to Ina’s, without border, but notice the three color ticks in the lower right corner):

Everything iPhone Photo

Where iPhone Photography has a home

Tag Archives: vintage photography

In other news, Hipstamatic Releases Hongdae HipstaPak

Now for something completely different, a Polaroid Film

Copy iPhone Photographs To Actual Polaroid Prints

Vintage Polaroid Cameras And Film In The Days Of The iPhone

Buenos Aires Square Format Photos Like My Instant Film Camera Takes

Retro Polaroid fun comes to the iPhone with Instant

Worn photos effect with ScratchCam FX on the iPhone – 50% off this weekend only

Americana Hipstamatic Pak on the iPhone Gets Two New Films