Hipstamatic Camera App for iPhone

What is it

The Hipstamatic app is a camera replacement for your iPhone’s native camera. It basically emulates the old box cameras from the 1960’s like the Holga and the Diana. These were novelty cameras with plastic lenses and notorious light leaks, and often referred to the as “toy cameras”. They use 120 film witch produced a 4cmx4cm print. The light leaks and thin plastic, not exactly clear, lenses caused interesting effects on the prints. These effects caused the cameras to become very popular among photographers. Now, thanks to this app anyone with an iPhone and a couple extra bucks can take brilliant vintage pictures.



What do you get out of the box

The app itself look like a box camera. It comes with three lenses, the John S lens, the Jimmy lens, and the Kaimal Mark II lens. You also get two flashes, the Standard flash and the Dreampop flash. Lastly you get three types of film, Ina’s 1969 film, Kodot Verichrome film, and Blanko film. That’s twenty seven different setups right from the start. The app also has a built in camera roll can show the last 72 photos taken with the app. From here you can find the lens, flash, and film used for an individual shot, and automatically set the camera back to that setup. You also get access to “The BIG Hipstamatic Show” where you can sign up and enter your photos in the monthly contests.


What accessories are available

There are four accessory packs available as in app purchases called Hipstapaks. The Wiliamsburg hipstapak includes the Helga Viking lens, Pistil film, and the Primary Gel filter pack (this gives you three new flashes: red, blue, and yellow). The Portland hipstapak includes The Lucifer VI lens and Black Keys B&W film. The Shibuya hipstapak includes the Roboto Glitter lens, Float film, and the Berry Pop flash. Finally, the Camden hipstapak gives you two more films, Alfred Infrared film and Black Keys Supergrain film.



How does one use this app

Using the app couldn’t be simpler. First, go into your phone settings and choose the Hipstamatic app. Here you can choose the start up mode (front/back view), viewfinder mode, shake to randomize, high quality prints, and EXIF data. This is all personal preference, but I highly recommend the using the shake to randomize. I also use EXIF data and high quality. This does increase the processing time between photos, but  it’s well worth if you post your pictures on the web or want to make a print.



Now that all that technical information is out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff! Fire up your Hipstamatic app. Mine loads to the front of the camera. Form there, first you can pick your lens by swiping you finger across it in either direction. Once you’ve decided on the lens tap the film icon at the bottom to pick go to the film selection screen. Again just swipe through the available films, pick your film and tap done. Now tap on the flash button and choose your flash in the same manner, tap done and your all set. If you just can’t decide what setup to use, just tap the button to flip the camera over, then give it a shake for a random setup. Now you should be on the camera back screen. If you want to use the flash, swipe the flash button and hear the capacitor charge. Line up your shot in the viewfinder and tap the big yellow shutter button. Wait for the picture to develop (about 15-20 seconds if high quality is on, less than 5 seconds if it’s off). Now you can tap the view icon and go to the camera roll to see your results. To see some examples of photos from this app check out my flickr set.

The camera roll is almost an app within itself. Let’s say, for example, you are looking through the photos in your camera roll and you come across a style you would like to replicate. Rather than taking a ton of pictures trying to figure out the setup for that style all you have to do is tap the original photo. This will give you the specific setup for that photo. If you want to change to this setup just tap the camera button below, then tap “change”. From the camera roll you can also email a photo or post it to Flckr or Facebook (your photos are also saved the the iPhone camera roll automatically). The camera roll also give you access to “The BIG Hipstamatic Show”. Here you can find out information on the current contests or enter a contest. To get contest information just tap any photo in the roll and the tap the badge icon below. This shows a list of available contests (i generally go to community.hipstamatic.com for this info). To enter a photo, just find it in the camera roll, tap it, the tap the badge icon, select the contest you want to enter, then tap enter. Make sure you already have your hipstaccount set up. You also need a flickr and twitter account, which I would assume you already have. These are all free services and the prizes are really cool!



Pros: Great app for taking vintage photos. Easy to use. 336 possible lens, flash and film combinations. Contests. In app camera roll. In app store for accessory packs. Flash capacitor charging sound makes any photographer smile.

Cons: Long processing time when using high quality print mode. Contests are judged by twitter retweets or facebook likes only. The viewfinder could stand to be just a little bigger.

Price: The basic app is $1.99 and there are four Hipstapaks at $0.99 each. Once you play around with the standard app you will find yourself needing all the extras!

That’s my review, now go and buy this app!

-thefosterkid-


PS:
I decided to give this app reviewing thing a shot. I always try to read a ton of reviews for an app before I decide to download it, especially if it costs money. The problem is I can never find anything very informative. It always seems to be either a tiny blurb about the basic functionality or a comment war between the app I’m researching and some similar app. My goal with this review is to cover the functions and features of this app along with my personal opinion and experience with the app. I hope you find it helpful in you decision making process, and as always your feedback is greatly appreciated!