#oneaday, Day 91: Hipstamatic-o-matic

It’s been a while since a photo post, so I thought I’d treat you all to one. (As if you care.)

Now, we all know that mobile phone cameras are crap. Put that hand down. All mobile phone cameras are crap. You can have all the megapixies in the world painting the little pictures inside your camera, but if you have a lens the size of a pin head and a sensor to match, you’re going to get crap pictures. You might get slightly bigger crap pictures, but still crap pictures. You may well have a flash, which means you can take crap pictures in the dark. But they are still crap pictures. If you want to take good pictures, buy a proper camera and stop pissing about with phones.

With this in mind, some enterprising young individuals have created the Hipstamatic app for the legendarily-crap iPhone camera, promoting it with the tagline “Digital photography never looked so analog”. The app simulates the titular 80s camera, complete with a selection of virtual lenses, films and flashes available for use. A few are included with the app, and others are sold via microtransaction within the app itself – though a friend discovered that by using the “shake to randomise” feature, you can actually make use of the premium equipment without having to pay for it. Sometimes it takes a bit of shaking to get the effect you want, though.

Anyway, the fact that the app is deliberately trying to simulate a thirty-year old camera means that the normally-crap cameras of mobile phones can be put to good use for once. Namely, rather than being in denial over the fact the iPhone camera is crap, the app embraces its crapness to produce a selection of stylised shots, most of which are way too dark, or overexposed, or coloured completely wrong, or have burnt edges, or too much vignetting, or… You get the idea. It basically gives you the opportunity to create the sort of pictures you see all the time on Tumblr at the touch of a button.

With that in mind, I went out for a little walk in the glorious sunshine today and ended up spending an hour taking pretentious photos of absolutely nothing of note whatsoever. But, should you be interested in the results of this clever little app, take a look at the gallery below:

There’s more info on the Hipstamatic app here, and it’s currently available from the App Store for the very reasonable price of one-pound-somethingorother.