My iPhone Toy Camera Quiver
iPhone photography, aka iPhoneography, has really become popular in the past year. How popular? It is the most used camera on Flickr! Since my iPhone is pretty much always with me it makes capturing those fleeting moments that much easier. As much as I love my Canon 5DII, it is not practical to carry with me all the time.
Now the iPhone is a pretty good camera but the quality is not the greatest. Don’t let this be a distraction though. This lower quality really lends itself to having fun with various toy camera apps. If you are not familiar with toy cameras, the Wikipedia entry for toy cameras should bring you up to speed but basically think of really cheap plastic film cameras. These cameras are known to produce randomly imperfect images with various degrees of focus, color, and exposure. The beauty of these images lays in their imperfections.
Lets get on with the list!
Top iPhone Toy Camera Apps
Best Camera App
This is the app that got me really excited about iPhone photography. Chase Jarvis created this app and a companion book called “The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You” This app is much more than a processing app, in fact that might be the weakest (relative to this other apps) part of the software. It is really about sharing. You can easily push out images to FaceBook, Twitter, the BestCamera site, and Flickr. This app helped me win 2nd place in the Adorama iPhone Contest. Below is another sample image process entirely in Best Camera App.
Out the Window
Plastic Bullet
A new entry into the space, you can see my full review in a previous post. I really really like this app, it produces stunningly beautiful images. I am in love with this app. The only current downfall is it only saves low-res versions but that is supposed to be fixed shortly.
Tiny Dancer
Lo-Mob
lo-mob is a great little app that has a ton of fun variations to play with. It attempts to reproduce various film variations and processes including shooting through the viewfinder of a twin lens reflex camera. Lots of vintage looks and film printing options like contact sheets and instant film.
Sadness
Hipstamatic
Miss that old flaky 110 camera? Now you can have it back! Hipstamatic does a great job of producing arty plasticy images. It takes a slightly different approach, it turns your iPhone into a little plastic camera where you can choose your lens and film before you take a picture. This is a bit different since you can’t manipulate an existing picture. The results are general worth it if you know ahead of time that you want to produce a toy camera type image. You can also upgrade your camera to new film types and lenses for a few dollars more.
Sea Myth
Camera Bag
Camerabag has a number of different settings, some are toy camera based, like the Helga setting and others are just interesting processing options. Below is an example image of the infrared processing in this app. This app creates some great images on its own but I often find I use it in the middle of a workflow as either the first or last app an image goes through.
Storm Eruption
So now that you have the tools, get out and make some great images!
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