I just upgraded to an iphone 4. It comes with a 3mp camera that can actually focus, I am suddenly really in love with taking pictures with my phone. As much as I love cameras of all sizes, the ability to share the images immediately from my phone is the major reason I reach for my phone as often as my point n shoot. In fact if you look at the stats of many photo sharing sites, smartphone usage is well on the rise, while point n shoots are waning. So eventually, everyone will have a phone for those quick snaps and a DSLR for the big events.
Here are the two apps I recently started using on my iphone. I find them both so fun to use.
Instagram allows you to take a snap, apply some cool filters to give your pictures a real stylized look, add a caption and send to Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, all in less time it took me to type this. It’s a really fast and fun to use. It has a social aspect to it, you add other friends who are instagram users so you can see their pics. Best of all it’s free! FREE!!
Hispstamatic
Hipstamatic takes the whole analog point and shoot aesthetic and runs with it. The whole UI of the app is based on a rare point n shoot some people covet. You can change film (really different processes) and lenses (again another level of processing) to create unique looks. They sell additional film types and lenses. You can share the images as well, though just adding another screen to tap feels like a major hurdle. So of the two I use Instagram a bit more. This app is $1.99
As many people who love these kind of apps there are a few who find it all a bit much. Tony Fouse is a good example. I can see their point but shooting these images, the danger in having all your memories look like old snaps that were never old. But as long as I balance them out with “real” images, I’ll continue to have fun.
You can see some more iphone images over on my flickr account here
