How do you get a printed, paper photograph from your iPhone? The easiest way is probably to use an app which lets you pick a pic, and then get a print delivered to your door a few days later.
But the funnest way is probably the one used by Adam Rhoades: he prints them in a traditional darkroom, using the iPhone’s screen as both negative and enlarger bulb.
There’s not a lot I need say about today’s Best Thing Ever, so I’ll keep it brief.
Manga Camera does exactly what its name suggests, and it’s no surprise that it’s a sudden huge hit on the iOS App Store.
You know those old-style video demos which presented images as an endless wall, and your point of view was that of a tiny creature as the wall sped past you? Gridditor is that, only its also an iPad photo editing app.
Photo app Camera+ has been updated to take advantage of the iPhone 5’s new low light boost mode. This feature is new to the iPhone 5, comes enabled automatically in Apple’s camera app, and is available to third party developers as an option.
Camera+ is the first non-Apple app to incorporate it.
Lex from Modahaus got in touch to let us know about this post on their blog, comparing the macro photography capabilities of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5.
If you’re going to add retro-style filter effects to your photos, then you might as well use Instant, a new app for the iPad (and Mac) which goes the whole way: not only does it Instagrammatificate your images, but it forces you to watch the results pop out of a Polaroid camera, and then you have to wait for the pictures to “develop.”
Which is not to say that I don’t like the app. In fact, it turns out to be rather excellent.
Would you buy an iPhone photography app that only let you take one photo? Not one per day, or one per week, but one photo ever. No? Neither would I. But I would download a free app just to see what was going on.
That app is real, and it’s called One Memento.
Tripod and lighting supremo Manfrotto — the Italian company whose name seems to combine the words “man” and “frottage” — is finally getting in on the iPhonegraphy game. And its Klyp looks to be every bit as sturdy and well thought out as the rest of its products.
Got a set of those annoying lenses for your iPhone that attach via magnets? Me too. The results are great, but getting the magnets lined up to the metal donut surrounding the lens is a real pain.
And so the following news is mixed. It's bad news because it uses the same dumb attachment system, and it's good news because it's a polarizer for the iPhone. And not just any polarizer, either. This one is made by legendary filter-monger B+W.
Instagram: Probably the best thing to happen to photography in recent years. InstaStory: a slick and simple little app which turns your Instagram photos into slideshows, and adds music. If you have an Instagram account, and you have an iDevice, then you should be downloading this free app right now.
Apple’s new iPod Touch is slimmer, faster, better, yadda yadda yadda. That’s neat and all, but what really matters, and what might just spike its sales into the crazy numbers, is its new camera. It has 5MP, it has auto-focus, it has the iPhone 5’s new panorama feature, and it starts at just $300. Why the hell would anyone buy a regular point and shoot any more?
At one time, deep back in the swirling mists of time, Polaroid was like the Apple of photography, not only making the best stuff but also inventing new ways to do things. Now, the brand is nothing but a label slapped onto a bunch of crap by the current owner.
But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing amazing going on in the analog instant film world. Take a look at the Impossible Project’s FPU (Film Processing Unit), an amazing gadget that marries your iPhone to real, instant analog photos.
Etchings is an iPhone photography app which takes your pictures and turns them into very realistic etchings. Or fake etchings, I guess. Whatever you call them, if you pick the right source pic then you’ll end up with something that looks as if you lacquered your own metal plate, etched it, dropped it into an acid bath, washed and dried it, inked it up and ran it through a printing press.
Only instead of taking a whole morning, it takes just seconds.
It’s taken a while, but the first iPad-specific camera apps are starting to trickle into the app store. The iPad 2’s camera was, frankly, a total piece of crap. The new iPad, however, sports the sensor of the iPhone 4 and the optics of the 4S. It was only a matter of time before the likes of ProCamera came along to take advantage of them.
Seems like everyone nowadays is trying to build something off of Instagram. We’ve seen cameras and printers that look like the Instagram icon, but nothing we’d ever really want, except maybe this new idea, called the Instacube.
Instacube is basically just a digital photoframe – you know, the kind that were almost popular back in 2006? Except it connects to Instagram and lets you view pictures from any feed on Instagram, or follow certain hashtags. You could even set it up in your living room and connect it to your own Instagram feed to show all your house guests how you’re a totally badass iPhoneographer, or something.
September is back-to-fashion month, when glossy magazines bulge at the seams with their biggest issues of the year.
To celebrate its fashion-packed September issue, W magazine partnered with Hipstamatic for a new lens called “WMag Freepak,” offered free to download in-app until September 2, and launched a contest that will earn the winner a chance to shoot for the magazine.
Photographer Peter Ellenby, a self-taught shutterbug who has lived in San Francisco, shooting bands, events, portraits and fashion since 1994, took the WMag lens on a trial run for pics that will appear in an upcoming edition of Hipstamatic’s iPad magazine Snap.
Here are his tips for photographing fashion, including why you should save money on a studio but always accessorize your shots with a touch of crazy.
One of the best things about using an iPhone to shoot your photos is the huge range of accessories you can buy to help out. But what if you’re on a budget? Or you just aren’t really into photography enough to spend more money? Or if you’re just bored today and feel like playing around?
Then you’re in the right place, because we’re about to take a look at DIY iPhone photo filters. And lenses. And other modifiers. And best of all, you probably have most of them around your home or office, ready for some instant procrastination. Let’s go!
Camalapse is short for “camel prolapse,” although oddly it has nothing to do with either ungulate mammals or slipping organs. Instead, the Camalapse is a clockwork stand for your camera which takes 360˚ time-lapse sequences.
I have no idea how many apps there are in the iTunes store that let you add filters to your photos. But I do know how many there are to remove those filters, and turn your picture into something that you can look back on in ten years’ time without cringing: One. It’s called Normalize, and it comes from Joe Macirowski.
Question: Do you have any idea what the following terms mean?
Multiply, Screen, Layover, Soft Light, Hard Light, Color Dodge, Color Burn, Addition, Difference, Darken, Lighten, Hue, Saturation, Color and Luminosity.
Answer (if you didn’t answer “yes” yourself): They’re blending modes. And a new iOS called Layover lets you use them to combine layered images. Still confused? Read on…
Back up your photos. Always shoot in RAW. After a while all the good advice starts to sound like the adults speaking in Charlie Brown cartoons. Wah-wah-wah-wahwahwah.
Especially now iCloud manages our backups and our iPhones only shoot JPGs.
But one piece of advice is still worth listening to: “always rotate JPGs losslessly.” What?
When it comes to iPhoneography, “retro” usually refers to adding some light leaks, desaturating some colors or adding fake grain. But for Jake Potts, it means taking the iPhone’s rear glass panel, turning it into a wet collodion plate and taking a real photograph with it. And because he’s a true photo nerd, he also documented every step of the process.
If I owned an iPhone, then I’d already have bought the Olloclip lens, a clip on widget which adds fisheye, macro and wideangle lenses to the iPhone using a slip-over clip. It’s impossible to line it up wrong, and it fits in a pocket or bag. But I don’t have an iPhone. I have an iPad. And I hate futzing around with all the magnetic lenses I have: they’re easy to lose, easy to get dirty and impossible to line up. What I need is a Mobi-Lens, a universal clip-on lens from Kickstarter.
The idea that you need a fancy camera and a bag of lenses to take good photos is utter crap. It’s a myth beloved of camera makers, and lapped up by amateur snappers who think that a Leica M9 or a Nikon D700 will somehow improve their tawdry, insipid holiday snaps.
Don’t agree? Here’s exhibit A: Photographer Dan Chung is covering the Olympics for the Guardian with an iPhone 4S, a pair of binoculars (used as a telephoto lens) and the iOS app Snapseed, and his photos are – too put it plainly – better than yours and mine.
Remember those neat Lightroom presets which would add Instagram filters to your big grown-up photos? Now the author Casey Mac is back with versions for Photoshop (snore) and Aperture (yay!).
