Review: Hipstamatic for iPhone

A few weeks ago I briefly mentioned hipstamatic and said I'd come back to it. Well, here I am and I have to say I love this application. It makes iPhone photography so much fun. The interface is lovely, especially changing the lens (see this video for an idea, but do turn the sound down - the song is frightful) and the upload to flickr feature (new to version 150) works really nicely, even doing some basic tagging for me.

My original concerns were, as I posted last time:

Up until now I've liked taking the photos on a "normal" camera application and applying filters afterwards - this is a change as I'll have to get it right first time.

Getting it right first time is no bad thing to get used to, and it goes along with my recent thoughts about creativity through limitations. I am trying to get into the habit of visualising the resulting image first, and then taking the photo, and given the time that the app needs to develop the image this is a good habit to get in to. I'm still definitely practicing this technique, but I'm hopeful that the improvements will be visible across any medium I photograph in - whether I'm using an iPhone, a DSLR, Mum's old Balda Baldiexette or any of the other film cameras which I own.

I do still use the normal iPhone camera sometimes, and if I'm indoors, or its dark, then I'll use night camera almost exclusively and combine it with one of the editing packages I mentioned last time (still exclusively on the iPhone though). I've enjoyed getting familiar with the different lens and film options (and I've bought all the hipstapaks), but definitely have a preference (at least at the moment) for the John S lens which I love for its vibrant colours and mottled age effect.

The photo above is my most interesting hipstamatic photo (according to the flickr interesting algorithm) but feel free to take a look at the rest of my hipstamatic photos on flickr.

Some additional sample photos: