As much as we love our fancy-pants digital cameras, there’s something about old-school analog gadgets that brings out the nostalgic sentimentalist in anyone. The Hipstamatic iPhone app ($1.99) lets us visit those bygone days when there was no such thing as a touch screen.
For $1.99, Hipstamatic comes with several different lenses, which can be changed with a swipe, a couple of different film types, and flash effects. For 99 cents each, additional “Hipstapacks” can be purchased, which include different lenses, films, or flashes. The whole package will cost you just under $5.
For your $5, you get a neat little toy. The photos you take with Hipstamatic are usually a surprise—the view-finder area is pretty small in relation to the entire iPhone screen, and the various films, lenses and flashes apply effects to your photos as you take them, rather than after the fact.
You’re not going to create anything you couldn’t accomplish with photo manipulation software, but the quirky photos you’ll take with Hipstamatic are just plain fun, and the advantage Hipstamatic has over real old-school cameras is that you can delete anything you don’t like.
Photos can be uploaded to Facebook or emailed directly from the iPhone app.
