Hipstamatic for iPhone -- Drinking The Electric Kool-Aid

One of the nice things about being an early adopter is ... er, haha, did I just write that with a straight face? I am not an early adopter of anything. I am practically a Luddite sometimes, and furthermore, I am as cheap as they come. So when I'm shelling out money for some cool new toy, even if it's something made by Apple, which owns a big part of my soul, I want to make sure it's worth it.

Which is my way of saying: my mother-in-law had an iPhone for, like, a year before I got one.

Now that I and half of everybody on Planet Earth has an iPhone, I have to admit, I find it pretty indispensible. I use it as a phone, of course, and for checking Twitter and emails and Facebook, keeping track of appointments, staying on top of traffic and weather, recording adorable things that my daughter sings -- the same stuff I would use any old mobile phone for, really.

But I've also used it for blogging and on way more than one occasion, I have entertained Shae with the SpongeBob and More Toast! apps I've downloaded. Hey, a mom has to do what a mom has to do. Desperate times call for desperate measures, etc.

During my unfortunately short-lived (but still intermittently ongoing) Project 365, I sometimes used my iPhone for taking pictures, and as Shae gets bigger and taller and more mobile and much more resistant to getting her picture taken, I have been using it more often to catch some quick pictures. And as much as I love my iPhone, it ... well, it doesn't always take the best pictures. I mean, they're not bad, and if you can get good light and the right angle, some pictures can be quite good.

But, still and all, they're cell phone pictures. And I wanted to find a way to make iPhone pictures look like they're better than your average cell phone pictures, because I really think the iPhone is way better than your average cell phone. I've been searching the Internet for some hints and suggestions, and I settled on Hipstamatic.

Now generally I have two criteria for selecting iPhone apps, regardless of their function: they need to work, and they need to be free or cheap. Hipstamatic is not free -- it's $1.99 for the "standard equipment," and 99¢ for each of four different "HipstaPaks," or add-on upgrades -- but it does work. Your base model includes three "lenses" for different lighting effects, three different kinds of "film" for special processing looks, and a special "flash" for flare effects. It also includes a convenient "shake for random" feature, which will generate a random lens-film-flash combo. Surprise yourself!

I still don't know what I'm doing, but to create a baseline for myself and try to figure out of this is worth the two bucks (before I spent more on additional HipstaPaks), I took essentially the same picture using one kind of film ("Blanko," which just applies a simple white border around the picture), each different lens, and each different flash effect, like so:

This is a plant in my office, a variegated green pothos in a plain gray plastic pot, on top of a standard beige filing cabinet, in front of off-white blinds. The left column is the Kaimal Mark II lens, middle is the John S, and right is the Jimmy, which I appear to have some sort of random trouble with, because every picture with that lens is blurry for some reason. Top row is no flash, center is standard flash, and bottom uses Dreampop, which puts that sort of motor-oil-on-puddles rainbow flare in random places.

Okay, seriously: these are terrible pictures, but that is because I am a terrible photographer. Considering that I had to do nothing but push a button and the app did the rest of the work, I am pretty impressed.

The interface itself is very cute, too: you can see the front of the "camera" to swap out lenses ...

... and use the back to frame your shot.

There is even a little button to "turn on" the "flash," and it makes that "wind-up" noise that old cameras make. It's pretty cool. And when you're done taking pictures you can pull up a "Recent Prints" screen ...

... that shows what combo you used, in case you're an idiot like me who can't tell anything apart yet.

All told, it's pretty cool. I haven't decided yet whether I'll be getting any of the add-ons, but I might. (I probably will.) I also don't know how often I'd use this for pictures of people -- although this would take some kick-ass Facebook profile pics, no doubt -- but for photos of stuff and/or random nature? OH HELL YES.

The cons, as I see them at this point: I am generally not a huge fan of "overprocessed" photos, and there's no way that it can be avoided. This app is pretty much designed to add special effects. There is no way to soften the effects unless you do further post-production. You also can't process pictures you've already taken, so you have to use the app to get any of these effects. However, the makers say they're working on it -- we'll see what happens. Also, this app is only available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Pros: This thing takes some REALLY COOL PICTURES. But don't just take my word for it ... you can see other great shots here, here, and here.