A month or so ago, I picked up a much talked about iPhone app called Hipstamatic, which promised all sorts of new “toy camera” effects for my best camera (aka, the one that’s always with me). I loaded it quickly, dinked around for about 15 seconds at most, didn’t see what it did that was any different from CameraBag and forgot all about it. Thankfully, I picked it back up again this weekend and am quite happy I did.

As to the question of what it does differently than CameraBag or any of the other dozen or so photo filter apps, the answer is really one of approach. CameraBag, TiltShiftGen, Mill Colour, etc all let you digitally process your photos right on your phone , some with pre-formatted effects, and the end results are fantastic 1. I love these apps and they certainly have their place. Hipstamatic is different, though, because it really does try to emulate the experience of using a toy camera, like a Holga or Diana or any of the other models you’d find on Lomography. The app is as much about limitations as it is about creativity, starting with not letting you import pictures from your photo library 2 – you have to take everything through the virtual viewfinder.

Dig around a bit and you’ll discover that you can swap virtual lenses, film types and add flashes for extra effect. It won’t take more than a few swipes to discover that you can buy packages of new lenses, flashes and films from within the app itself for a buck a pop – a fully loaded Hipstamatic with every Hipstapack will run you a grand total of six dollars; I would’ve happily paid triple that. Photojojo did the math and figured that there are 336 lens, film and flash combinations, though I’m sure you’ll find a few favorites.

My only real turn off once I got to know it was the name, until I discovered the back story of the Hipstamatic. Bill Barol wrote a great bit for BoingBoing a while back that tells the whole story, it’s incredible and touching and will only endear you to the little app all the more.

A word of caution: the app seemed to drain my battery even faster than usual and keeping it loaded up all the time while on a morning photo safari crashed my iPhone 3GS, twice. Best to quit out occasionally to keep from having to reboot your phone.

Alright, enough jabbering, here’s my weekend through the lens of my Hipstamatic.

The folks who make Hipstamatic also built an app called SwankoLab that is all about post-processing your photos, with a twist, of course. The approach is decidedly low-fi, you mix chemicals in a virtual darkroom to create effects on photos from your library. Of course, you can process your Hipstamatic photos in Swankolab for endless fun. ↩︎

This is actually the chief complaint against the Hipstamatic app, that you can’t give your existing photos those cool effects ex post facto. Read the first few reviews (like all user comments on the web, this requires a bit of masochism) for a phenomenal display of missing the point. Personally, I’m thankful that the folks at Synthetic Corp have stuck to their original idea and not kowtowed to the App Store hoi polloi. ↩︎