I haven’t been taking many photos lately, probably due to all the holiday hubbub and stress. Now that I don’t have to visit 5 people in the space of 2 days in addition to the crazy work schedules of both me and my husband, I think I can blog again. Thank goodness.
I did get some new toys over the holiday season. My birthday is awfully close to Christmas so I tend to get all my fun presents bundled at the end of the year. For my birthday I got an iPhone. I love it! It’s wonderful not to have to carry a PDA and cell phone separately, which is one of the reasons I wanted one. An unexpected treat has been the built-in, goofy little 2 mega pixel camera.
In previous devices I’ve found that phone and PDA cameras have generally been pretty worthless, especially in low light. Not so with the iPhone. I decided to try it out inside at the Air Mobility Command Museum located on Dover AFB. Located inside a large hangar the light is pretty poor. I’ve taken my lo-fi cams there once or twice and gotten bad results without flash. Just goofing around, I started taking some pictures of the kids. It works surprisingly well. It adjusts to the low-light situation and doesn’t take forever to take the shot, so there is hope that your subject might be able to stay still enough for a decent picture.
In addition, there are a great many apps available for the camera. I’ve downloaded Steady Cam, which works pretty well to keep your shot still and Toy Camera, which gives your shots toy-like effects. You can’t control which pics get which effects so you just have to take what you get. My favorite app is Camera Bag, which allows you to choose which toy/vintage camera effect to apply to a picture you’ve just taken, or to one already stored on your phone. You get to choose between 9 filters, including Helga, Lolo and Instant.
I know, I know. It’s digital! It’s NOT lo-fi and using those stupid programs to make your pictures look lo-fi is cheating. I completely agree however, check out this little digicam’s shots. They are low-res, low-tech and completely unsuitable for enlarging or using in any real meaningful manner. They’re not the crazy crisp shots that your DSLR or even a good point-and-shoot could give you. For personal use and screwing around, it’s just plain fun.
Next time I’ll talk about the other fun toy I got over the holidays. A big, fat Kiev 88 medium format film camera….
ipdegirl
You hit the nail on the head there. It is just fun and who cares that its a digital camera. I realy get fed up with all those people that put a stigma on anything digital. If it makes you happy thats all that should matter just don’t put digital pictures in a Holga flickr pool.
[...] to work with. I look at it as a bridge between the digital SLR world and the toy world (see my post New Year, New Camera ). I recently got a couple of new apps for my iPhone that I’ve been really [...]