There are plenty of iPhone apps that mimic the look of vintage analog photography, but what about retro video game photography? “8-Bit Pocket Camera” is a new app that is designed to mimic the style of the Game Boy Camera, which became pretty popular on playgrounds in the late 90s. In addition to the 8-bit photos, the user interface will surely cause some serious nostalgia. You can pick up the app for $1 over in the iTunes App Store.
3D Photo is hardly a useful app, but it’s a fun way to play with the camera on your iPhone. What it does is map your photographs onto geometric shapes, giving them a pseudo-3D effect by allowing you to move the shapes and view them from different perspectives. You can find it for $1 in the iTunes store.
(via John Nack)
Cameras usually hide what it’s shooting from you when the sensor is capturing light, so you can’t watch slow shutter speed photographs as they’re being shot. Magic Shutter is an app for the iPhone that shoots these long exposure using the camera’s video feed, which allows you to see the photograph as its being “developed” on the screen.
Due to limitations Apple places on video resolution, this app currently only spits out low res images (though an update with 1MP photos is coming soon). If you want to play with it you can find it for $3 in the iTunes store.
Magic Shutter (via Wired)
There seems to be a growing trend of professional photographers teaming up with developers to create the “ultimate” photography application for the iPhone. In September 2009, photographer Chase Jarvis teamed up with Ubermind to create The Best Camera, an ecosystem that revolves around the Best Camera iPhone application.
Now, Lisa Bettany of MostlyLisa.com has partnered with Taptaptap to create Camera+, an “ultimate” photo app that aims to upgrade your iPhone photography. Development of the application took over a year. Here’s a sample photograph posted on the website:
The app, priced at $2.99 like Best Camera, includes features such as a stabilizer and dozens of 1-touch effects to enhance your photos. Here’s a short video in which Bettany introduces the application:
If you decide to try out the app, let us know how you like it!
Streetmuseum is a new (and free) augmented reality iPhone app created by the Museum of London that allows you to browse historical photographs in various parts of the city.
The app leads you to various locations around London using either the map or GPS. Once you’re there, click the “3D View” button, and the app will recognize the location and overlay the historical photograph over the live video feed of the real world, giving you a brief glimpse into how the past looked.
We’ve seen projects that overlaid historical photos over modern ones, but this is the first time we’ve seen an augmented reality app do it for you in real time. Here are a few more examples:
If only this were available in every big city around the world.
Mopho is a new photo sharing service with a strange name — until you realize it’s a domain hack using Tonga’s ccTLD, making it mopho.to.
The idea is similar to more established location based services such as Foursquare or Gowalla, but rather than sharing your locations via check-ins and then adding photos, you share a geotagged photograph through the iPhone application. You can download the free application here.
Once you capture a photo, geotag its location, and publish it through the app, your friends will be notified through their apps, the Mopho website, or Facebook.
The photo and location service spaces are both extremely crowded with 800-pound gorillas in each. I don’t think Mopho offers enough to rise above its competition, but it might succeed in developing a small, enthusiastic community of users like all the other services in the long tail of these spaces.
Fotobabble is a newly launched service that allows you to add a short audio clip to photographs via either your computer or iPhone (using their free application).
Here’s the description on their website:
Fotobabble lets you create talking photos in two clicks. Simply upload a photo and then record your voice directly through your computer to create a talking photo. You can easily share it by e-mail, Facebook, Twitter or embed it into a blog or website.
It’s free and all completely web-based. No software to download, just register and get started in seconds.
Here’s an example Fotobabble found on the website that we embedded into this post:
(via PhotographyBLOG)
Abandoned is an iPhone application by design group FORM that allows you to find modern day ruins to explore and photograph. There are many people who enjoy photographing abandoned and run-down locations, and can easily find and share such locations using this app.
In addition to providing a list of locations near you, you can also read and write comments on locations and maintain a personal, private log of locations you’ve found.
The application costs $2.99 and is available from the App Store. I think this would make a really good free web application if someone has the time to build it.
