I’m not an iPhone’r. I’m an Android’r. Actually, I was really late to the tech bandwagon, only getting a smart phone this last fall. I can remember about two years ago sitting on my couch with a friend while she made fun of me because I was trying to text the word ‘the’ or something lame like that and was struggling. She then reprogrammed my phone so it would do predictive writing – and that was the beginning of my descent of being hooked on being “connected.”
Meanwhile, I have a cell phone that has a 5 megapixel sensor in it. I am a “professional” photographer that operated successfully with a Canon 20D from 2005 to May 2010, which was an 8 megapixel body, before I upgraded to the 7D. I know it’s a completely different type of sensor, but I was printing 48″ prints on that 20D. A phone that is 5mp?!? That’s nuts. I’ve come a long way in the last 2 years.
Lately I’ve been noticing all the things that the iPhone’s camera can do with all of it’s retro and trendy settings. They’re all over facebook and I even have a flickr contact who only shoots his iPhone and creates amazing works. Though it is a phone, they can document really well! The Droid camera is not too shabby either. I just haven’t used it too much. It’s hard to focus on using a slow point and shoot when you’ve got ‘pro’ gear lying around. The other night I was curious about what was available in the Android Market so I did some perusing and ended up installing retroCamera but hadn’t gotten a chance to check it out until tonight. It has five different style cameras of which four have black & white options. All five offer slightly different processing and styling, all creating very unique results.
Tonight while I was cooking dinner, I took the time to get some sample images of the different styles. These are the results:
The Bärbl: a low neutral saturation, medium contrast, minor stratches
Little Orange Box: Color and BW, high X-processing with a red/purple color cast with severe film scratches and damaged frame
Xolaroid 2000: Color and BW, high X-processing, blue/green color cast, minor glossy scratches
pinhOle Camera: Color and BW, low saturation, multi color cast swirls, medium scratches and contrast, full bleed film frame
FudgeCan: Color and BW, low saturation, no color cast, minimum scratches, medium contrast, full frame
So what do you think? Personally, I’m still not so sure how often I’ll be using them. At least now I can say I’ve explored it. If I had to pick, I like the BW versions of Little Orange Box and FudgeCan over the others. But that’s just me.
ps. That’s ground venison browning in a cast iron skillet. I’m flying solo tonight so I went simple. I added some diced tomato and a bunch of stuff from the spice cabinet. I let it simmer a while then I inhaled it all.
Pypeline.