Retro Cam app for Android camera/phones

I have been having a great deal of fun lately as well as recharging my creative thinking by shooting with a few photography apps available for free for my Motorola “Droid” camera/phone. I wrote about the FX Camera app in a previous post. This post discusses the Retro Cam app.

Retro Cam simulates several styles of old film cameras. The choices include Barbl(cheap German rangefinder), Little Orange Box(mass produced “toy” camera), Polaroid(with several choices of “look”), Pinhole and Fudge(another “toy” camera look). All camera choices include the ability to select black&white or color output and rectangular or square framing. All also include some degree of “vintage” film effects such as scratches, frame edges, fading, enhanced or reduced saturation, etc… All image files produced are quite small(580x580 pixels for my favorite square framing option) but are quite adequate for on-line sharing and web page illustration purposes.

Except for the very small file sizes produced, I think this is a great app and I am using it more that others I have been exploring. I harbor a deep fondness for vintage cameras and still occasionally use a twin-lens American-made medium-format Cirro Flex from the late 1940’s and a Russian-made medium-format Kiev60 from the 1970’s. Both cameras use square framing. I also love shooting with my Lensbaby Composer on my DSLR, which reminds me of shots from antique large-format view cameras. With the new Android camera/phone apps, I can pick and choose from the various styles at will or just shoot them all in sequence and sort out my favorites later on the computer.

In conclusion, Retro Cam is a fun and easy to use app for mobile Android camera/phones. This app adds variety and interest to photos, effectively camouflages some of the short-comings of the naked built-in camera and produces files that are easily e-mailed or uploaded to an on-line photo album.  Last but not least, it won’t cost you anything to try it out.

Android cat composite

 

I took a real day off today(at least most of it), did a little recreational reading and spent a few hours playing around with a couple of free photo apps for my Android phone/camera. Since the old black cat was being cooperative, I was able to cycle through almost all of the various options available and get direct, side-by-side comparison shots. This type of experimentation gives me a basis for deciding when and for what subjects I would use any of these variations in "real world" photography. At any rate, the cat and I both had fun and I will now be keeping a sharper eye out for more of these apps.

FX Camera app for Android phone/cameras

FX Camera is a free app available for android mobile phone/cameras. FX makes a variety of different and interesting photo effects available while also down-sizing the file size for easier and faster on-line sharing. I think of it as a third-party upgrade equivalent to the “picture modes” available on most compact digital cameras and DSLR’s.

+Toy Cam mode gives options for color-biased cross-processed simulations, high contrast, vivid single color renditions, warm tone and monochrome. Framing can be set for rectangular or square. Severity of vignettes and pinhole(round) can also be set.

+Polandroid is a Polaroid simulator. The main choices are vintage, faded, aged or monochrome. Rectangular of square framing can be chosen as well.

+Fisheye has only two settings to choose from-round or full-frame.

+Symmetricam splits the frame either vertically or horizontally and creates a mirror-image double.

+Warhol makes four single-color posterizations of the image.

+Normal gives choices of monochrome, sepia, negative or solarize.

I found the Fisheye mode most interesting and quite convincing. Both the circular and full-frame images emphasize and enlarge the central portion of the frame while proportionally distorting the edges. The middle of the image seems to bulge forward while the edges retreat into the background. As with any “real” fisheye lens, much more effective for some subjects than for others and easily overdone.

The Toy Cam is also a mode I will use for some subjects to add interest. I am a fan of vintage cameras and particularly liked the effect produced by the monochrome-medium vignette-square frame settings in combination. The ”look” is similar of some old medium-format film TLR’s I have used.

This app adds a lot of choices for phone/camera images where there were none previously. I would have no problem leaving a Holga or Dianna or CirroFlex TLR at home, saving the film and processing money and carrying just my phone with this app. The image files produced are quite small for prints but adequate for on-line use. And it is really difficult to argue with free.

Imgur for Android makes photo hosting easy

The following article is a guest post by smart-phone expert Craig Walkup.

 

An aspect that I have always felt has been lacking in the mobile world is the ability to upload photos to photo hosting sites easily and seamlessly. Now one of the best options I have seen for this comes to the Android Market in the form of Imgur for Android.


First things first, if you have never heard of Imgur, you need to know that it is one of the best and simplest photo hosting sites on the internet. Where most hosting sites have all kinds of limitations, from forcing you to create an account, to limiting what you can do with photos after you upload them, Imgur has none of that. You can literally go to their site, hit upload, pick your file, and watch as your photo is quickly uploaded, then presented to you with links for HTML codes, message board codes, and even direct image links. You also have the option of creating an account if you want to, which will simply hold on to all your uploaded photos in a simple page so you can go there and find them easily by thumbnail. I had been using Imgur for a while, and was elated to find out that someone had made a real app for the Android operating system.


This app is as easy as the website to use. Upon opening the app, you will be taken directly to the pictures you have already uploaded in your account, along with buttons at the top to refresh the album, a camera button to open the camera, and an upload button to upload a picture from your phone. If you don't have an Imgur account, the screen won't have any pictures on it. I suggest opening an account, as it keeps track of everything you've uploaded, and you can completely manage the files from the app or from the website.
When you click to upload a photo, it will being you to your gallery screen, where you choose what photo to upload, then it will ask you if you want to upload it under your account or anonymously. Another neat thing about the app is that it integrates itself in to the operating system, so when you take a picture and click the share button, imgur comes up as an option along with text, email, facebook, twitter, etc. This is an excellent app for any Android user wishing to use photos between their mobile device and the internet.


Imgur for Android is available in the Android Market as a free app. Make sure if you search for it, you download the one called "Imgur for Android"
developed by Colin Edwards. The other ones that come up are poor applications. There is a download version for this app if you feel like supporting the developer, it is $1.99 but doesn't seem to include any added functionality, except preference in future feature requests.


Imgur: http://imgur.com/


Imgur for Android:
http://www.appbrain.com/app/imgur-for-android/com.imgurforandroid


Craig is a contributor for iPhone repair techs at iFixyouri.