I must say that by writing this post is an admission of being severely behind on the times. I only recently upgraded my iphone 3G to the 4G. Tempted to wait for the potential 5G which was only rumored, I could not wait any longer. The 3G was beyond frustrating. After upgrading I was blown away by the camera quality of the 4G. But this is not what this post is about. What I am going to address is an infamous app called hipstamatic. An app that I purchased for my 3G. Serving me well, the app was carried over to my 4G. I would push hipstamatic and the phone to a frustrating climax.
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| Image created using Iphone 3G. A person flies above Justin Herman Plaza, San Francisco, California on an urban zipline, part of a promotion by the Canadian board of tourism. |
Realizing the iphone 4’s new camera quality I found myself relying more on my iphone when commuting to the city than carry my heavy Canon 5D rig. I was shooting everything with my iphone and hipstamatic app. I loved the square format and quirky different film formats and lens options. I had my favorites. Primarily shooting with “John S” lens and “Blackeys” Super grain black and white, and Ina’s 1969 color film. The hipstamatic app combined with the 4G camera produced great results. I was using it so much that people began questioning my use of the iphone and hipstamatic. Shooting street, candids, it worked for me, superbly, and was far from overwhelming than a 5D and a 24-70 in the subject’s face. But I digress. Here is the point of this posting:
Hipstamatic/iphone combo has some frustrating issues. As I began relying more and more on my iphone and hipstamatic in situations I would max the exposure count (virtual film roll) out in hipstatic at 9 frames. Why 9 frames? An average roll of film was at least 12 exposures? Who knows. Anxious to see each image appear before my eyes I would wait patiently for the processing to finish. The process took forever to process each frame. To my disappointment the app would crash after 2-3 frames being processed. “What the hell!” I would yell under my breath. Relaunching the app I would find the 6-7 unprocessed frames were lost. Where? Why? Who knows. They were gone as was the moment.
At first I thought this was a fluke. It continued to happen randomly. Lost images and cursing plagued my daily routine using this app. “OK” I thought. I won’t max out. Occasionally it would still happen. It was so random. I couldn’t figure it out. I loved the images though. I accepted it and continued shooting, dealing with it. I was afraid to close the app to multi-task, afraid I would lose my images. Sadly, I would find myself constantly tapping my screen to keep it active while the developing process carried on, afraid I would lose my images.
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| Using the iphone 4 and multiple apps this image of People wait in line for breakfast at a popular breakfast joint in Pleasanton, Ca. was created. |
I rarely use hipstatmatic these days. I have progressed to a new iphone work flow. I use the iphone camera to shoot so I have a “raw” untouched image. I then import into camera+ app, or the instagram app to apply filters. Camera+ allows me to tweak images in any frame format. Instagram is strictly a square format. If I do not want the square the process ends in camera+. If the image lends itself to the square I continue on to instagram where I can also share it in the instagram community. This work flow also allows me to layer many different filters to produce some interesting affects. But that is for another post.
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