ClassicPAN iPhone app
Because I am often carrying my camera with me, I rarely use the camera on my iPhone; but, these days, I am starting to use it a bit more for quick shots to Twitter or to this blog. I’ve never loved the camera function on the iPhone, but, like ANY camera, you can get good shots from it if you know what you are doing. (I should note that I have the 3G, not the 3GS model, so the camera is quite limited.)
Anyway, the recent change in my iPhone camera habits means that I’ve been trying out some different apps to add another dimension to the process. One of the apps I recently bought is the ClassicPAN Vintage Panoramic app (¥115 or $0.99) from misskiwi. It looks like a retro camera within your iPhone, with a shutter button at the top right, and you swipe the lower portion of the screen (where the retro looking crank handle is) to change the type of film effect – here’s a screen shot (from misskiwi.com):
classicPAN screen shot ©misskiwi.com
The images are stored in a 9:4 format (iPhones regular aspect ratio is 4:3) with the top and bottom cut out to get the effect of a panoramic photo. This aspect ratio gives the effect of a 24×54 mm panoramic 35 mm format and, as I mentioned above, there are a number of film effects to choose from. In fact, there are 11 in total: negative film, positive film, black and white film, sepia film, desaturated film, high-speed black and white film, high quality vivid film, vintage damaged film, overexposured color film, overexposured black and white film, CLS original #1 film. A vignette can also be applied and you have the option to store an original file (with no added effects) in case you want to do your post-processing elsewhere.
The weather was horrible today in Tokyo, but, as I was passing by a just-about-to-bloom cherry tree, I thought it would be a good subject for showing the different film effects. Unfortunately, I had neglected to charge my battery before going out to run some errands, so my battery died as I reached sample #9 (I think it’ll soon be time for a new iPhone because I’m almost at the 2-year mark and it seems I am always needing to charge it). Anyway, below are the samples I took (they are in the same order listed above) – the vignette effect was on for each and they are all SOOC (straight out of the camera, with no additional processing).
Overall, I like the interface and the app seems quite stable (a couple of sudden crashes, but they could be due to other issues with my phone) and it’s definitely a fun, very reasonably priced, app that will add some new creativity to your iPhone photos and make you like your iPhone camera a little bit more.
ClassicPAN iPhone app samples ©tokyololas
