Big World Picture: Getting the most out of Iphone photography #2 Hipstamatic

This post is aimed at helping you to get the most out of the Iphone and its potential. You may wonder why I have chosen the Iphone to talk about, opposed to Android or Ovi (Nokia). The reason for this happens to be that I happen to own a Iphone4 so it just seemed logical. Since I have had the Iphone4 I have found more and more things that I can do with the camera and Apps that use the camera on the phone.

Mobile phone photography really doesn't have to be the territory of just the snapshot. With just I few Apps all of which are free (some add-ons may cost extra but they are not essential), a am able to take far more interesting photos. With these Apps I am able to Edit, enhance, and add artistic touches to the photographs that I take. I love the Iphone for this and I’m sure you can do similar, if not the same things, with other phones.

I really like these camera apps for their ability to share with my other social networks such as, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr and Twitter.

So by using these Apps, you too should be able to get more out your photography on your phone. In this post I chose the Hipstamatic App and I shall show more great Apps in future posts.

Hipstamatic

This is a very popular free App and photo sharing platform. One of the reasons I like to use the Hipstamatic camera app is the square format that you are presented with, it kind of reminds me of the instant photographs taken with a Polaroid camera, indeed as do a lot of the filters, that coupled with the large array of lens flashes and films you can choose from within this app. It is great to have a camera always in my pocket ready to capture the moment or essence of any given time.

So what do you get with the Hipstamatic camera App?

Well you get a vast choice of lenses such as Helga Viking, Hornbecker, Americana, and John S plus many more. You then have a wide choice of films such as Blanko Freedom 13, Ina’s 1935 and more , and then a choice of various flashes and coloured gels. All this, making for a huge variation of configurations.

To make things a bit clearer I now shall do a run through that various elements that make up the Hipstamatic App.

Once you have downloaded the App and you have opened it up you will be faced with the screen above. It is a very simple app to use and takes no time at all to get used to working with. There is the obvious shutter button on the left, with the viewing screen in the center.

Recently Hipstamatic have added a nifty feature that is the "multi-exposure' toggle switch. To use this, just slide it over and take your first image. Try not to make this first image too exposed (bright) as remember that the darker areas will be what to second image will show up more on. Once taken the second image, it will say exposing.

A fun technique is to use this feature in the dark and by using the flash mode to fire light onto your subject but leaving the background fairly plain. Your second shot for the exposure using the flash also will give you double portraits and other fabulous effects.

There are symbols along the bottom of the main screen and you may think what are their functions?
I shall go through each symbol and by looking at the diagram at the top of this post, to be able to give you insight into them.

Developing

This will have a dot in it when it is not developing any shots, when developing however, it will show a number and this tells you how many shots are developing.

View your gallery

By tapping this it will take you to your gallery of photographs. In the gallery you can print, share and even enter competitions.

Flash

Using the flash is optional by the fact that you can use the flash whenever you like. The flash can add various colour casts to your image. There are two options on the main screen, sliding to the left gives you a lighter image but without using the built in flash of your phone. Slide the switch to the right and this will use the built in flash of your camera.
You can also change the flash by tapping the curved arrow (the access) button, this will bring the front of the camera up and by tapping the flash image (second from left), you can scroll through and chose one of the many flashes and coloured gel options. Once you have chosen your flash, tap "done" then flip the camera back over by tapping the camera image and you can then continue shooting.

By tapping the access button you can also change the lens and film.

Lenses

To change the lens it is very much the same as changing the flash but this time just slide the lens on the screen left or right to go through the wide range of lenses, whatever lens is shown will be the lens used when taking your shot.
You will also notice that on the left side of the lens is a lever, slide this up to increase the quality of the image and down to decrease the quality. Although I always just have it set to high as a phone photograph is never really going to be a particularly large file.
If you tap on the front of the lens a screen will come up with details about this lens and sometimes some sample images, I found this a great option as it saves a lot of time when going through all the different choices. Tap done to go out of this screen, then flip the screen with arrow button and shoot away.

Films

As for the flash and lens, tap the access button.

Then tap the film icon button on the left. Scroll up and down to go through the films and as with the lens, the film on show will be the chosen lens once you tap "done".
Some of the films offer different boarders and some such as "infrared" offer a dramatic colour shift.

Due to the fast amount of possibilities of combinations for lens, film and flash, there is a favorite button on the main screen (the star button). if you really like a certain combination tap this and it will be saved for you, this is a great function as it could be a lengthily task trying to find he same set-up twice.

So now that I have been through the various functions I guess the last piece of advice I can give is to get out there an shoot away and experiment.

Below are some examples of my photography using the Hipstamatic camera app.