Make your weak iPhone camera do something interesting
Most cell phone cameras are pretty lousy, but the iPhone camera is especially bad considering the rest of the phone. No auto focus, no flash, 2 megapixels and a lousy lens lending a toyish quality to its images.
Over the weekend I discovered Camera Bag, a nifty little app that deliberately turns the camera into a toy. Activating the app, Camera Bag takes over the camera function and allows you to apply a range of filters over the image before finally saving it into your camera roll along with your other photos. The filters are, oddly enough, inspired by various film processes. The “Helga” simulates the look of the medium format Holga plastic toy camera. “1974” gives you washed out color with a white border, reminiscent of images in your family album from that era. “Lolo” mimics the Lomo with a square frame and high saturation. “Cinema” crops the image to a Cinemascope aspect ratio. And “1962” transforms the image to high contrast black and white.
You are, after all, applying filters and cropping to an already small, low-quality shot, so the quality leaves something to be desired. But it’s fun to lay in these effects once in while. There’s a setting to automatically save the original, too, so you’re not losing anything.
UPDATE: See potential technical issue in the comments below.