I happened across an interesting iPhone App today that integrates with/enhances the built-in camera.  It is called CameraBag and it purports to emulate other camera formats/film sizes/effects.  You can use it “live” while taking pictures or doctor already taken pictures on your iPhone, and I must say, it’s pretty cool.  It won’t replace Photoshop, but for on-the-fly pix to be posted to the cloud, it has it’s uses.  And at a current price of $2.99, one could do worse.

The app mimics various cameras lens/exposure styles (apparently the preset names are changed for copyright reasons), border styles and aspect ratios:

1. Helga: An old toy square format camera with vignetting. Square format.
2. Lolo: Not sure of the vintage, but makes very vivid shots. Square format w/borders.
3. Cinema: Dramatic contrast-y shots with the appropriate 16:9 aspect ratio.
4. Ansel: Mister Adams style smooth silvery B/W gradients.  Original aspect.
5. 1962: Old style contrast-y B/W. Original aspect.
6. 1974: Washed out color photos.  3:2 bordered aspect (Polaroid?).
7. Infrared: For infrared landscapes shots.  Original aspect.

Here are comparison shots based on one picture – click on the thumbs for larger pix (the thumbnails don’t represent the aspect ratio of the final shots):

This is the original shot from my iPhone.  Predictably, it’s a crappy shot.  A no flash indoor/incandescent light/no ambient light shot, so it is fuzzy and has the horrible indoor white balancing issues you would see in such a snap.  Not to mention, the iPhone is not the best camera on the planet.

The orginal shot

This is the Helga tweek: all nicely washed out and vignetted.  It has charm.

Helga preset

This is the Lolo shot: it boosted the shitty indoor “gold bloom” white balance issues, but amped up the colors and contrast.  I’ll say more about this preset later since this is a bad example of this preset.  Note the stylistic thick border around this one – kind of cool, no?

Lolo preset

The Cinema shot: the aspect of this shot is all wrong (since it is applying a 16:9 landscape aspect to a portrait aspect shot), but it’s nicely touched up the contrast and colors of the shot.  Probably want to shoot “live” through the CameraBag when using this one rather than post-processing (it gives you a mask to aim off of when you are shooting “live”).

Cinema preset

The Ansel shot: very nice smooth greyscaling.  This will work nicely if one wants a good B/W shot.

Ansel preset

The 1962 shot: cool, constrasty and grainy.  I like this one.  One could get all dramatic with this one.

1962 preset

The 1974 shot: normally I like more saturated photos but I like the somewhat washed out version here and the interesting aspect ratio/bordering. Plus, Bethany likes it, so it’s gotta be good.

1974 preset

The Infrared shot: probably a bad example since I think this is mostly for outdoor nature shots.

Infrared preset

One can either post-process shots taken with the internal camera – in which case it creates a new processed copy – or “shoot directly” from the plugin where it just saves the doctored version. As noted above, it’s probably a good idea to shoot “live” through the app when using one of the square-ish or cinema presets.

I wanted to give another quick look at one of the presets that looks useful: the Lolo preset.  It seems to make things really vivid.  Consider the following:

Bad light Lolo test

This is a prety banal shot really.  Just an uninteresting tester picture of some junk on my back porch.  However, this was taken on one of those horrible San Fransicso days where the light, the air, and everything else was basically the color of dirty dishwater.  The light was low, the focus is lame, and there was no flash.  But everything with color, including the cherry tomatoes on our dying vines, has some snap.  So that’s sort of cool.

All told, CameraBag is no substitute for lovingly post-processing your shots in Photoshop/Pixelmator/whatever.  Then again, the iPhone is not really a substitute for a proper point and shoot (or better).  Since more and more photos from sketchy “cameras” like the iPhone are getting put online via social networking sites/apps without intervention, I think that CameraBag is not a bad way to touch up an iPhone photo or front-load a little artistic touch before doing something with it.

Final verdict: check it out!