red mum

Obviously these hipstamatic pics are going to be the subject of ongoing posts, I simply can’t resist them. Aside from the drama of the images, one of the things I particularly love about them is the same thing I’ve felt about digital photography in general, for little to no cost (camera aside of course) anyone can have fun with it and being on your phone, which we all carry with us at all times, it can’t be easier.

At one stage with film I just couldn’t afford photography anymore, despite having my own make-shift darkroom between paper and chemicals (and a shite darkroom location, ie my old leaking light bathroom) you literally think about how much each frame costs you from taking to printing; this changed for me with digital photography. Since I got my first digital camera I haven’t taken one pic on film, despite many threats about pulling my old film camera out. I’ve a lubitel camera that I haven’t taken pics with in about 10 years (though I will again sometime). For those people who will probably never get near a lomo camera or whatever, the hipstamatic app allows everyone to have a bit of fun with the app giving toy camera effects, course they are not as great as the real thing, but it comes a good second.

At some stage, when I have somewhere for it, I will set up the darkroom again, nothing can beat a couple of hours in a darkroom, the smells, seeing the result appear before you, for now needs must as there is nowhere in our house to set up another darkroom. Actually keeping my enlarger when I moved house became a bone of contention between Nanny and me, she could not at all understand why I would keep it. But why on earth would I get rid of it!

But back to hipstamatic pics, on most occasions I’m also taking the same image with my camera, and of course there are times when the phone is the closest I have to having the camera with me and on that note alone its better than nothing You can see more hipstamatic pics on Pixie.

Over the last while I’ve posted a couple of hipstamatic posts taken using the app on my iphone so you’ve probably gathered that I love the app. Around the time I downloaded hipstamatic I also got Panolab which allows you to either take pics and use the application to place into a panoramic image or indeed take a load of pics and use the programme to put them in order.  Other than one or two small complaints the app is brilliant and couldn’t be easier to use. I’ve included some screenshots to show at the bottom of this post. Do try it out and have some fun (I should have probably cut these out to get rid of the black background but hey )

This was my first attempt, using pics taken with the Hipstamatic John S lens and Ina’s 1969 mock film and shot in Trinity just to see what the Panolab app was like so I just shot in a row.

This next one, once again in Trinity (which they all are) was taken with the Hipstamatic John S lens (again) with the BlacKeys B&W film. This time I included sky and more foreground.

I decided on the last lot to take pics normally on the iphone so there wouldn’t be any borders and because the hipstamatic takes a while to warm up between pics and I wanted to do the shots quicker.

Once I had my shots Panolab couldn’t be easier to use (you can take images from within the progamme itself.

Once you open Panolab, you are then directed to add a pic, either by taking it there and then or from your camera roll.

When you add the second pic at this stage you drag the two images together and using two fingers can rotate the image to completely align. Its at this stage that I discovered a problem. You are not able to push the images up away from the instructions, so the very part I had to align was stuck behind the writing on the screen, so there was a bit of guess work. Even when you move out of the editing mode and push the image upwards on the screen, when you go back to align, it snaps back. But thats not really a complaint.

You are given the option of bringing a pic to the front or to the back. Once you are happy with your panorama, you’ll be asked to drag a box around your image and like me you can include the whole lot, or you could crop it to a long narrow panoramic image, something I’ll probably try the next time. The last stage is exporting the image to your camera roll.

I can definitely recommend Panolab to anyone it’s a lot of fun and well worth downloading. Do post a link in the comments to any of your panolab shots!

These were taken back in May, I forgot about them until I was clearing up the computer. I’ve loads more to clear off/sort through so there may be the odd post here of pics I’ve forgotten about.