{maique}

On the latest Hemispheric Views episode there’s Photography Corner. Hipstamatic X came up, and the nice gentlemen (Hi, guys! 👋) wondered how I felt about the app.

Quick, rather messy, thoughts below…

I have used, and spent a decent amount of money, on the old Hipstamatic. I’ve used it since 2009, if the app is not lying. We even used it for the newspaper, back in the day. iPhone 4, maybe? That was the OG app, the one that started the whole “shoot with the phone” thing for me. It was fun.

Hipstamatic X is certainly fun, still, but I’m probably too old for it as well. I have moved on to using the iPhone more like a camera, and less like a toy camera.

It’s SO buggy too! It crashes, it forces me to reboot my phone every once in a while, and I keep tapping the wrong buttons. The experience is far from perfect. I’d even say it’s far from usable. Having to pay for that? Meh.

I do love one lens/film combo, but it’s a very un-Hipstamatic one, not a lot of processing going on there. I prefer less edited photos and, whenever I’m using another camera on the app, I feel like I’m overdoing it.

A filter will not save a bad photo, and there are a lot of those being shared in the app. I get that’s the point of the app, but…

Some users do have nice photos, but most are not that interesting, in my opinion. That might work for some, and I respect the purpose of the app, but one has to pick where one spends their free time, and I can scroll for hours and be underwhelmed most of the time here.

It’s like this is the anti-Glass. I get the impression that not a lot of thinking goes into the photos shared on Hipstamatic, and too much on those available in Glass.

To each his own, obviously, but both end up not working for me. I don’t have time for either of them, and I’m not sure how they’d even fit in my workflow, if I did find the time.

Yet, I do enjoy a good toy, and I’m still taking advantage of the three-month trial.

I enjoy the gamification, the passport stamps, the Snappy Hour, the streak counter,… That has been one of the reasons why I keep doing it, but that enthusiasm has limits.

Launching the app, when it works, is actually fast, as I’m using the lock screen widget. That’s one thing that I enjoy.

One thing that annoys me, is that it won’t save the original, full frame, photo next to the edited one. The original Hipstamatic didn’t as well, and it was one of the reasons why I stopped using it. Meanwhile, they fixed that on that app (it does now), but not on this one. Whenever I see something that I’d like to save, I’ll have to shoot it twice. One for the Hipsta, another “for real”. Of course, some things are impossible to shoot twice, so the Camera app will always get the first go. I can import it later but, and apply the filters, but after a few times, why bother?

Then there’s the fact that almost no one I know is over there. It’s one of the reasons why I pick social media sites/platforms. If no one is around, and the ones that are, aren’t appealing to me, I won’t stick around for long.

Another odd feature is the time limit on the photos. They’ll just go away after a while. No way to stop that. Odd.

No hashtags, or any way to find photos, other than by country/region, and even that is a mess. Not cool.

In the end, it’s fun, but I don’t think this will last. I can still get the same result with the original Hipstamatic, and the original photo. That’s what I’ll do. Or just stick to the Camera and Lightroom combo that works for me. Sharing in Micro.blog, crossposted to Mastodon. I like that. Once in a while, I’ll still post to Instagram. That has the advantage of having all my friends, and clients.

Update: Since I downloaded the original Hipstamatic app when I signed up for the new X version, I have also been testing the older one.

JK kept telling me this was the one to go with, and I might have to agree. Thank you!

I already have the filters I need (and plenty more to go with them). The camera mode is good, as you can pick a simple, Camera.app like UI, or the playful Hipstamatic mode.

And, better, I can just shoot as I normally do, with the camera, and apply the filters later. Edited photos are saved as new ones too! Great.

This is as close as possible to a perfect situation. I have a few presets/combos saved as favorites, a couple of taps is all I need to get the edited photos saved to the Camera Roll.