Hipstamatic stores the settings used with each image! Tinto 1884 Lens and Ina’s 1982 Film. Interesting blur effect.

Here’s a statistic for you:  in 30 minutes, I took 36 shots with my Hipstamatic app on my iPhone.  That’s while walking around a park with a dog (who was not exactly helpful when it came to setting up shots) by myself.

After shooting, I spent about 5 minutes on post-processing the photos making only a few slight adjustments to a few of the images.  I ended up with 15 images I liked well enough to share on my blog and 4 I’m seriously considering hanging on my wall (we’ll see how they look in print).

So, in 35 minutes, I netted 15 shareable images.  Comparatively, on our Christmas hike,  hand-holding my DSLR and using only 1 lens, I took 165 shots in about 5 hours, spent at least another hour on post-processing, and netted 35 shareable images and none I would consider hanging on my wall.  That’s nearly 2 minutes per shot.

In total, I invested over 10 minutes per shareable image with my DSLR compared to over 3 minutes per shareable image with Hipstamatic.  Hmm .  . .

Of course, I’m not ready to stop using my DSLR–the images I got with my DSLR are higher quality and better technically.   I just don’t decide what to hang on my wall based on those criteria.

Sunbeams suddenly make their way through the clouds

One of the big challenges I discovered on my meander through the park is the bright sunlight problem.  This is a universal problem for LCD display screens–you can’t see them in bright light.  I literally held the phone up completely blind and tried to guess if I was pointing at the bridges at a good angle.  While I might have framed the sun beams differently had I been able to see them, I was pretty impressed with the images.

Maybe not quite the framing I would have chosen, but not bad for shooting blind

That is one of the huge advantages of a camera with a view finder:  you can see what’s in the frame no matter how much sunlight there is.  Although, supposedly pointing the lens directly at the sun puts you in danger of damaging your eyes.  That might explain why my vision seems to be failing.

Trail of Tears sculpture shot from observation pier

I love the trail of tears sculpture in the tintype settings in Hipstamatic.  I also like it shot from this position–I’ve shot it from the other side many times, but this is the first time I incorporated the observation pier in front of it.  The pole for the security cameras in the background doesn’t really work for me, but maybe I’ll see if it’s possible to remove that from the image without messing up the look.

Tisen ready to go sniff elsewhere

Tisen quickly lost patience while I was shooting at the end of the observation pier overlooking the river.  I guess there weren’t any interesting scents on the pier to keep him entertained.  He kept picking up on scents he needed to run to check out each time I was pushing the shutter button.  I really need to provide better on-the-job training if he’s going to be my assistant.