iPhone - Specialty Toy Camera and Plastic Camera Apps

These Cameras all have a cool Toy Camera interface and are loaded with toy camera effects. They all let you either swap lenses, flashes and/or films.  Some have in-app purchases for more lens packages. If you are at all into iPhone photography they are really fun to play around with and you can get some great pictures pretty easily. A lot of these cameras also have Flickr groups that you can check out to see what kind of pictures you might be able to get. I find the Flickr groups very helpful when deciding whether or not to purchase a new camera app.

Hipstamatic

There is a reason why Hipstamatic is one of the most popular toy camera apps in the appstore. It's got a great user interface, some really cool effects and I find it really fun to swap out lenses, flashes and films. The app comes with a basic lens/flash/film pack and offers other packs as in-app purchases. I bought all of them and think the extra cost was worth it.  This is definitely my most used camera app on my iPhone.

Pinhole Camera

So far the Pinhole Camera is pretty simple. Like the Hipstamatic camera, you get a little viewfinder to frame your pictures. The graphics and interface look pretty good and the pictures come out great. There are only three "film type" options so far but they are good. What I really like about this camera is the double exposure option that enables you to take some pretty cool, textured photographs. You can share your photos to Facebook or Email from within the app and turn the iPhone 4 flash on or off. The only problem at the moment is that it outputs at a low-resolution, but I'm sure they will be able to fix that quickly.

Retro Camera Plus

Retro Camera Plus is a free toy camera that is supported by ads. Although I'm not a fan of ugly ads cluttering up my screen, the app is decent so I don't really mind that much. There are five different vintage cameras, complete with descriptions and a color/b&w option. The app doesn't support full iPhone 4 resolution yet, which is disappointing but I'm glad to see another plastic toy camera app emerge. Plus it is free, so why not give it a shot?

Pudding Camera

Pudding Camera used to have a cool toy camera interface but with the most recent update it changed to a couple of small buttons. Regardless, Pudding Camera is a great and free toy camera with a bunch.  Unfortunately, its all in Korean and there isn't an English version yet. There are a bunch of different simulated cameras and films to choose from, including; A few Lomo-like toy cameras, a Panorama, a Fish Eye and two multi-photo cameras like the ClassicSAMP.

ClassicTOY - Plastic Toy Camera

All of the Classic series of cameras come from the same developer. They all have a variety of film types to swap out. My primary problem with this method is that there is no way to preview your film type selection to see what it may look like and I can't remember what they would all look like if I were to use them. With that said, the ClassicTOY camera takes some pretty cool pictures and has a nice and simple interface. It comes with a couple of lenses and film types and you have to purchase the rest inside the app. The addition lenses include a pin-hole simulator, a weird color wash lens, a four and six picture lens and a fish eye. I don't use this camera as much as Hipstamatic but still enjoy busting it out once in a while.

ClassicPAN - Vintage Panoramic Camera

ClassicPAN does one thing, it takes pictures with the top and bottom cut off to create a panorama. Its got some cool film types that you can swap out and a nice vignetting effect. I like using this camera for quick panoramic shots because its easy and fast. They pictures come out nice like all the other Classic camera but if I want to take a real panoramic picture, I use the app Pano.

ClassicSAMP - 4 lens toy camera

I'm not really a fan of the "mulit-lens" camera. They all take a series of pictures and just stack them next to or on top of each other.  If you are into that sort of thing this app is simple and does it well, with some nice photo effects.  I prefer to take my pictures separately and put them together in an app like Diptic.  ClassicSAMP is more suited to action shots, where you want to take 4 pictures pretty close together and place them next to each other.

ClassicINSTA

ClassicINSTA is another easy to use and quick toy camera with a variety of film types and three user interfaces that you can choose from. Its good for speed, when you don't want to take the time to swap out lenses on another more complex camera app but if you already have Hipstamatic or ClassicTOY then you probably don't need this one.

These Cameras don't have a toy camera interface but they are free and simulate various toy camera effects.  The other toy camera apps listed above can do the same thing that these apps do (except the Vint Shift camera) so if you get any of them, you won't need any of these free apps. If you don't have the money to spend and want to mess around with some vintage effects, try these out. All these apps do one thing and do them quickly.  I think the Vint Shift is a pretty good free app but you can't really adjust the line of focus. Once you take the photos, you can't make any changes in any of these apps, what you get is what you get.

Vint Red

Vint Green

Vint B&W

Vint Shift

iPhone Photography - Microscopic Images

This is a selection of Microscopic Photography that I took with my iPhone 4. A lot of the images were taken with the app Hipstamtic but I also sometimes use ClassicTOY, PictureShow, TiltShift Generator, CAMERAtan, Lo-Mob and other photo effect apps.

 

I have recently purchased a Canon t3i after years of fantasizing about getting one and I have started to take a little macro photography with that as well. I've always had a fascination with the way things look up close and personal.

iPhone Photography - Objects

This is a selection of Object Photography that I took with my iPhone 4. A lot of the images were taken with the app Hipstamtic but I also sometimes use ClassicTOY, PictureShow, TiltShift Generator, CAMERAtan, Lo-Mob and other photo effect apps.

iPhone Camera Hacks - External Lenses

I've been experimenting with various camera hacks for my iPhone 4 recently. The first one I tried was a Mini Microscope Mod by Crabfu.  Next I tried the CD/DVD lens hack.  Both were fun and had some okay results.  The CD/DVD lens was incredibly difficult to mount and the quality wasn't that great.  The Mini Microscope Mod only works really close up and I often have lighting issues.  It's also hard to get things in focus and you have to use your digital zoom to get rid of the black circle around the frame.  I think I found a hack that is better than both, cheaper and much better quality.  Before we get to that though, if you want to try the CD/DVD lens hack, I made this video about how to remove one from an old PC CD player:

I was recently wandering though a thrift shop and saw a huge basket of old 35mm camera's for between $2 and $3 dollars.  I decided to buy one, tear it apart and see what kind of lenses I could pillage from the interior.  What I found was a gold mine and it was super cheap.  It did take a long time to get to everything though. It took about 1 hour of labor and you'll need a tiny screw driver and a pair of wire cutters.

I also purchased an old broken Polaroid camera and found an amazing lens that was similar to the dvd/cd lens but bigger.  Its much easier to mount and align with the iPhone camera and takes higher quality pictures.

You can check out some of the Microscopic pictures I've taken on my Flickr page.

The Four Most Basic Personality Types - Early Childhood Development

The extrovert and introvert personality types are often thought of as the primary social personality types. I would like to put forth my theory that they are not social personality types at all and the first, most basic, social personality types come after the extrovert/introvert perception develops.

Early Childhood Development: The Extrovert and the Introvert


The first development in personality has everything to do with survival and security. It is the first either/or response to the world, where we separate experiences into two categories; good things or bad things. This is a forward/back orientation in space/time and the creation of our first boundary line, where we distinguish ourselves as something apart from the outside environment. Newborns can not separate themselves from their experience at first, everything is one sea of consciousness and there is no "I" to experience "That." As a newborn eases its way into the world, the first thing it becomes aware of is that there is a boundary line between itself and the environment. Our early experiences will imprint our feeling towards the world as somewhere on the good/bad scale; so we either seek or we retreat from novelty, stimuli and new experiences. I think this reaction to the world is where we get the introvert and extrovert personality types, in varying degrees.

An autistic child is an extreme form of the introvert, where the child retreats into his or her world because the outside world is imprinted as extremely bad. On the other end of the spectrum, there are the types of people who actively seek out new experiences all over the world.  They believe the world is inherently good and will do anything to experience as much of it as they can.  These types of people tend to always be mobile and never settle down in one place for very long. The basic attitude of trust or suspicion and the imprint that was made in early childhood tends to hold solid where ever we initially make it and it is very difficult to change. Problems with this initial imprint are closely associated with abuse of sedatives like Opium or Morphine, which bring the user back to a newborn-like, floating consciousness.

Early Childhood Development: The Four Personality Types

The second development in personality is territorial and associated with a domination/submission dichotomy, as well as an emotional sense of feeling "Up" or "Down." In this case, dominant behavior is a sense of oneself being good, while submission behavior is a sense of oneself being bad. I think this development in personality arises out of the infants transition from crawling to walking; when they become an active member in the family and begin to explore the territory, no longer dependent on others for mobility. The combination of the forward/backward and up/down orientations give us a two dimensional Cartesian Plane that we can divide into the four basic personality types;

1. I am good and you are bad.
2. I am bad and you are good.
3. We are both good.
4. We are both bad.

This stage begins to define our, often unconscious, social attitudes towards other people and draws the second boundary line between ourselves and the people we interact with. I believe this is the first real development of social personality types and the extrovert/introvert development has more to do with environment. These four personality types shape our daily interactions with other people as we create a expectation of interaction before we even begin to socialize. The primary drug associated with this stage is alcohol. If you want to catch of glimpse of someone's personality type, observe them while they are intoxicated. The aggressive (I'm good, you're bad) or emotionally depressed (we are both bad) alcoholic is typical of this stage. They are the most likely to abuse alcohol and the hardest to communicate with. The “we are both good” personality type tends to drink socially without any problems and communicate well, even when intoxicated.  The "I'm bad and you're good" personality type tends to use alcohol as a social lubricant because they want to feel good.

These personality types are not limited to extreme positions and can be thought of as having varying degrees of intensity. Certain situations can trigger a temporary change in position; going from the "we are both good" attitude to the "I'm good and you're bad" attitude can be beneficial after someone is identified as being dangerous or toxic. The basic personality types are not, however, about specific circumstances.  They are initial reactions, delivered by the unconscious, before a social interaction even occurs. These imprints from early childhood usually stay pretty rigid, unless there is a shocking experience that allows for a temporary re-imprinting. There are also other techniques to temporarily lift the imprint and re-imprint, such as meditation, yoga, entheogens or religious/spiritual experiences.  However, most people will go through much of their life with the same personality type they imprinted in early childhood.