Digital Instant

"The best camera is the one that's with you" - Chase Jarvis

The above quote and linked post are obsession feeders. It's very easy to get stuck into the "I don't have my Polaroid/Holga/D90 etc etc with me" mood, and not bother taking pictures when they present themselves. I always have my iPhone in my pocket, but have tended to treat it as a lightweight snapper, a little too low-res, a little too electronic, to take fully seriously for grown-up photography. But Chase Jarvis is right - it's the best one when it's the only one, and creative use of the many applications for the camera take it further.

ShakeItPhoto

Now obviously my previous post extolled a love for the analogue wonder of Polaroid, but I'm not a purist. I'm mainly a bit lazy and impatient. But I like image-making and particularly image-taking, and almost enjoy the finding of potential images and capturing them more than actually doing anything with them. It's great to shake up a usual way of working with different lenses, cameras etc. Polaroid is great because of its restrictions - fixed lens, press the button and there's the image. Digital can seem somewhat disposable and overly flexible by comparison: zoom, snap, zoom, snap, discard, snap.



My current favourite iPhone photo app is ShakeItPhoto.

"ShakeItPhoto is the most realistic instant photo experience for the iPhone. Works just like a real instant camera. Watch the photo develop. Shake your iPhone to make it develop faster. Our Perfect Processing makes your photos look just like the real thing." (From the application page in iTunes)

Well. Of course it doesn't look "just like the real thing", and the dropping down of the 'print' with SX-70 sounds effects, and a longish wait for the image to appear is silly if cute.

But.

It makes you think differently about the images you're about to take. The delay stops you from just snap snap snapping; the colour effect and frame add a weight that the images wouldn't normally have; you can't convert a previously-taken image from your library - you take the image and it processes it. And it shoots square. Lovely, lovely square.



The important thing is to make the images. If Polaroid film was limitless (or cheaper), I would absolutely carry it with me at all times and shoot away. And certainly there are many of these shots that I would rather have as a 'real' photo that I could print larger, that didn't suffer from the digital noise. Perhaps I should buy a Holga. Oh dear. Another obsession looms... But until then, this is the best camera, because it's the one I have on me.

post script

An article from today's Boston Herald discusses the future of the Polaroid brand. It mentions an instant camera based on the PoGo technology. Sounds interesting, out next month...