CameraBag 1.93 (for iPhone)

CameraBag 1.93 (for iPhone) ($1.99) is largely the same as version 1.4 of the app, which I reviewed in 2008, with some modest enhancements. On the upside, it now has 16 filters (up from 10 in CameraBag 1.4), it?s more stable, supports higher-resolution images, and lets you e-mail images from within the app. The downsides are that it still doesn?t let you adjust the images, and there?s no integration with social media. CameraBag is a solid and fun app, if one that's behind the curve, expecially when compared with newcomers like Instagram (free, 3 stars).

Other photo apps, such as Camera Genius ($1.99, 3.5 stars) and Camera+ ($1.99, 3 stars) now offer not only creative filters but shooting aids like timers and burst mode, and the ability to tweak contrast, saturation. Most can also upload images to Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, or their own online galleries. But CameraBag still has its place, and will appeal to those who crave a simple way to fancy up their iPhone photos.

CameraBag lets you transform your photos to resemble vintage photographic styles simply by clicking on the appropriate filter. Photo buffs will find it does a creditable job of imitating historical photo techniques, and even those who just want to spruce up their iPhone images should enjoy experimenting with this app. If you want to edit your photos, or upload them to social media or photo-sharing sites, though, you?ll have to use other tools.

Operating CameraBag is simple. When you open the program, you see a dark screen with four icons at the bottom: snap a picture, email an image, save an image, or load an image from your iPhone's photo library. This is actually a plus over some of the newer apps, which only let you manipulate photos taken within the app. After you select or shoot a picture, the name of the last-used filter appears above the image, such as Colorcross or Infrared.

Vintage-Style Filters

By tapping on the filter name, you get a list of all 16 filters. Their one-word names, such as Plastic, Fisheye, and 1974, give a clue as to the filter's nature. Tapping a name selects the corresponding filter. Shoot a fresh picture or import one from the photos stored on your iPhone, and a thumbnail of the image with filter applied appears in the center of the screen. Swiping a finger across the screen advances to the next filter, so if you keep swiping, you can see the image with all of the effects applied in turn.

The information icon at the screen?s top-left lets you access a Photo Options menu lets you save the original photo (if you?re shooting images from within the app), use borders or cropping (which, when enabled, are automatically applied when appropriate to a particular filter), and turn filters off so they don?t appear when you're swiping through the thumbnails. You can see the provenance for Instagram in some of this.

The filters themselves cover a wide range of styles, from professional and specialized techniques (Magazine, Fisheye, Infrared) to consumer snapshots (1974, Instant) and toy cameras (Plastic). Every photo is an opportunity to experiment, and you can't be quite sure in advance which filters will work best on a particular image without trying each of them.

Helga and Lolo mimic the pictures taken with the Holga and Lomo hobbyist cameras with similar names. These cameras have cult followings both despite and because of their significant optical flaws, which can create unusual effects. The filter names are slight variations on the camera names, presumably to avoid infringing on the camera companies' trademarks.

Helga produces significant vignetting (a reduction in brightness at the edges of photos, particularly in the corners), while Lolo pictures appear oversaturated, often to the point of garishness. Helga generally didn't appeal to me. Lolo's high saturation, on the other hand, detracted from many indoor shots and portraits, but it nicely enhanced some outdoor scenes. It was particularly good at twilight shots, for which it really punched up the color and brightness of the sky and city lights. Both Helga and Lolo crop images to a square format, as the cameras they're modeled after do.

Cinema crops images to widescreen format. This is good if the images were taken in landscape orientation, but it lops off much of the top and bottom of portrait-mode images. Not the most exciting filter.

Colorcross provides vivid yet hazy, darkroom-style colors, while Plastic oversaturates colors, usually reds and yellows. Mono provides good, balanced black-and-white images while 1962 produces high-contrast monochrome images reminiscent of that era. Silver evokes the early days of photography, with a silvery blue (and sometimes yellow) tint. Magazine provides rich tones, while Italiano gives the images a mild, sepia tint and adds a trace of vignetting. Lightleak adds a streak of brightness across the image.

The 1974 effect reproduces the style of the day's photos by rendering color images with a slightly yellowish tinge that I generally found warm and cheery. And, as you'd expect, Fisheye distorts images as though they were shot through a fisheye lens, while Infrared mimics the result you'd get shooting through an infrared filter. I liked the ghostly, negative-like look of many of the Infrared images I created. Fisheye works best in shots of overarching branches, tall buildings from below, or funhouse portraits.

The Instant mode provides wide-bordered Polaroid-style snapshots?though you won't experience the anticipation of watching the image slowly materialize on film. Original lets you save the image unchanged, even if you just shot it from within CameraBag.

CameraBag lets you choose between 4 settings for image size (width of 600, 800, or 1,200 pixels, or full size). Even at full size, saving an image is relatively fast (about 4 seconds).

A Little Too Retro

Whether you're a photography buff or just want to spruce up your iPhone photos, you're sure to have fun producing many intriguing versions of your iPhone images with CameraBag. Experimenting with the app is an adventure: Before you apply a filter, you never know quite what you're going to get. Some of your variations created with these retro filters may even look better than your original.

But speaking of retro, CameraBag just hasn?t kept up with the times: Many iPhone photo apps are more full-featured. Camera Genius lets you upload images directly to Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter, while Camera+ includes those services while adding Picasa and Tumblr to the mix. Camera Genius offers a wider range of filters, including many vintage ones, while Camera+ provides 27 different effects. They let you fine-tune your images, as do both Photoshop Express and Editors? Choice Snapseed (4 stars, $4.99), which are focused on editing. With CameraBag, you get to choose between filters, but that?s about all.

[App Store link: CameraBag]

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