Hasta La Gadget!

IPhone photographers get all the retro-licious fun. Apps like Hipstamatic and Instagram let you mess with your pristine digital pics and make them look as if they came from a low-quality plastic camera from communist-era Eastern Europe. Now videographers can join in the image-degrading hijinks, with 8mm Vintage Camera.

The app does exactly what you’d expect. It adds dusty, speckly artifacts to your footage, and you can shoot through a variety of virtual lenses (flickering frame, light leak and color fringing, for example) and capture the video onto one of several “films”. You can also add random jitter and movement to the movie, as if the projector was having trouble keeping the film fed neatly through its gate.

All the effects happen in real time, so you see on-screen exactly what you are recording. There are modern touches, too: you can light up the iPhone’s flash whilst recording, and the familiar touch-to-focus feature is in there. Exporting options are good, too. ITunes sharing is supported, as is email and saving to the camera roll, but you can also send movies straight up to YouTube.

Best of all, the app is just $2. Sure, my $800 Micro Four Thirds camera might shoot great-looking, hi0def video, but this looks like way more fun.

8mm Vintage Camera [iTunes via iPhoneography]

See Also:

• Hipstamatic Gentrifies iPhone Camera
• Instagram for iPhone, Like a Lomo-Twitter for Your Photos
• Hands-On with Swankolab, a Chemical Darkroom for the iPhone …