8mm Vintage Camera

8mm Vintage Camera Review

by on May 6, 2011

This app is designed to replicate what your clips would have looked like had they been shot with an older camera, complete with frame jitter, hair, dust and blurred edges. The first time you launch the program, an overlay graphic labels each button, giving you an idea of what you can achieve (you can access this overlay at any time afterwards by tapping on the ‘i’ button, lower left of the screen).

You can change the type of film used, and hence the general effect applied to your video, with the main button located at the lower right of the screen. Don’t be fooled by the arrow encouraging you to swipe down: doing this lets you cycle through your effects, but only in one direction. Instead, swipe left or right on the film’s title to cycle in either direction. You can do the same with the lens button (upper right of the screen). These lenses allow you to apply a secondary filter to your effect – such as a flickering frame, leaking light, bleeding colour or muted edges – giving you 25 different combinations to choose from.

To complete the effect, you can also add a projector sound to your clip, which will be inserted once the recording has been done.

Using the app is incredibly easy. You can select the film and lens you’d like to use at any time during, or prior to, the recording process. We thought it would be hard to use the Jitter button, since tapping on the screen would affect the iPhone’s framing, but since the effect is designed to distort the visuals anyway, any movement on our part was completely hidden. You can access all your clips in the My Reels section, where you can delete them, save them to your device’s Camera Roll, email them or upload them to YouTube.

It’s a shame that this app is solely designed to alter live recordings, meaning there’s no way to apply these filters to clips you’ve already shot. Also – and this may not affect you – this app isn’t aware of your device’s orientation: if you hold it in your left hand, you would usually have the Home button on the left, to avoid your fingers inadvertently covering the camera. However, this app can only be used with the Home button on the right, which may force some people to change the way they hold their device. By comparison, Apple’s Camera app isn’t affected by the way it’s held, so there’s no danger of holding it wrong. But this quibble aside, 8mm Vintage Camera is a very enjoyable app.

Download this app: 8mm Vintage Camera

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Review courtesy of  Tap!