On the extreme side of fine-tuned, high-res & prop­erly composed/framed/exposed pho­tog­ra­phy, lies a genre that begets joy. Most of the time, every­thing is acci­den­tal, com­po­si­tion is point-and-shoot-lucky-if-you’re-in-the-shot, expo­sure is hor­rid by your instructor’s stan­dard and out-of-focus is the new focus. But it’s fun. So much fun some­one decided to res­ur­rect an old phe­nom­e­non of another lo-fi cam­era sensation.

The result is some­thing purely orig­i­nal, yet sig­ni­fied by a bril­liant sets of feat that’ll make grandpa proud, drop dead sim­ple you wish it arrived much sooner, it’s envi­ron­men­tally green too, so green I’m sure Al Gore & his pho­tog­ra­pher wife, Tipper will be snap­ping around their christ­mas din­ner with this lovely gem. Yes, films are needed but is not lim­ited to 36 frames.

So how do you recre­ate a hip­pies’ free­dom of ana­log joy — with all the organic ele­ments — for the 21^st cen­tury vowel-loosing era? Put the iPhone to the pic­ture, throw in a designer & a devel­oper and you’ll get your­self a per­fectly usable dig­i­tal incar­na­tion of this fad­ing sensation.

Enter Hipstamatic.

Pixel per­fect graph­ics puts a pseudo cam­era into the screen of your iPhone, the front side to swipe lenses, films, gels & flashes; and the back façade gives you the plas­tic feel viewfinder, a flash on/off switch and its sig­na­ture yel­low shut­ter button.

One final touch of this finely crafted graph­ics? A drop-dead-realistic sound effect that makes every­thing feels natural.

So what makes this app so spe­cial? Clearly, pretty face alone can’t do jus­tice, but throw in a hand­some look­ing pic­tures — it’s 100% film like, the best I have seen on any dig­i­tal media, a bril­liant pro­gram­ming — it’s 100% ana­log cam­era like, the best clas­sic to digital/iPhone trans­fer I have seen on any dig­i­tal media, you got your­self a nice christ­mas gift. Thank you Santa.

Too bad, the $1.99 pur­chase only gives you the basics, you gotta pop in addi­tional $2 to make it game: $1 for the BlacKeys Film Pack (B/W film, pixel per­fect film bleed to wrap your 6×6 frames) and another $1 for Williamsburg Bundle that gives a you a Helga Viking lens, 3 color-gelled flashes & the bril­liant Pistil Film that gives your hipsta-print a nice black border.

It’s a per­fect $5 christ­mas gift for your­self, or your iPhone-using-paparazzo friend, yes occa­sional crash still hap­pens and opt­ing in high-res out­put gives you the never-ending wait to snap another around, but you’re in for a dif­fer­ent kind of iPhone-photography game, peo­ple… and this time you might want to stay a lit­tle longer cause dig­i­tal never felt & looked so finely analog.

Hip Hip Hooray!

update: Someone from Japan posted a very nice com­par­i­son of Hipstamatic’s dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tion of lenses, films & gels.

Update: Here’s the story behind Hipstamatic, and how the iPhone ver­sion came along.