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1-Hour Photo app brings the feeling of film photography to mobile devices

1 hour photo app brings feeling film photography mobile devices screenshots
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Many of you will remember the days of film photography, when you had to bring your finished film roll to a lab and, in the best case, wait an hour until you received the images. In the meantime, between the moment you pressed the shutter button and the moment you took possession of your prints, you were left in the dark about how your photos had turned out.

Today, with digital photography, you get immediate results. This has a positive side to it, because it means that you can check your photo and, if you’re not happy with the result, take it again – impossible with analog photography (with the exception of expensive instant film). But it also has a downside, as it means people take many more pictures than they actually “need” and think less about what they’re shooting before clicking the shutter. (NPR’s All Things Considered recently discussed this issue with smartphone photography.)

So, when you don’t get to see your results immediately, you take a more deliberate approach in your photography, as you may not get a second chance in many cases. There is also another reason to wait for your pictures a little longer, the makers of 1-Hour Photo claim. On the app’s website, they write that “by the time you see your photos, the moments they’ve captured have already become memories, which changes how you feel about them forever.” As the name suggests, you have to wait an hour before you can view the photos you take. Once they’re “developed,” the images appear in a film-like analog quality.

Are you up for a more deliberate approach to your mobile photography? 1-Hour Photo is available for iOS devices via Apple’s iTunes store. Whether the app will also make it to other platforms such as Android is unkown for the moment. Alternatively, you can just undust your old analog camera and shoot pictures the old-fashioned way – on actual film.

(Via The Phoblographer)

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Felix Esser
Felix is a freelance tech journalist with a strong focus on photography. Based out of central Germany, he contributes to…
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