This App Turns Your Smartphone Into a Digicam

You may have heard digicams are having a bit of a moment. The turn back to the point and shoot Canons of yesteryear comes alongside the return to iPods over streaming services (which I’m well a part of), the move towards notebooks over note-taking apps (okay, this one might be a figment of my imagination). Beyond just the push for something nostalgic, I think many are looking to decouple themselves from their phones, and the always-online society we’ve built, for good and ill. It’s cool I carry around a little computer, but also cool that my Kobo will never show me a notification.

I must admit, even I had started to get caught up in the digicam wave. Especially in Tokyo, as someone who walks into camera shops regularly, it’s easy to look at a slim, shimmery shell with a modest price tag and imagine myself shooting portraits with flash like it’s 1999.

But I digress. I haven’t pulled the trigger, and don’t expect to (though I do keep eyeing a Ricoh GR with a flash...). Really, I’ve got very little complaints with my current camera setup (though you can always have more lenses).

Still, I’m always looking for new ways to shoot. I’ve been following along with the work of Nuevo.Tokyo, a Tokyo-based design studio that often dabbles around photography for years now. They designed a concept camera called the Keirin in collaboration with Mireia.Studio and Nemonic.io, which aims to present a fresh look at panoramic cameras like the famous Hasselblad XPan, combined with some interesting and novel innovations, such as a curved screen that emulates film strips (among other things). While the camera hasn’t hit the market, the design especially seemed to open some doors, and may have even paved the way for the Sigma BF, one of the most beautiful cameras ever made.

If you enjoyed this issue, consider joining my membership_program, The Order of the Black Lotus. For the price of a cup of coffee in Tokyo ($3/month or $30/year), you not only support my writing and photography, but I’ll send you ahandwritten, one-of-one postcard from me in Tokyo —a tangible piece of my journey, just for you. You’ll also get access to all exclusive posts , and an invitation to my private photography feed on_ Retro_._

JOIN THE ORDER OF THE BLACK LOTUS

Joining is the most meaningful way to ensure this work continues, and I thank you for your support!

In Nuevo.Tokyo’s newsletter, they recently announced VWFNDER + MBL, a camera app for Android phones. It promised RAW shooting—no processing!—and seemed to carry the UI / UX of the Keirin concept into something I could get my hands on. So I hit download and decided to give it a shot.

It’s a beautifully designed app, with a clear minimal interface. I do feel that everything’s been given sort of the same weight, however. There’s very little hierarchy in the app, aside from the large shutter button, which can make it difficult to distinguish the most important controls, mainly shutter speed and ISO (no aperture control here). It’s got a cute mechanism of sliding to control the aspect ratio, which also takes you to the gallery. All in all, it’s a pretty nice app to look at and use.

But how do the pictures look? They look good, which is to say bad, which is to say they look real. I haven’t really written extensively about this, but generally, the photos that smartphones take are NotGood. They are passable as snapshots, and work better under good conditions (i.e., in bright sunlight, deep depth of field, etc.) Most of all, they look fine when viewed on another phone, and best when compressed for social media. But photos taken with smartphones edge into uncanny valley for me almost immediately—and I mean just the regular amount of processing, not the really creepy stuff like Samsung’s fake moon photos, or the subtle and not-so-subtle ways most of these apps edit your face. As someone who is very particular about photography, and yet still makes a ton of snapshots with my smartphone, I’ve rarely been happy with the output.

Looking at the photos taken from VWFNDER + MBL (let’s come up with a better name, guys), it’s immediately clear I’m looking at something different. What’s that? Noise, in my smartphone photography? Bokeh? You mean to tell me the focus point isn’t actually that sharp? And that’s when I realized it; this is the digicam look.

Sharp is relative.

It makes sense, right? The smartphone is basically just a digicam. Tiny sensors, acceptable glass, occasional flash. Looking at these images, you can see just how much processing a smartphone does to an image, and it’s not all good (mostly not, I would say). It’s like setting everything on automatic; the smartphone is making a lot of choices for you, and not always doing the right one. With the RAW images from VWFNDER + MBL, you can make your own choices.

VWFNDER + MBL on the left / top, stock camera app on the right / bottom.

I was going to say this isn’t the app for those of us looking for perfectly clear images for Instagram, but maybe the rise of the digicam proves this incorrect. Maybe most of us are ready for some more authentic images, noise and all. I’m not sure I’m ready to throw away the pure convenience of being able to double-tap my sleep button to open the stock camera app, but when I want to make something with a bit more intention, I’ve been having a lot of fun with VWFNDER + MBL.

Subscribe to Refrakt

A bi-weekly newsletter on curiosity, creativity, and (hopefully!) insight, through the lens of photography, writing, study, art and beauty, and my life.

Subscribe

Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup.

Join 150+ members on the path.

Buy me a coffee