There is no doubt that the iPhone has had a large impact on people using their Smartphones as a camera over carrying a ‘regular’ camera. When possible, I still carry both, since the lens and possible resolution is much greater with my digital camera. That said, my iPhone 4 snaps a minimum of 10 pictures per day… minimum.
Do to the popularity, there are many new add-on accessories for the iPhone 4 in the area of photography. I’ll cover the lenses later, today I’ll go through a few of the items on the market to make your iPhone 4 look more like a ‘real’ camera.
Starting with the wildest, the Leica i9 Concept. Not sure if this will see the store shelves, but the concept is huge. Take a iPhone4 and have it plug into a case with working dials, specialized software and in the future enhanced lenses.
Next is the HipstaCase from the folks with Hipstamatic. The case is a iPhone4 protective case that has been designed to ‘look’ like a early 80’s camera. The case carries no lenses or features beyond look and protection. Purchasing the HipstaCase (shown on their site for $39.95 US) gets you the case, tripod mount and wrist lanyard.
One case I watched for a while over at Kickstarter which did not get funded successfully was the UN01. Another protection and visual ‘camera’ case for the iPhone4, had a unique way of holding the two halves together via the removable ‘lens’ ring. Had the funding been successful, there was promise of colors and texture options in the future. The creator’s site does not mention any work going on with the case since the funding round closed.
Other visual and protective cases, of which I own several, are the printed vinyl skin protection. I have mentioned UniqueSkins as an option where you can create your own. But if you prefer, there are folks that have many models already designed and printed so they are a lot easier to get your hands on.
Two providers; ShuffleArt on Etsy offers 10 ‘camera’ skins, 6 of which are for the iPhone4. Here is the Leica M9 Titanium –
Just a FYI, since the iPhone4 isn’t the exact scale size of the camera ShuffleArt offers, a coworker pointed out that it gets tricky to adjust an image of a camera and keep the printed ‘lens’ round.
The second ‘camera’ vinyl skin provider is TopScoreDecals. They offer a lot of iPhone4 skins that look like a variety of devices and hardware. Three of which are cameras, with the most famous being their Polaroid Land Camera iPhone4 skin.
