1-Bit Camera App Brings Game Boy Camera Nostalgia To iPhone

Ever missed using your Nintendo Game Boy camera attachment to capture black-and-white, extremely low-fi photography?  As nothing says 'socially trending' nowadays like a picture with an antique filter on it (hi Instagram), we would like to take you back to 1998 with the 1-Bit Camera app for iPhone.

The new photography app takes the vintage concept in something of a different direction, stripping away all of the megapixels which your camera can capture, leaving you with (as the name suggests) a 1-bit camera: 320 x 480 images in black-and-white.

Fortunately, the retro throwback idealism of the app doesn't compromise certain functionalities you'd come to expect.  Forms of image tweaking include a high and low-contrast mode, along with two dithering algorithms (dithering is a technique used to determine tones and shading between different areas of the picture using black and white pixels.  

The Bayer dither providing the image aesthetic you'd be used to from a Game Boy camera, and Atkinson (being used on the original Mac's monochrome display) taking your photos back to an era subtly remenisced via the use of the old Chicago fonts and icons that look as if they've been taken straight from the Mac OS interface.

Full sharing capabilities are implemented, allowing you to tweet, tumble or Facebook your photos, alongside an option to share to the 1-Bit Camera community network.  While not so disparate from what is already out there, and certainly not the first to bring Game Boy-esque imagery to the iPhone, it's a polished app, and worth the 69p for a purchase on a whim.

Source: iTunes app store, David Lindecrantz