Old School Camera Emulator

Version 2.3.0 shows the look in the camera preview. The camera preview is not a plain camera. While you frame the shot, you see the phone or the filter, and that is the picture that gets saved. You can turn the preview off. Photos and videos still save with the look you picked. VHS is a video look. Shoot a clip in the app, or bring in one you already have, and the picture and the sound both take on a worn home-tape feel. The sound is worn in the same pass as the picture. VHS does not take photos. The photo shutter tells you it is video only and does not save a still. A photo you try to import while VHS is selected is left alone. Leave VHS and the camera goes back to the photo or video mode you were using before. Open VHS options for the tape. Tape wear runs from Off to Mint, and the preview updates as you move it. Off leaves the picture alone. The camcorder stamps can still be on. Mint is the soft wedding-tape look: a little softness, color that does not sit perfectly on the picture, a little tracking, and light noise. A new install starts on Mint. Bottom tape is the torn band along the bottom, with its own strength, and it stays put when Tape wear moves. The camcorder marks are stamps. Each one applies to the live preview, to a recording, and to an imported clip. Date stamp puts the date on the picture. Record timer counts while you record. REC lamp is the blinking record light. Keep it as a live indicator only, or burn the blinking REC into the saved video. The zoom bar is the old camcorder zoom marker. Pinch the preview and the marker moves with the zoom. It is not written into the file. If this camera has no zoom range, the bar is left out. Old camcorder picture crops to a tall 480 by 640 frame. Horizontal video crops the upright camera to a wide 640 by 480 band. With both off, the clip keeps this phone’s normal picture size. While a clip is recording, the top controls hide. On VHS, tap the preview to stop. The volume button still starts and stops a recording. The stamps are drawn before the tape effect, so blur, noise, and tracking pass over them. Pro signal knobs are optional. Moving Tape wear resets them. Luma blur softens brightness. Chroma blur softens color. Chroma delay lets the color lag. Sharpen puts a little edge back. Edge wave wobbles the sides of the frame. Head switch is the band where one tape head meets the next: on or off, how tall, and how strong. Tracking is the vertical jitter, through the whole frame or only the lower third. Luma noise and chroma noise are the grain. Snow is the static. Wear stops at Mint. A snow-filled tape is not what that slider is for. Drunken Sailor is the other new filter, for a photo or a video. One Booze slider runs from Sober to Wasted, and the finder updates as it moves. It smears the picture and lags the color. Sober is a clean pass-through. A new install starts between the two ends, already a little drunk. There are no camcorder stamps, and the sound is not worn. That belongs to VHS. The picker is Phones and Filters, and the last tab is remembered. Phone looks stay on Phones. Filters holds VHS, Broken, Pixelated, Custom, and Drunken Sailor. Custom is the phone you build yourself: type the photo size and the video size, randomize the look, and watch vignette, color, highlight knee, shadow lift, and posterize change the live preview. Broken keeps its artifact control. Pixelated keeps its block size. Early 2000s phones are softer now. A very small frame reads as soft color, not as a hard posterized block. On iPhone and iPad, live VHS and Drunken Sailor are drawn at old-camcorder size, then fitted to the screen. A large iPad preview stays responsive, and the saved clip matches that working picture. Bring in a video while VHS is selected and the tape look is what gets saved. Bring in a photo or a video with another filter selected and that filter is what gets saved. There are no ads. If a phone or a filter is missing, tell me and I will try to add it.