Hypocam is a free, dedicated black and white photography app for both iOS and Android smartphones. It’s simple and straight forward to use — with minimal fuss — and takes great images you can share quickly and easily on social media.
I especially like the high contrast, almost grungy look it gives your smartphone images. There are minimal editing options, but it can pack a punch with what it’s got. There are a few filters included or there is the option to buy in-app filters as well.
What you do get with Hypocam
Simply put, you get a real-time “what you see is what you get” preview as you shoot. Using the controls across the top, you can adjust exposure and contrast. You can even play with the color channels; red, blue, green and yellows.
It uses the camera’s auto or manual focus, although you can turn that off in the settings. In settings you can set the image JPEG quality (Low, Med or High). Sharing from the album (bottom left) is fairly easy to social media, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
What doesn’t work
Remember, Hypocam is fairly bare-bones basic, so it doesn’t seem allow for flash photography. There’s no real explanation of what options there are — you need to figure that out yourself — but it’s not overly complicated.
While you can turn your phone horizontal (or vertical), the images taken aren’t full smartphone size (16:9) and remain approximately 4:3 ratio. It doesn’t shoot images in RAW, and doesn’t give you files larger than 4MB (which is plenty big enough for social media), with the average in my experience being 3MB.
Sample images
Verdict
There are so many apps around for both Android and iOS, but I have been using this one on and off for a few days now and found Hypocam works well. It is simple, quick and I like the images for social media.
