Since its launch back in October 2010, Instagram has quickly become the spiritual successor to the Polaroid. Anyone can take instant photos, anywhere, and share them straight away. The resulting images are weird-looking, just like Polaroids, and you even have to buy a special camera to use it — in this case, the iPhone. With it, I often take better photos on my iPad 2 than I do without my “proper” camera.
But it’s limited. There are third-party services that let you view Instagram images on Android or the web, but good luck getting your Mom to use those. There are also a whole lot of other ways to take and process pictures that offer more features than Instagram. Here are a few Instagram hacks.
Using a Better Camera.
The iPhone’s 5MP camera is great, with more than enough resolution for Instagram’s tiny 612 x 612 images. Even the iPad 2’s awful camera can handle this (although Apple’s weird anti-noise algorithms uglify the source picture something awful). But what if you want to shoot pictures with your grown-up camera and share those?
There are two ways, in the field. First is to use the Eye-Fi wireless SD card to beam photos direct from camera to iPhone or iPad. This is so clunky, so unreliable and so damn annoying to use that I’d recommend the second, (much cheaper) method. Instead of buying the $50 Eye-Fi, buy the $30 camera connection kit. You can then slip the SD card into your iPad, copy the photos you want to share and open them from within Instagram (you know you can use camera-roll photos in Instagram, right?)
The third way is to just wait until you’re at your computer, sync the photos to your iPhone in the usual way and go from there. This rather misses the point, though. The app is called Instagram, after all. more at Wired
