TUAW's Daily App: 8-bit Pocket Camera

The iPhone's camera has only gotten better over the years, with higher resolutions, better ways to deal with low lighting and brighter colors than ever. But here's an app that passes on all of that technology for a much more retro feel. The 8-bit Pocket Camera app is designed to take pictures the old-fashioned way: as low-res black-and-white 200x200 pixel .tiff files, just like the old Game Boy Camera and other early digital cameras did. Why would you want to take pictures that way? Well, you might not. But it's more of a nostalgia thing; just as apps like Hipstamatic are great at making iPhone pictures look like old film or old instant cameras, these pictures might take you right back, if you happen to have taken some shots in the right time period.

There's a real raw quality to these, and I don't mean .RAW files. These are straight up black-and-white shots, full of digital noise and pixelated lines. They may not look great, but they certainly have a feel to them, and with 8-bit Pocket Camera, you can take these pictures, put any number of old-school effects on them and send them out via Facebook or Twitter. The app's currently on sale for a launch price of just US$0.99.