Instagram. I previously wouldn’t dabble in such a trendy trend, but I caved due to social pressures was recently persuaded to give it a shot. You can find my page here.

With this past trip, I’ve created a sort of experiment. I would run photos I processed through their barrage of contrast, saturation, and vignetting destroying enhancing filters, to compare the results.

The rules:

• Abide by the square crop.
• Every photo must use a filter
• I would apply border effects as long as it didn’t intrude on a vital aspect of the shot.

First up, the 787:

The crop has cut off a wing… As for the color shift? To put it politely, this is not how the scene looked in person.

Rinse

Next up, the wing shot

The mandatory crop made me choose between Rainier or the Sun Dog. Rainier lost, and the sun dog has lost some of its effect. Also, I didn’t use a border, because it was hideous, just like the white balance. Not impressed.

X-Pro

Wide angle shot of Nishi-Shinjuku

The crop has removed the wide angled-ness of a wide angle shot…

Rinse

Silhouette under Shinjuku Station

Contrast and clarity spiked, and I don’t mind the crop. Overall, not bad!

Inkwell

Osaka Street #1

Warming filter is OK and I cropped to remove the sky. Which crop do y’all like?

Rinse

Osaka Street #2

Same as above and the vignetting/exposure changes put emphasis on the subject. I like it.

Hefe

Sushi Chef

Probably my favorite of the Instragram conversions (the previous is a close second). The image seems softened up a bit, and it bumped the exposure on the chef’s face and body which gave him a “glow”. I could do this in Photoshop… and probably will.

Sierra

Yamazaki Tracks

The crop removes some lines, the image was desaturated, and micro-contrast was increased. Also the sky is blown out… Not the biggest fan of the colors…

Brannon

Whiskey Library

Not much of a difference.

Lo-Fi

Tree

The tree almost lost its trunk.

Lo-Fi

Kimono

I don’t mind the crop. but I don’t like the desaturation, or what it did to the subject’s neck.

Sierra

Kiyomizu-dera

I prefer the square crop. Maybe I’d warm the street in my shot.

Earlybird

Fushimi-Inari

I prefer the original crop and exposure.

Sierra

In the end?

• I don’t like the borders, or wish that the app would “add” the border, rather than subtract the border’s space from the image.
• The blurring and contrast features are 100% awful, at least on photos not taken with a phone. 
• Most of the filters are complete trash, especially the ones heavy on contrast and white balance changes.
• Will I continue to use Instagram? The outlook is not so good. That being said:
• It provided some interesting alternative “looks” to what can be done in post.
• I will consider such changes when processing future shots.
• Maybe I’ll run my phone photos through it, as I’ve yet to do this.
• Do I see the “social networking” benefits? Not yet, but I haven’t spent the time to follow any users or look through anyone else’s photos…. 
• I actually bought 500px’s Black Friday deal, so more on that on a future post.