I tested these 3 retro camera apps and created my own photo time machine

Summary

Huji: brings back the thrill of using film cameras with a vintage feel and light leaks.
Dispo: simulates the full film experience, but fell off when it tried to become a social platform.
West: offers various preset filters and effects, giving a fresh and nostalgic twist to photos.

Much to my Gen X parents’ dismay, all the cool kids are simply obsessed with the

vintage
. I used to fawn over artificial light leak edits on a VSCO photo, something that they used to moan and groan about when they saw it make an appearance on their freshly developed roll of

Kodak
film way back when.

That said, digital and disposable cameras have never been more back. If you see a flash at a dive bar, chances are it’s a little

FujiFilm
or even a cheap CVS disposable. All my best friends keep a little memory maker in their purses for a night out, but I don’t trust these butterfingers of mine. I’ve seen way too many cute cameras take a tumble around closing time, and the price to replace them isn’t nearly as endearing.

I play it safe with the little supercomputer in my pocket, instead. To quote my dad: there is, in fact, an app for that. So, here are my four favorite

point-and-shoot
camera and editing apps to get the full vintage effect without the concerns of late-night elbows throwing your single-use device onto the sticky bar floorboards.

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Huji

The OG point and shoot app

I can’t tell you the ruckus Huji stirred up my junior and senior year of high school. We were taking pictures of the most mundane little things. We were only such trigger-happy teens because we never knew the scarcity of film — if it didn’t turn out, we could just delete it and take another shot, duh.

My favorite part about Huji photos, besides the unpredictable nature of the lovable light leak, was the true vintage feel of the digital date in the bottom right corner of each photo. The default always puts your photos at a cool ’98 year, but you can edit them in settings to make it the current date or no date at all. I personally use ‘Current.’

What I loved about Huji was that you really could go into the ‘lab’ and see it right away. Now that I’m deep into the memories (and feeling some debilitating

nostalgia
for SB2K17), check out some of my favorite shots above.

Huji

Huji Cam gives your photos a nostalgic, 1990s disposable camera look with rich colors, light leaks, and timestamp effects. It’s a popular app for achieving a vintage film aesthetic straight from your phone.

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Dispo

For the full film development effect

Dispo hit the app store running in 2019. It was created by YouTube personality David Dobrik (before all the controversy), originally named “David’s Disposable,” but renamed to “Dispo” in late 2020. At one point, it was even the number-one downloaded app in the App Store.

What made Dispo unique was the way it simulated the full experience of having to wait to see what you shot after it “developed.” However, unlike how my parents had to wait and wait and wait for their film, Dispo sends you a notification at 9AM the next day when your photos are “ready.” Talk about a bit of a gimmick, but it worked — there would be shouts on Sunday evenings to gather your roommates in the living room to see what kind of havoc you wreaked the night before.

Dispo began to fall off when the app tried to become more of a social platform, but it was great fun while it lasted. I preferred Huji’s warmer style of “film,” personally.

Dispo

Dispo mimics the experience of using a disposable camera, where photos “develop” overnight before you can view them.

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West

Where have you been the last 10 years?

This one was a peer-pressure download. On New Year’s Eve, 2023, one of my best friends was bopping around our celebration flashing shots of everyone, and they turned out to be the best pictures any of us had taken in our entire lives. They blew even my favorite Hujis out of the water and into the stratosphere.

West is one of my favorite apps to this day, while Huji and Dispo have been tucked in my back pocket.

West is free, but only for the point-and-shoot version. You can pay a flat $8 fee like I did — don’t worry, there are no microtransactions to plague your account — and gain access to all the presets, specific filter effects, and more that you can overlay onto any picture that’s already in your camera roll, too. I also love that you can “refresh” certain effects for a different look, as well as turn up the heat on certain edits, like the graininess of your image.

West is one of my favorite apps to this day, while Huji and Dispo have been tucked in my back pocket. It’s nostalgic to go through those rolls, but if I’m snapping a cool shot for Instagram, West is the point and shoot I’m taking with me through my twenties.