Here is a view across out to Baggy Point, looking over the Woolacombe Bay Hotel.

The photograph above was taken with a Pentax Spotmatic 35mm camera using ‘old stock’ (March 2000) Agfacolor HDC 200. I am really impressed with the vintage postcard look of this image – very 1950s. The slideshow below contains some images taken from the same roll of film, they have a distinctive red/brown tint.

It is fashionable to use vintage feel photographs in posts, on Facebook and on the web.

The rise of Instagram,  a free photo sharing program that was launched in October 2010 is the best example of this ‘look back’ at analogue photography from the 20th century. This service allows users to take a photo and apply a digital retro filter to it and then share it on most social networking services. The distinctive retro feature of this app is that it converts photos, which in contemporary formats are rectangle, to a square shape, like Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images of the 70?s. The most common aspect ratios used in still camera photography, are 4:3, 3:2 (more recently in consumer cameras 16:9 is being used). Other used aspect ratios include 5:3, 5:4, and 1:1 which produces the square format. Most mobile devices have a 4:3 aspect ratio.