Ten decades of photography, live in the viewfinder. Turn the dial from 1930 to 2020 and the grain, the colour and the frame rate all change with the year.
Anno is a camera that shoots in any decade from 1930 to 2020.
Turn the dial and the viewfinder changes with it. Not a filter applied afterwards, but the way that year's photography actually worked, rendered live on the camera feed before you take the shot.
TEN DECADES, BUILT FROM HOW CAMERAS SAW
1930 Orthochromatic black and white. The film could not see red, so skies burn out.
1940 Panchromatic
1950 Press black and white
1960 Tri-X, pushed
1970 Documentary
1980 VHS
1990 Hi8 camcorder
2000 CCD digicam
2010 Early smartphone
2020 Computational
Colour is not a slider here. It arrives when it arrived, and the press holds on to black and white well into the seventies.
MOTION HAS A DATE TOO
A still can carry the grain. Only movement can carry the judder. Video records at the era's own rate, built the way a projector builds it: 16fps hand cranked in 1930, 18fps on Super 8, 15fps on a 2000s digicam, 30fps on a modern phone.
THE FRAME AND THE DATE BELONG TO THE YEAR
Each decade frames the picture the way its cameras did: 4:3 film, 3:2 in the nineties, square in 2010, tall for today. What is inside the frame is what you keep.
And every photo is dated the way its decade dated one. Handwritten on the print in the thirties, a lab stamp in the fifties, orange digits in the seventies, a camcorder overlay in the eighties and nineties. Shoot today in 1980 and it says 1986. Turn it off with one tap before you save.
NEW: TRAVEL, FOR WHEN THE GRAIN IS NOT ENOUGH
The dial changes how a photograph was made. Travel changes what stood in front of the camera.
Take a photo, turn the dial to a decade, and Travel puts you in the clothes, the hair and the street of that year, keeping your face. It works on places as well as people: the same corner, as it looked in 1955. The picture comes back and is then developed on your phone in that decade's own grain and colour, like every other photo here.
Travel is the one part of Anno that does not happen on your phone, and it never happens quietly. Your photo goes to Google's Gemini image model through Anno's own server, and Anno says so and asks before the first one ever leaves. Nothing goes with it: no name, no account, no location.
Travel is optional and is for ages 18 and over. Your first one is free. After that it runs on credits, from a small pack to a large one. No subscription, and credits never expire.
THE CAMERA STILL NEVER LEAVES YOUR PHONE
No account. There is nothing to sign up for. Open the app and it works, on a plane or anywhere else.
No upload, unless you ask for one. Every decade renders on the device, on its GPU. A photo you take is never sent anywhere. Only a photo you hand to Travel leaves, and only after you have said yes.
No analytics. No tracking, no third party SDKs, no advertising identifier. The app asks for the camera and your photo library, and that is the whole list.
WHY I MADE THIS
I have always loved the feeling of old photographs. A black and white frame, or an image from another era. It does not just show a moment, it shows how cameras used to see the world, and how far we have come since.
Today we take a photo, edit it, send it, and move on in seconds. But when I look at my old family photos I still go awww. They bring back people, places and moments I had almost forgotten.
So I wondered: what if we could feel that about the photos we take today?
Anno is a small experiment. Take a photo, and see how that same moment might have looked in another era. Partly technology, partly nostalgia, mostly about making today's memories feel a little more timeless.
Point it at today. Shoot it in 1962.
Requires iPhone with iOS 17 or later.
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