36 Takes vs Dazz Cam: A Filter You Apply, or a Photo You Commit To
Dazz Cam has 50+ vintage filters you can try on any photo. 36 Takes bakes one film look in at capture and gives you 36 frames. The difference is what a photograph costs.
By Thinslate Labs
Originally published on Thinslate Labs. 36 Takes is a Thinslate Labs app, like Keepp.
Dazz Cam is a beautiful piece of work. Fifty-plus vintage filters, cameras sorted into digital and video and vintage 135 and vintage 120, an Inst collection, accessories, the lot. If you want to make a photograph look like it came from some other decade, Dazz will get you there, and it’ll look good.
It’s also, underneath, an editing app wearing a camera’s clothes. And 36 Takes isn’t a filter app at all.
The difference is one question: does the look cost you anything?
Applying a look vs committing to one
In Dazz you take a photo — or bring one in from your camera roll — and then you audition. Try this camera. Try that one. Slide through the collection until something clicks. Undo. Try another.
That’s a nice way to spend ten minutes and it’s the reason the app is popular.
In 36 Takes you choose your film before you shoot, and the grade is burned into the pixels at the instant of capture. The raw sensor data is discarded. There is no version of that photograph without the grade on it, because the un-graded photograph never existed as a file.
You cannot audition. You cannot undo. You cannot come back tomorrow and try it in black and white.
This sounds like a missing feature. It’s the product.
Loading a roll of slide film into a real camera meant buying the look for thirty-six frames, and standing in a room deciding this is a black-and-white kind of evening is a real decision with a real consequence. Making that decision is what turns you from someone processing images into someone taking photographs. If Noir is always one tap away, you never chose Noir — you deferred it, forever, along with everything else.
See what each stock does to the same night →
Fifty filters vs four
Dazz has 50+. 36 Takes has four, and one of them is “no filter.”
Chrome — vivid, cool, crisp slide film. Zero grain. Classic 36 — warm, faded, lifted blacks, heavy vignette, real grain. Noir — monochrome, punchy, the grainiest of the four, shadow detail kept. iPhone — unfiltered. Just the 3:4 crop the format shares.
That’s it, and it’s finished. Four is not a roadmap position on the way to fifty.
Fifty looks is a menu, and a menu invites you to browse. Four looks is a decision you make once and then forget about for the rest of the night, which is precisely when you become able to notice the light in the room instead of the interface in your hand.
Unlimited photos vs 36 frames
Dazz doesn’t limit how many photos you take, and it happily works on photos you already have.
36 Takes gives you thirty-six frames a roll and no import button whatsoever. Nothing from your camera roll can enter a roll of film. Every frame in it was taken through this camera, in that room, in that hour.
That’s what makes a roll a record of a real span of time rather than a folder of pictures that happen to share a filter. And it’s why the app can turn a finished roll into an album that means something: the thirty-six photographs in it are, by construction, thirty-six things one person decided were worth a frame while it was happening.
You can delete a photo you hate. You don’t get the frame back. The negative is spent.
Subscription vs film
Dazz Pro is a subscription; most of the cameras and accessories sit behind it.
36 Takes is a free app with no subscription, ever. Your first roll is free. After that you buy film:
- 1 roll — $9.99
- 3 rolls — $24.99
- 5 rolls — $34.99
One-time purchases. Cameras don’t charge rent; film costs money. We thought that was the right way round.
The ending
When the thirty-sixth frame develops — as a negative first, then a darkroom wash rolling across it, then the photograph surfacing as though it’s drying, which takes a few seconds and which everyone at the table will lean in to watch — the roll is finished.
And a finished roll becomes a photo book: cover, laid-out pages, your captions sitting under the photographs, shared with a link that opens in any browser. Six designs, from Contact Sheet to Vows to Darkroom Mono.
Dazz gives you a photo to post. 36 Takes gives you a thing to send to the eleven people who were there.
The table
| Dazz Cam | 36 Takes | |
|---|---|---|
| Looks | 50+ filters and cameras | 3 film stocks + unfiltered iPhone |
| When the look is applied | After capture; re-editable | Baked at capture; permanent |
| Re-grade a photo later | Yes, freely | Impossible — raw data isn’t kept |
| Import from camera roll | Yes | No. Fresh capture only |
| Photos per session | Unlimited | 36 per roll, then spent |
| Captions | — | Typed at capture, then locked |
| Pricing | Dazz Pro subscription | Free app, first roll free, $9.99/roll. No subscription |
| The output | A photo | A finished roll → shareable photo book |
Which one should you get
Get Dazz Cam if you’re making images. If you enjoy the edit — trying a photo through six cameras, finding the one that transforms it, building a feed with a consistent look. It has vastly more range than 36 Takes and it always will. For retouching, for aesthetics, for working on photos you already took, it’s the better tool, and it isn’t close.
Get 36 Takes if you’re keeping memories. If you want the shutter to cost something. If you want to choose your film before the night starts and find out whether you were right. If you want thirty-six photographs of one evening, chosen while it happened, captioned while you still remembered why it was funny, and bound into a book you can send to everyone who was in it.
One is a darkroom for photographs you already have. The other is a camera that makes you pay attention.
Get 36 Takes on the App Store. The first roll is free.
More comparisons: 36 Takes vs Dispo · 36 Takes vs OldRoll · or read why photographing everything made it matter less