36 Takes vs OldRoll: Unlimited Filters, or 36 Shots That Count?
OldRoll gives you a library of vintage cameras and unlimited photos on a subscription. 36 Takes gives you one roll of 36, three film looks, and no subscription. Which fits how you shoot?
By Thinslate Labs
Originally published on Thinslate Labs. 36 Takes is a Thinslate Labs app, like Keepp.
OldRoll is the big one. If you’ve searched “vintage film camera” on the App Store, it was near the top, and for a good reason: it has an enormous library of emulated cameras, each rendered with real care — the colour, the grain, the texture, the little imperfections. There’s an 8mm video camera in there. You can spend a happy afternoon in it.
It is also, in the most literal sense, the opposite of 36 Takes.
OldRoll gives you more. 36 Takes gives you less, on purpose.
Unlimited photos vs a roll of 36
In OldRoll, there’s no limit on how many photos you can take. Pick a camera, shoot all day, shoot a thousand.
In 36 Takes, a roll is thirty-six frames. The counter goes up and never down. When it’s spent, you load another roll.
The two apps are both about film, but they’ve taken opposite lessons from it. OldRoll rebuilt film’s aesthetic — how the picture looks. 36 Takes rebuilt film’s economics — what a picture costs you.
We’d argue the economics were the important part. The reason your parents remember every photo in the album isn’t that the grain was pretty. It’s that there were thirty-six of them and each one cost something to take. Grain you can simulate in an afternoon. Scarcity you have to actually enforce.
If you take a thousand photos with beautiful grain on them, you have a thousand photos you’ll never look at, with beautiful grain on them.
A camera library vs three film stocks
OldRoll’s appeal is breadth: dozens of cameras, effects like light leaks and VHS, decade presets, endless combinations. The joy is in trying things.
36 Takes ships three film looks plus your plain iPhone, and no effects at all:
Chrome — vivid, cool, crisp slide film. No grain whatsoever. Classic 36 — warm, faded, lifted blacks, heavy vignette, real grain. The disposable-camera look. Noir — black and white, punchy, the grainiest of the four, with shadow detail deliberately preserved. iPhone — unfiltered. Just the 3:4 crop.
That’s the whole menu, and it isn’t getting longer. There are no light leaks, no VHS, no fake dust, no 8mm. Not because we couldn’t, but because those are costumes. A roll of film doesn’t have a light leak unless the camera is broken.
See all four on the same night →
The bigger difference is when you choose. OldRoll lets you pick a camera whenever you fancy. 36 Takes bakes the grade into the pixels at the instant of capture and throws the raw data away. Choose your film before the night. Live with it for thirty-six frames. You cannot re-grade a photo afterwards, ever.
Subscription vs a one-time roll
OldRoll’s full library is a subscription — free daily trials of cameras, pay to keep them.
36 Takes has no subscription and will never have one. The app is free. Your first roll is free — a full 36 frames. After that:
- 1 roll — $9.99
- 3 rolls — $24.99
- 5 rolls — $34.99
Bought once. You own them. You are buying film, which is the metaphor working correctly: film costs money, cameras don’t charge rent.
If you shoot one event a month, that’s roughly $8–10 a month at the three-pack, and you’ll have twelve finished albums at the end of the year. If you shoot one roll a year, you pay ten dollars, once, and nothing else ever.
The thing OldRoll doesn’t have
A roll that ends.
When your thirty-sixth frame develops, 36 Takes turns the roll into a photo book — cover, laid-out pages, your captions under the photographs — that you share with a link. Six designs, including a Contact Sheet that lays all thirty-six out like a darkroom proofing sheet, and a Vows template for weddings.
Everyone who was there gets the link. It opens in a browser. It takes ninety seconds to read and it has an ending.
There’s also no import button in 36 Takes, at all. You cannot pull a photo out of your camera roll into a roll of film. Every frame was shot through this camera, in that room, that night — which is what makes a roll a record of a real span of time rather than a folder.
The table
| OldRoll | 36 Takes | |
|---|---|---|
| Photos per session | Unlimited | 36 per roll |
| Looks | Large library of emulated cameras + effects | 3 film stocks + unfiltered iPhone |
| Light leaks, VHS, 8mm | Yes | No, deliberately |
| When you choose the look | Any time | Before you shoot. Baked at capture |
| Change a photo’s look later | Yes | Impossible — raw data isn’t kept |
| Pricing | Subscription for full access | Free app, first roll free, $9.99/roll after. No subscription |
| Captions | — | Typed at capture, then locked |
| Imports from camera roll | Supported | Impossible |
| When a session ends | It doesn’t | Roll finishes → shareable photo book |
Which one should you get
Get OldRoll if you love the craft of the look. If you want to shoot the same subject through a fisheye, then an 8mm, then a 90s point-and-shoot, and see which one sings. If you’re making images rather than keeping memories. It has more cameras than we ever will, they’re lovingly made, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting a big box of toys — it’s a genuinely good app and the breadth is the reason.
Get 36 Takes if you don’t want a box of toys. If you want one camera, one roll, thirty-six frames, and the specific feeling of standing there deciding whether this moment is worth one of them. If you want the photograph to develop in your hand. If you want the night to end — as an album you send to everyone who was in it.
And if you’d rather not pay rent on a camera, that decides it too.
Get 36 Takes on the App Store. First roll’s on us.
More comparisons: 36 Takes vs Dispo · 36 Takes vs Dazz Cam