Apple has released a new app for iPhone and iPad, the previously announced video tool Clips.
Apple describes Clips as an app “for making and sharing fun videos with text, effects, graphics, and more.” Essentially it’s a stripped-down version of a video editor like iMovie, optimized to make edits fast and user-friendly on mobile. Its key focus is allowing you to shoot seconds-long clips and string them together into a video worth sharing.
Apple released a new ad in its ‘practically magic’ series featuring the iPhone 7 Plus Camera app’s Portrait mode called ‘Take Mine.’ Set in Greece, the video starts with a young woman arriving to visit her grandmother. They sit in a cafe where the young woman takes a photo of her grandmother using Portrait mode, which simulates a shallow depth of field.
The grandmother gasps when she sees the photograph exclaiming ‘What a great photo!’ which gets the attention of others nearby. That leads to the young woman being asked to take portraits of people all over her grandmother’s village. The action cuts between the woman taking photos and the portraits she takes, ending with the tagline ‘Portrait mode on the iPhone 7 Plus.’
Ben McCarthy, writing for iMore:
Editing RAW files feels like a huge leap forward in terms of mobile photography: With iOS 10, the iPhone is evolving from a great camera for taking casual photos with into a capable professional tool. It still has plenty of limitations, but I suspect we’ve passed a tipping point.
But shooting while out and about is one thing. What about using the iPhone in a studio? I gathered together a couple of friends to do a little impromptu photoshoot to see how the iPhone would hold up.
Ben is the developer of Obscura, which I featured in my review yesterday because of its native RAW support on iOS 10. He makes some good points on the limitations and advantages of shooting RAW on iPhone.
I consider the iPhone a computer with a camera more than a computer that makes phone calls. Therefore, Austin Mann’s annual iPhone camera review is my favorite of the bunch. I’ve been linking them for the past couple of years, and I find Austin’s approach always fascinating and well-presented.
This time, Austin has outdone himself. To properly test the iPhone 7 Plus’ camera with optical zoom, they’ve flown to Rwanda in collaboration with Nat Geo Travel and Nat Geo Adventure to track gorillas and take close-up pictures, timelapses, test wide-color gamut photos, and more.
He writes:
As many of you know, in the past I’ve created this review in Iceland twice, Patagonia and Switzerland, but this year I wanted to really change things up. With indicators pointing toward possibilities of optical zoom I asked myself: where’s the best place in the world to test optical zoom? Africa of course.
So this year, in collaboration with Nat Geo Travel + Nat Geo Adventure we’ve set out to get you the answers. I’m writing you from deep in the Nyungwe rain forest in southwest Rwanda… we’ve been tracking gorillas in the north, boating Lake Kivu in the west and running through tea plantations in the south… all with the iPhone 7 Plus in hand.
I’ve had a blast playing with the wide spectrum of new features and tech but as always, our mission is to find out the answer to one question:
How does all this new tech make my pictures (and videos) better than before?
The result is beautiful. The video “review” is a mini-documentary/short film about tracking down mountain gorillas, and it’s 9 minutes long. Seeing how they found the gorillas brought a big smile on my face, and you can notice how the zoom interface of the iPhone 7 Plus was useful for that purpose.
Watch it below, and go check out Austin’s photos and summary of the experience here.
Fun new camera app for iPhone by William Wilkinson and Deepak Mantena: Slide lets you create animated GIFs with a 3D effect that you can share with others. The 3D effect, as delightfully explained in the app’s weird promo video, is achieved by sliding the iPhone quickly to the side after selecting a subject.
I bought the app, and it works as advertised. Slide doesn’t work with the front-facing camera because it requires high frame rate to build the 3D animation, which, depending on what you’re looking at, may produce odd and funny results. I’m sending pictures of 3D furniture to my parents right now and they’re asking what’s going on.
Nice diversion from Live Photos and traditional GIFs, and just $1.99 on the App Store.
In the past eight years, each new advancement in iPhone camera technology has made dramatic improvements to image quality. The new 12-megapixel iPhone 6s iSight camera is no exception. With 50% more megapixels than the last four iPhone 8-megapixel models, the iPhone 6s boasts a number of key improvements including: improved auto-focus, local tone-mapping, noise reduction, and colour separation, with that fancy “deep trench isolation” technology Apple is raving about.
In this follow-up post to my previous iPhone comparisons, I present a 9 iPhone comparison from all iPhone versions taken with Camera+ including: the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3Gs, iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and the new iPhone 6s, in a variety of real-life situations to test each iPhone camera’s capabilities.
Lisa Bettany’s annual iPhone camera comparison is always well worth a read. Make sure to tap on the examples for more details, and check out Lisa’s explanation of the photos.
Apple aired a new commercial as part of their “If it’s not an iPhone, it’s not an iPhone” campaign, this time focusing on the device’s camera for photos and videos.
The entire ad showcases full-screen photos and videos taken on the iPhone 6, noting that “every day, millions of amazing photos” are shot with iPhone. Unlike other ads in the campaign, there’s no mention of third-party apps – just the iPhone’s camera and animations generated by photos and videos. Previously, Apple had featured iPhone photography with the “Shot on iPhone 6” initiative, which was later expanded to ads, films, and billboards across the world.
You can watch Apple’s latest iPhone commercial below.
Neil Cybart has some fascinating thoughts on the role of cameras in the modern age:
_Interpretation. _While there is still plenty of innovation left with how we use cameras to communicate with others, the camera’s most exciting role will be utilizing software to help us interact with and navigate the world. The camera will become an input device for software to interpret clues in various settings at home, the office, or school. The camera essentially becomes a pair of intelligent eyes that goes beyond simple image capture.
Mobile cameras are outgrowing “taking pictures”. They’re becoming a completely new input method for what’s around us.
LinX Imaging is the latest in Apple acquisitions, as reported by MacRumors:
Apple has purchased Israeli camera technology company LinX Imaging for approximately $20 million, reports The Wall Street Journal. LinX specializes in creating multi-aperture camera equipment for mobile devices and it’s possible that Apple will use the company’s technology in upcoming iOS devices.
Reading through what LinX Imaging had developed, there’s lots of interesting possibilities for the future of iPhone cameras.
The simple truth is that Apple thinks portable cameras can still aspire to higher degrees of quality and convenience, edging towards SLR-like photos without the complexity, cost, and additional hardware of SLR cameras. The iPhone’s camera is one of the features that is improved every year, and it sounds like we’re going to see notable breakthroughs over the next iPhone iterations.
