33 ms·
iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
- sudosysgen 5y agoMy Poco F3 does that too - it can actually focus even closer. It's quite useful for reading markings. That said, I often break out my camera and use it's macro lens when I need serious resolving power.
- packetslave 5y agoWhile this is obviously a promo for the Halide camera app (which is awesome, mind you) it's full of useful information on macro photography, regardless. This bit in particular caught my eye: "What makes Halide 2.5’s Macro Mode so special? For one, it brings Macro capabilities to all iPhones." (not just the iPhone 13 Pro)
- dkonofalski 5y agoI will admit that I got a little tinge of resentment when I realized it was an ad/announcement for their app but that quickly subsided when I realized that I would much rather have educational/informative ads like this than the alternative. Even if I don't download their app, I got something useful from this and that's ok with me.
- packetslave 5y agoyeah, content marketing doesn't annoy me nearly as much when it's this good (and this isn't technically CM since they're open about the fact that they're announcing their new app version)
- bigiain 5y agoAnd when it's good, it's good. I just clicked buy on Halide. I'd downloaded and played with it back when I got my iPhoneXR, and I only upgraded from that recently purely because I wanted some of the camera advances. $80 to buy specialised software for my $1800 camera (that also happens to be a phone) feels totally like the right thing to do.
- t0mbstone 5y agoYeah I just tried it out and holy shit it's light years better than the default camera app when it come to letting you adjust manual focus and what not. I signed up for the trial. The yearly fee is only $11.99. How did you spend $80?
- KANahas 5y agoAccording to the Halide II App Store landing page[1], a one time purchase is $50. Whether or not it's easily accessible in the app is another story. > In-App Purchases 1. Yearly $11.99 2. Monthly $2.99 3. One Time Purchase $49.99 [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/halide-mark-ii-pro-camera/id885697368 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/halide-mark-ii-pro-camera/id88...
- kowbell 5y agoI just downloaded it today. First thing you do when you open it is choose which of those three you want to pay (or start the free trial with a cancellable auto-subscribe for the yearly), do the 2-second Apple Pay prompt, then it sends you right to the camera. That is to say, the one-time was immediately easily accessible.
- bigiain 5y ago> The yearly fee is only $11.99. How did you spend $80 Australian dollars/app-store pricing, and bought outright instead of subscribed. Happy with what I paid there.
- ImaCake 5y agoI am always happy to defend an advertisement that has informative content and is up front about it’s true nature as an ad. An honest ad would be a win-win, consumers understand things more and the product, if its good, gets increased sales or awareness.
- 153957 5y agoSo this is just a digital zoom (crop) with Super Resolution™-like (machine learning) upscaling...
- Tagbert 5y agoYes, though there may be some other adjustments it makes. This is just a feature of their Halide app that gives an approximation of macro photos within the limits of the existing lenses. You would need to buy an iPhone 13 Pro to get the new lenses that can focus down to actual macro ranges. The app has lots of manual controls for taking photos that are not exposed on the default camera app.
- fastaguy88 5y agoIt is may be worth mentioning that it is very difficult to get such amazing pictures without a very stable setup -- both for the subject and for the camera. Even if you have enough light for a high shutter speed, it can be difficult to compose a macro shot if there is any motion at all. And, as was pointed out, lighting/shadows can be tricky when the "camera" lens is just a few inches away.
- ip26 5y agoForget about composing the shot, it's often even a struggle just to keep the depth of field centered where you want it. (Apple might be handling that via smarter autofocus, though) A little sway left or right can be cropped away, but missed focus ruins the shot.
- throwanem 5y agoHalide does focus peaking, albeit only in manual-focus mode. In general, though, you're right - I wouldn't want to try for the same kinds of shots with a phone that I get with a DSLR. My macro rig weighs about five pounds, which sounds like a lot and is in comparison with a phone, but between the damping effect of all that mass and the ability to get a good grip with both hands, it makes for a much more stable platform overall.
- brudgers 5y agoYes. “Use a friggin tripod” still applies. So does “bring your own damn light.”
- CharlesW 5y agoAlso, you can avoid touching the iPhone when you shoot by using a timer, a Bluetooth shutter remote, or your Apple Watch (Halide has a watchOS companion app).
- bwanab 5y agoI feel the need to point out that Nikon has always called extreme closeup lenses micro instead of the oxymoronic macro the rest of the industry uses: https://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/lens/f-mount/#special https://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/lens/f-mount/#special.
- cfjgvjh 5y agoThat's because the original micro lenses were commissioned to resolve images of microfilms iirc[1] (See under 1962), and doesn't really have anything to do with the macro/micro relationship. [1] - https://www.nikon.com/about/corporate/history/chronology/1946/index.htm https://www.nikon.com/about/corporate/history/chronology/194...
- lostgame 5y agoThis is a fantastic nugget of info, thank you!
- dkonofalski 5y agoThese kinds of comments are what I miss seeing in the majority of posts on HN. Thanks for this esoteric bit of knowledge!
- pdpi 5y agoThe name Macro makes perfect sense. It doesn’t refer to the size of the subjects being shot, but rather to the magnification factor. Macro lenses are capable of preserving 1:1 scale between the subject and film/sensor
- rrreese 5y agoThere is a well understood difference between macroscopy and microscopy. Naming macro lenses micro might be helpful to the layperson but not the subject expert.
- shoto_io 5y agoWow. I can see every detail of every scuff and scratch. I need to take better care of my stuff. “Wow,” was exactly what I thought when I saw the third crown image. Incredible.
- flyinglizard 5y agoGoing be amazing for people working on PCBs, to read difficult package markings and to inspect solder pads instead of using a microscope.
- jkestner 5y agoIt’s nice to have a do-all device, but a head-mounted dental loupe is hands-free and can light up your subject.
- macintux 5y agoOr just old people like me trying to read serial numbers on electronics hardware.
- passivate 5y agoYep! I knew I wasn't the only one :)
- noneeeed 5y agoHonestly, as someone who is starting to go long-sighted, this is tempting me towards getting a 13 pro (or Pixel 6 i it is similarly good). I frequently find myself using my phone camera to zoom in on ridiculously small text on things, but my phone has always struggled with it. Good phone macro will be a feature I would use all the time.
- gnicholas 5y agoI've heard of people who are very near-sighted using their smartphones to help them find their glasses. Just hold the phone close to your face, so you can see it in focus, and open the camera app. Voila, you can see the whole room in focus!
- fieu 5y agoNever thought of that. Good idea
- 5y ago
- marban 5y agoWhile the 13 Pro's lens is undoubtedly a marvel of engineering, I feel like all those 'mind.blown' reviews must have been written by youngsters who never used a dedicated macro lens on a (D)SLR.
- GoodJokes 5y agoYoungsters or people who don't want to and should not spend big money to carry around a bulky camera to take a picture 1 million other people have taken a picture of. One always see people in these threads projecting their insecurity with having forked over a $1,000 on a bulky camera that is nearly bested by a multi-purpose phone.
- defaultname 5y agoHaving that functionality in your pocket, instantly usable, beats having an SLR in the closet at home with a macro lens that you can switch to for a passing need. And FWIW, the curse of SLR macro lenses is minuscule depth of field, so much so that many take many photos (presuming a perfectly stationary subject), bracket the focus, and stack by sharpness. It's a hugely involved process. A macro lens with a tiny focal length instantly has a big advantage, though depth of field is still going to be a problem given the fixed aperture. It most real world scenarios I think the average person will have a much better chance of successful results.
- sudosysgen 5y agoThis is a fixed issue in cameras. Stop down to F16, and use a ring flash, there you go, fixed.
- bosie 5y agoi assume fixed at 24mm because at 90mm, stopping it down to f16 won't do you much good?
- sudosysgen 5y agoYes, somewhere around 24mm. You'd need to step down a bit more at 90mm. However, at 90mm the object would also be farther away, so you wouldn't need to stop down a lot more than you'd expect.
- smoldesu 5y agoI see a Lux article, I almost always skip it. Fair warning, basically every article I've ever read from this site was a fluff piece intended to take a hit for Apple, promote their iOS-exclusive app or both.
- packetslave 5y agoHere's the thing about iPhone photography (and Android too, I suppose): if you know what a DSLR is, or the difference between DSLR and mirrorless bodies, you are not the target audience. Apple isn't trying compete with a $3500 Sony A7R4 with a $1000 90mm macro lens. They're aiming for people who see the example "macro" photos and say "neat! I want to try that". Or the people who have already bought a Moment macro lens (or one of the other clip-on/screw-on iPhone macro lenses) and are tired of carrying it around. edit: formatting
- amelius 5y agoIt's the other way around. People with iPhones look at professional photography and will say "I want that too", and they're disappointed if their iPhone can't do it, so Apple makes sure it can.
- EugeneOZ 5y agoNo, laws of physics will not be changed just because customers want it. You want a more detailed photo - take a bigger sensor, better lenses. The software can improve something, but not create the details.
- tshaddox 5y agoI would have guessed quite the opposite: that people who know about and use DSLRs would be particularly interested in advancements in smartphone photography. I would have guessed that such people probably use their smartphone cameras more often (and more deliberately) than other people use their smartphone cameras. Heck, I bet a lot of these people even use their smartphone cameras more often than they use their DSLRs.
- Someone 5y agoI think the group of people who know about and use DSLRs is too small to be the target audience of any of Apple’s smartphones. Other smartphone manufacturers might be willing to do a product for, at best, a few million users, but Apple thinks focusing on fewer products is the better choice (for them, and, possibly, for all users because Apple can spend more effort on each design) I would guess Apple’s target audience is everybody who wants to make better photos, whether they know about DSLRs or not. Yes, they have RAW support, but I think they find that a nice to have, not a must for their product.
- wyldfire 5y agoThis company makes a software product called "Halide" for your mobile camera, AFAICT it is an iOS app [1]. But interestingly enough there's an image processing programming language called halide, too [2]. [1] https://halide.cam/ https://halide.cam/ [2] https://halide-lang.org/ https://halide-lang.org/
- sandofsky 5y agoThis comes up every time a post makes it to Hacker News. I can only speak for the camera app, but I assume the language also refers to silver halide, a chemical used in film photography. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_halide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_halide
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwanem 5y agoI've tried this functionality in Halide on my 12 mini, and it's not half bad in good light. No doubt the 13s with built-in macro do better, and it's certainly nowhere near the same realm as the D850 and 105mm macro lens I use for real [1] work [2], but it's not a bad capability to have in a device that fits in a pocket. [1] https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/DSC1250-1.jpg https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/DSC1250-1.jpg [2] https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/DSC0772-240dpi.png https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/DSC0772-240dp...
- uuddlrlr 5y agoContent warning: bug on bug violence Gorgeous shots tho
- fudged71 5y agoSurprised to see zero mention of ring lights. A small ring light would be perfect for iPhone macros.
- jagger27 5y agoThat’s a neat idea for an accessory. I bet you could make a little stick-on or clip-on light pipe that redirects the built-in flash to a tiny ring diffuser around the macro lens.
- slowhand09 5y agoGoogle it - theres about a million...
- novok 5y agoApple's crop / digital zoom with the 1x camera vs using the telephoto camera has been pretty annoying with the new iPhone 13 pro. It fails in many cases it's not supposed to, like zooming in at 3x in a bright day trying to take a picture of a flying bird or similar in the sky.
- opensmtpd 5y agoMy problem with smartphone cameras(including iPhone) is that they completely misrepresent the scene. They try to make the colors of your photos as punchy as possible even when that's not actually what you're seeing. Older iphones used to capture accurate colors (which is why I preferred iphone cameras in the past) but now they produce the same over-saturated, over-sharpened images as every other phone these days. If I want to make my photos punchy, I can do that in lightroom. For those who don't use lightroom, you can do that in the built-in photos app. My old iphone 6s produces much accurate colors than my iphone 11. On the iphone 11, colors are way off and images are so over-sharpened that I can see severe haloing around high-contrast areas. And those awful noise-reduction watercolor textures... I wish they would just leave some noise as-is. Get rid of chroma noise (which is relatively easy), and leave some luminance noise around. I mean, luminance noise are actually quite nice as they are similar to film grain. I can get pretty close to what I want with raw(not ProRaw), but you know, I can't even capture raw with their default camera app even when they are bloating it with useless(IMHO for a stock camera app) features like portrait mode, cinematic mode, photographic styles, filters etc. I mean, I get why they are doing it; obviously because people like over-processed photos for their instagram. But it's my pet peeve...
- Tagbert 5y agoApple brought out a new feature in iOS 15 where you can modify the settings used in the initial pipeline. Currently you can adjust some basic settings like contrast, saturation, and color shift. Those settings are then applied to all photos as they are pulled off of the sensors.
- renewiltord 5y agoThe iPhone lens swap trick that it does can be triggered by holding your fingers over the lenses. You'll see that as your finger approaches the lens, it will get bigger until it suddenly disappears when it covers the lens! Very cool!
- ironfootnz 5y agoI’d say, I almost got tempted to download the app to later realize that I have to commit a 7 day trial before even trying the app. Would be ideal to just buy the app for $$ price rather than upfront cost.
- sandofsky 5y agoThere’s a “Pay Once” option next to the subscription options.