[HN Gopher] Halide for iPad ___________________________________________________________________ Halide for iPad Author : uptown Score : 178 points Date : 2021-05-18 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (lux.camera) (TXT) w3m dump (lux.camera) | t0mbstone wrote: | How is this not a product advertisement? | nvrspyx wrote: | Product announcements are posted here all the time. | CharlesW wrote: | I've enjoyed using Halide for iPhone. It was interesting to get a | tour of the thinking and design challenges around making a tablet | version. | jonplackett wrote: | The map is brilliant | W0lf wrote: | Every time this term comes up here, I have to think this is about | Halide [1]. | | [1] https://halide-lang.org/ | [deleted] | andrewmunsell wrote: | I find this interesting: | | > We did prototype a machine learning-based Concert Mode that | detects when you are taking shots at a show and disables the | camera automatically, but we decided that was perhaps a bit too | much. | | As much as I hate that person at a concert holding their iPad up | to take photos, I respect the decision to let their users make | the choice for themselves and to not become a gatekeeper (and, | almost certainly, block use of the app in legitimate situations | due to false positives). | jrockway wrote: | Digital Restrictions Management. Still a thing in 2021, sadly. | jkingsman wrote: | I interpreted this as a cheeky joke, not as an actually | considered feature :) | andrewmunsell wrote: | That's totally possible as well and it may have just gone | over my head :) | crazygringo wrote: | I just don't understand the hate around concert photos/videos. | | I always have a bunch of friends who wanted to see the show but | couldn't make it. Being able to send them a few photos and a | couple 30s clips lets us all enjoy it a bit and have a good | message back and forth. | | If it's a 2h show, I'm still completely "present" for 99% of | it. It's not detracting from my enjoyment. | | And I actually think it's pretty cool when there are moments | when everyone is sticking up their phone to record -- it's this | shared experience where everyone is expressing _yes, this is | the moment_. You see it 's not just important to you but to | others. And all the glowing screens is aesthetically similar to | the way people used to hold up their lit lighters when people | smoked. | | If I'm on stage and everyone's pulling out their phones to | record at a certain moment, that's when I know I'm making magic | and we're all sharing it. People are appreciating it so much | it's worth saving. | andrewmunsell wrote: | It's not so much the taking photos/videos that's the problem, | I do that on occassion to. | | This is the problem that Halide was either trying to or | joking about trying to fix: | | https://i.imgur.com/QA0hX.jpg | | Phones are small, tablets are not. If you're behind this | person, your experience is beyond just inconvenienced. | deejorama wrote: | Quick snap? No problem. Holding up an _iPad_ for a whole | song? Go fuck yourself, respectfully. | crazygringo wrote: | I've been to more shows than I can count in Brooklyn and | never in my life have I seen someone with a tablet/iPad. | | I'm sure someone has done it somewhere... but it's not a | problem that exists at any meaningful scale, as far as I'm | aware. | | I was referring to the people who criticize the recording | people do from their phones. | tomduncalf wrote: | I saw someone hold up an iPad for an entire Bjork show on | the row in front of me, live-streaming the gig to their | friends on Facebook. Didn't totally block my view but was | definitely annoying and I thought especially rude as | there were notes saying Bjork had specifically requested | no cameras be used (it was a gig with just an orchestra | so she wanted people to focus on the music). My friend | had a word with them at the interval and they did move it | out of our line of sight at least, lol | egeozcan wrote: | That'd be better solved by human interaction, not machine | learning. | kergonath wrote: | Or not so respectfully. I don't pay EUR50 to see someone's | iPad for 2 hours. | jrockway wrote: | You kind of do, right? If you had EUR50,000,000, you | could have a private concert. You don't, so the general | public is there, doing general public things. | lethologica wrote: | Not being able to afford a private concert doesn't mean | that common decency should go out of the window too | though. | kstrauser wrote: | Do you want someone to throw a beer at your iPad? Because | this is how you get someone to throw a beer at your iPad. | smukherjee19 wrote: | Just to give you a different perspective: in Japan, and | before COVID hit of course, I've attended quite a few | concerts, and _none_ of them had _any_ person holding up | their phones or iPads to record anything, ever. It 's | completely banned in all the concerts I went to and is | illegal: you'll have your phone confiscated and the recorded | material deleted by the event staff. Not that I've seen | anyone trying to break it. Maybe the ones done by amateurs at | small stages don't have that rule, but even then, I've never | seen any. | | But what we did carry were penlights/cyalium lights. And each | song has a set of calls people do at specific parts of the | song. And for the rest of it? We set our penlights to the | color matching the artist on stage, and we wave them, and | sing along and make the screaming calls when it's | appropriate. I would feel this crazy emptiness in my hands | with one penlight so I'd bring two for both hands. The making | of magic moment happens when few thousand fans scream | "Encore" at the end, and when we do this penlight waving and | all the stuff together. Phones don't even come to the | picture. They are in vibrate mode. Can't have it ringing when | the MC is speaking and everyone else is quiet, that'd be rude | as hell. | | I guess it's totally different elsewhere, but I'd be in for a | culture shock if I saw that many people trying to "capture | the moment" on a device screen, instead of in their hearts | and minds. For me, those are memories I treasure. | | I do understand that I cannot share the experience with my | family/friends, but I get to share the experience with the | guy sitting/standing next to me, and maybe the guy I | exchanged Twitter details with so we could talk about it | afterwards. Met quite a few great people during those | concerts, and some I talk with time to time on Twitter even | now. :) | crazygringo wrote: | That's interesting it's different in Japan. | | But I'm precisely pushing back on the dichotomy you're | presenting -- it's not an _either /or choice_ about a | screen vs hearts and minds, or sharing with friends vs. | with the person next to you. | | You can have _both_ -- you can have _all of it_. Record a | couple of minutes, share with friends, _and_ make friends | next to you as well the entire _rest_ of the concert and | have _those_ memories. Plus, you can multitask. Even if I | 'm filming a quick bit of a song, I'm sure as heck enjoying | the music and experience too! It's not like I stop | listening or looking. :) | paxswill wrote: | I feel the issue in this case is more a tablet being used to | record a show versus a phone. The larger tablet blocks more | of the view of people behind you. This does kind of fall | apart with the blurred distinction between large phones and | small tablets though, so in this case I feel like their | decision was the right way to go (in addition to the other | issues like false positives, complexity, etc). | notyourwork wrote: | False positives would be a really poor user experience. In | fact, I'd likely uninstall and never look back if I encountered | that type of issue. | thekid314 wrote: | I love Halide but never remembered to open it. Luckily iOS 14 | shortcuts made it possible to trigger open Halide whenever the | Camera app is opened. It now acts like the default camera app. | | Specific instructions: https://www.daviddegner.com/blog/change- | default-camera-app-o... | hellomyguys wrote: | I'm pretty into photography and love to shoot manual on my | mirrorless and film cameras, so was naturally very intrigued by | Halide. Unless I need to take a photo at a fast shutter speed, | most photos look better taken through the stock camera with all | the AI/ML processing Apple does. I guess I could also use | Halide to shoot in RAW and edit later, but I don't really care | to do that with iPhone photos. | | Curious what you're shooting where you feel you need the fine | tune control Halide provides and if you actually fine the | results better than the stock camera app? | mortenjorck wrote: | This matches with my experience. I love shooting full manual | on my mirrorless, even dialing in manual focus on a fast | prime with some assistance from focus peaking, but when it | comes to iPhone photography, I prefer shooting hands-off. It | feels like the ML engine just knows the limitations of the | sensor better than I do and can give me the most to work with | in Photos' streamlined develop mode. | feifan wrote: | For me, Halide lets me shoot regular RAWs, whereas the stock | camera doesn't -- I don't like working with ProRAW because it | renders buggily in Photos and Lightroom and I don't find it | worth the file size. | perardi wrote: | I have no specific comment besides: bless your heart, I had no | idea you could do this. Thanks for pointing out that shortcut. | lethologica wrote: | Thank you! I didn't know this was possible. I was in the exact | same boat. Bought the app, never use it because I keep | forgetting about it. | tomduncalf wrote: | That's a pretty neat trick to get around the lack of changing | default apps! | rasz wrote: | >We set out to build something much more than a large iPhone app | on a bigger screen. We had to completely rethink our design to | for the big, bigger and biggest portable screen. | | >The best UI is usually as little as you can get away with, so | just like on Halide for iPad, our exposure dials only appear | while adjusting exposure. They fade away into the background | after a few moments. | | we had to think what to do with all of this extra screen space, | so we decided to hide even more of the UI | sandofsky wrote: | As mentioned in the post, when the viewfinder fills the screen, | controls have to overlap the viewfinder. This makes it harder | to judge your composition. That's why it still makes sense to | keep your UI from looking like an airplane cockpit. | AmVess wrote: | Exactly this. Hiding a UI behind a UI behind a UI is nothing | but painful and slow. | | I downloaded the app and was met with two subscription options | and a purchase option. You cannot try the app free without | choosing one of two subscription options or a rather silly | purchase price of $40 USD. | | Requiring a subscription signup before using software is | Scuzzware...they are betting you forget you downloaded it and | signed up for the sub. I have an extremely dim view of this | practice. Strike 1. | | They have UI hidden under UI. Strike 2. | | UI buttons unmarked with no clear indication as to function. | Strike 3 and uninstalled. | luke2m wrote: | Do people really take photos on a tablet? | minimaxir wrote: | The cameras in the new iPad Pro (comparable to recent iPhones) | may finally put an end to that meme. | twobitshifter wrote: | In photography you'll hear similar arguments about people using | the camera display instead of the viewfinder. The viewfinder | provides the best view of what the image will look like, but | people would rather hold their camera out in front of them then | stick their eye up to the viewfinder. | | I think the argument can be made that the pro-view offered by | halide would be better for image composition than the iPhone, | but as mentioned using the whole screen won't allow you to | truly see everything. | kenjackson wrote: | For sporting events we use iPads for videos and photos. The | reason is that the quality is "good enough" and the large | screen makes it so much easier to actually follow the action on | the screen. When we tried to use phones, people were much more | likely to watch the action not using the screen, and then would | miss the shot because they couldn't get the camera aligned with | the shot fast enough. | monkeynotes wrote: | When you say "we" do you mean a professional outfit, or just | as a group of consumers at a sports event? I thought pros | were all about DSLRs and long lenses at sporting events. What | kind of action can you actually detail with an iPad's lens? | kenjackson wrote: | Sorry. For "we" I mean parents at youth/school sports | events. Not professionals. | crooked-v wrote: | In my experience it's extremely common at theme parks. I don't | understand why people do it, but it happens. | feifan wrote: | For my mom, her iPad (Mini) is her only computer, including | for taking photos. She much prefers the large screen (vs a | phone or camera-sized screen) and wouldn't know how to | transfer photos over from a traditional camera. I imagine my | mom is pretty close to the average demographic that goes to | theme parks in this way. | pjmlp wrote: | All the time, just look at any tourist group and you'll find a | few doing it. | dillondoyle wrote: | Yes! And video. | | My coach uses it to film climbing and it's really helpful for | instant feedback. There are also apps to do more in depth | analysis to for instance draw geometry on your movement to | understand and improve. | nathancahill wrote: | Wow, what kind of app is that? Sounds useful for climbing. | Know ski coaches that use iPads for filming ski training for | similar reasons. | kccqzy wrote: | Of course. Look at the 2012 London olympics. This is a use case | that surprised Apple designers too. | | From https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/chaudri/ | | > So I remember very clearly at the 2012 Olympics in London, if | you looked around the stadium, you saw a lot of people using an | iPad as a camera and generally that was people that just needed | to have a bigger viewfinder for vision reasons, etc. | [deleted] | sandofsky wrote: | I'm cofounder of Lux and one of the engineers. Happy to answer | any questions. | dadanda wrote: | Could you please add a digital zoom option in Halide? I bought | the app to have full manual control over the camera and I don't | understand why it cuts out this standard feature. One of my use | cases is that I often use my phone with one of those macro lens | clip-ons and on pocket microscopes and there you just have to | zoom in digitally. And even for everyday shooting I sometimes | just want to zoom in slightly. Of course everything is possible | in post, but since you are boasting full manual control, I also | expect the app to have all features of the default iPhone | camera. | sandofsky wrote: | Doing digital zoom "right" involves some serious thought. | | One issue is technical. The iPhone cannot capture a RAW photo | with digital zoom enabled. It's restricted at an API level. | The reasoning is that it wouldn't make sense to crop a RAW | file, and there are privacy concerns around saving data in a | photo that the user thought was cropped. | | Another issue is that digital zooming is awful. You're | typically looking at simple interpolation, whereas cropping | the photo afterwards in any half-decent editor offers better | algorithms. Very smart software can apply super-resolution. | | Then there's added UI complexity. On hardware that supports | optical zoom, you want to clearly surface to the user whether | they're engaged digital zoom or optical. Many users are | caught by surprise with how the first-party camera app | quietly switches between the telephoto lens and cropping the | wide-angle lens when it needs to focus on macro shots; the | wide-angle lens has a closer minimum focus distance. | | From talking to users, we found many folks use digital zoom | as a focus aid. That's why MkII included a focus loupe, which | solved that problem in a much more elegant way. | | We do have some ideas on how to do digital zoom well. Stay | tuned. | goldenkey wrote: | Doesn't digital zoom lose information? It's equivalent to | cropping and enlarging. Seems antithetical to a camera app | meant for professionals. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-18 23:01 UTC)