Professional camera’s and those darn lenses can be quite expensive, not to mention take a ton of time to master, both resources that a lot of influencers and/or aspiring photographers often lack. But social media is unforgiving and the demands for quality and striking imagery on leading platforms are at an all-time high.
The solution (at least if you’re an iPhone user) may well be the new to market app, Halide. If you haven’t come across it already, earlier this week, iPhone users were gifted this nifty new app, which in a nutshell, promises to maximize the potential of your iPhone’s camera, the way your built in iOS stock camera only dreams it could. Seems like a great second option to me.
So here are a few key facts and features, along with tiny bit of help from us to understand why they matter.
1. To start with, the app was created by former twitter engineer, Benjamin Sandofsky and a man who certainly knows his Apple products, Sebastian De With, a former designer for the company
2. As with anything touched by Apple designers and engineers, attention to detail is paramount. And they’ve spared no expense here in ensuring all the features to be mentioned are easy and fun to use for novices and pros alike.
3. It’s not a one size fits all; so if you’re thinking of applying filters, recording videos, square crops for Instagram, this one isn’t for you. But we already have tons of free options for that stuff. Everything here is focused on taking the best raw image possible
4. Provides full manual control over exposure, ISO, white balance, and even shutter speed. Automatic options are available as well
5. Adjusting shutter speeds allows you to adapt your shots for night and day. Show shutter speeds are better suited for the night as more light hits the sensor, and faster shutter speeds work better during the day
6. Focus peaking is super easy, literally taking a tap to toggle. Even has a red light (for more recent models) to highlight specific areas
7. Features a live histogram. The pros are probably foaming at the mouth right about now. For those of you who aren’t, a histogram is used to quickly judge the exposure and pixel distribution of an image. Get familiar with it, this will save you a ton of time
8. Allows you to capture images in RAW and JPEG formats. RAW records all the data recorded by the sensor, while JPEG file formats compress the same.
9. Certain traits like the aforementioned histogram, RAW and peaking require iPhone models 6S and onwards
Bonus fact, it’s currently on discount as part of launch week and costs just under $3 ($2.99 exactly). Price will be marked up after June 6th