Halide
Halide is the new camera app from Sebastian de With and Ben Sandofsky.
In a sea of camera apps, what could possibly set Halide apart? Design.
Halide not only has to fight against the stock camera app, it must also fight against all the other ‘pro’ camera apps. I’ve tried almost all the ‘pro’ and ‘manual’ apps out there. These apps sell themselves as giving user manual control, but often fall flat in usability.
A pro camera app should be about is giving a user power & with ease of use. The stock camera app takes great pictures, but you can’t dial anything in. Pro apps like Manual allow you to dial everything in,but UI is filled with too many buttons and is too complicated to use.
Where Halide shines is its simplicity. It gives you power, but not enough to be overwhelming.
You can dial in focus, exposure, iso, and white balance. Everything else like shutter speed is automatic - great when you know what you want, but don’t necessarily know every bit of minutia about cameras. Just play with a few basic things and you’ve got a shot dialed in.
To adjust exposure, simply drag your finger up and down the screen.
To set focus, swipe from left to right using the bar at the bottom. Halide even has focus peaking, so you can easily tell what’s in focus.
The app offers simple ISO slider, and simple white balance control.
Halide also has great photo-triaging built in. 3D touch your latest photo to see a preview. Tap to view full screen.
Swipe left to delete.
Swipe right to favorite it (this puts the photo in favorites album in Photos.)
There are a lot of really pro features here, like the histogram and RAW. I’m a knowledgeable enough user to know about white balance and manual focus, but not savvy enough to know what a histogram is.
Where Halide excels is making everything super accessible and easy to use. In using the app just today I’ve seen how intuitive and easy it is. This is brilliant work.
Get Halide here.
Typed on ErgoDox Test Board