Halide's New Feature Lets You Take Virtual Telephoto Shots on Non-Pro iPhones

[Chaos215bar2]

I wonder if this is actually simply just good quality noise reduction, sharpening, and summing of neighbouring pixels?

Neural/Machine-learning implies it is (for example) scanning the photo, working out what’s in the scene, perhaps comparing that to a reference data pool, then using that to decide the best way to process things for that particular image, even maybe redrawing elements of the image using elements from reference data, and using this process to inform future tasks.

An easier way to think about “AI” processing of the kind that’s likely being used here is that the software effectively hallucinates extra details for your image. It’s only comparing to reference data in the sense that there was a pool of many thousands photos used to train the machine learning algorithm.

Ultimately this is just a more sophisticated form of digital zoom. The results may look good, most of the time, if the algorithm is well designed, but there’s no way to add real details that weren’t in the original image.

 

[Chaos215bar2]

Why does this website keep pushing Halide and not other apps on so many of their updates?
Is there a sponsorship between the two?

It certainly looks that way. Would be nice if MacRumors either called out the sponsored post or called out that they’re making money from the app store links. That would be the ethical way to handle this, anyway.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Just tried it out on my iP 13 mini.
and I´m totally underwhelmed.
It just scales up the image, applies some anti-aliasing, smoothing, filtering.

Absolutely no "AI" magic here.
Not comparable to products like Gigapixel AI or Sharpen AI (on the Mac).

 

[Jxdawg]

Could someone post an example? Would love to see what it looks like in the real world.

 

[Larsvonhier]

Could someone post an example? Would love to see what it looks like in the real world.

Here we go. See legend on the upper left of each photo.
To get an impression of the distances: The red tile roof building as approx. 500m away, the crane/forest ca. 1km.
All images scaled to approx. the size of the "native" resolution of the iPhone sensor.

edit: addition of the 1x non-zoom original view, just to get the real picture of the magnification of the zoomed ones

 

[Jxdawg]

Here we go. See legend on the upper left of each photo.

All images scaled to approx. the size of the "native" resolution of the iPhone sensor.

You rock! This is about the quality I was expecting. Not great TBH.

 

[Larsvonhier]

You rock! This is about the quality I was expecting. Not great TBH.

Absolutely. Even the cheapest of optical zooms (from Tchibo!) does a better job, albeit with chromatic aberration except in the middle area.

Halide: Installed, tested, deleted.

 

[maternidad]

No matter how you rename “digital zoom”, it won't give you real details.

Maybe real details aren’t that much better than fake details.

 

[TheLinkster]

My 13 mini already has a decent 2x zoom built in. What would impress me is if Halide could do a 10x virtual zoom and make it look good. That would be worth the subscription price.

Agreed. 2x is a baby step.

 

[MacWiz_007]

I'm not entirely sure if this is good or bad! 🤣

 

[videosoul]

Here we go. See legend on the upper left of each photo.
To get an impression of the distances: The red tile roof building as approx. 500m away, the crane/forest ca. 1km.
All images scaled to approx. the size of the "native" resolution of the iPhone sensor.

Is it me or does it look worse than both the native and Halide zooms without Halide?

 

[turbineseaplane]

Good people working here, so I wish them well..

But I honestly just can’t get myself interested in subscribing to a camera app

 

[Mousse]

No matter how you rename “digital zoom”, it won't give you real details.

Wait wut?! You mean law enforcement can't zoom and enhance? 🙃Explain how they do that voodoo on the CSI series of television shows?🙃

 

[SantaFeNM]

Back when I saw an article here on MacRumors, touting Halide bringing non-native Portrait abilities to the 2nd gen iPhone SE, I jumped and purchased the app. I could not get it to work, despite doing a deep dive into their website to see if was doing something wrong. I emailed them, letting them know that I could not get it to work, and asking for help. I received no response. Burned once. Not again.

 

[w5jck]

Digital zoom is as worthless as teats on a boar hog! Even the camera in the iPhone 13 Pro Max sucks compared to any APS-C or full frame camera. My iPhone 13 Pro Max can take somewhat decent photos for low resolution social media purposes, but the quality falls apart quickly if you zoom in. These are crap cameras that are way too small to EVER produce decently good photos. The laws of physics win out every time. There is not enough clever marketing in the world to gloss over the FACT that photons don't scale. A tiny POS camera with tiny POS lenses equals POS photos...

 

[PeteBurgh]

Why does this website keep pushing Halide and not other apps on so many of their updates?
Is there a sponsorship between the two?

Halide is a well-known, popular app regularly highlighted by Apple itself. It one one of the most recent Apple Design Awards for goodness sake.

Isn't a significant update to an app like that exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to find on an Apple news website?

It certainly looks that way.

It certainly does not.

If Halide or anyone else was slipping payola money under the table to Macrumors to feature products more prominently, sure that's a huge ethical problem. But I see no evidence of that, beyond a prominent app being covered prominently.

Macrumors has a clear, transparent policy on affiliate links that is very similar to other tech sites.

I really dislike this sort of casual slander/idle conspiracy theory. The vague style of 'just asking questions'/'looks fishy to me'/'is there a deal?' seems cowardly to me.

I think a policy of put up or shut up is best - if you have specific evidence that something underhand took place, by all means share it. I've no doubt that such sharp practices happen. But idle, evidence-free speculation is best kept to oneself.

 

[turbineseaplane]

I agree with @PeteBurgh

I'm not personally interested in Halide, but I know the team of folks is first rate and great people (very small team also).

I really don't think they are doing some pay for review scheme with MR
I'd be stunned by that honestly

 

[SantaFeNM]

Here are examples I just took with my iPhone 13 Mini. The first two photos were taken at 2x, and the 2nd pair are at 3x. The first of each pair (photos 1 & 3) are the iPhone's native camera app. The 2nd photo of each pair (photos 2 & 4) are taken with the Halide app.

Notice the green on the chrome edges of the barstools and on the edges of the window frames. Those are the Halide photos. I'll take the less smoothed native photos over that green artifact in the Halide photos!

 

[Octavius8]

Actual reviews anyone?

 

[cocoua]

50USD?? better invest in a pro model for 100USD

 

[turbineseaplane]

@SantaFeNM

Good comparisons -- this isn't a feature I'm interested in, even if free honestly

 

[SantaFeNM]

Here we go. See legend on the upper left of each photo.
To get an impression of the distances: The red tile roof building as approx. 500m away, the crane/forest ca. 1km.
All images scaled to approx. the size of the "native" resolution of the iPhone sensor.

Well, turning a construction crane into a white cloud is kind of magical, I guess?!

 

[turbineseaplane]

Here we go. See legend on the upper left of each photo.
To get an impression of the distances: The red tile roof building as approx. 500m away, the crane/forest ca. 1km.
All images scaled to approx. the size of the "native" resolution of the iPhone sensor.

Wait…how did you do the telezoom?

What product is that?

 

[VulchR]

... I'll take the less smoothed native photos over that green artifact in the Halide photos!

I wonder if the training set for the ML was a bunch of pictures of pastures. Bias in, bias out.

 

[lk400]

No matter how you rename “digital zoom”, it won't give you real details.

I y often use the “telephoto” lens to improve the lens distortion of the “normal” and also introduce a little background compression, which digital zoom obviously won’t do.

Having said this, I noticed on the 13 Pro (vs XS Max) that these effects were less visible. I later found out that the phone often just takes a cropped image from the “normal” lens, so digital zoom equivalent. It seems to do this based solely on noise levels from the slower “telephoto” lens, and can’t be overridden.