Portrait Camera App 'Focos' Gains Real Lens Optical Effects and Improved Shooting Mode

[wesley96]

The app is simply impressive. Visualizing the depth map to edit the bokeh, in particular. It does show me where the depth detection has failed in some of the shots, and solved the mystery of why a couple of my portrait mode photos turned out weird. If that depth data could be edited like henrikhelmers wanted, it would be perfect. But in the mean time I could use the app to see what sort of conditions work better in terms of depth detection.

 

[polterbyte]

The absolute best ten bucks I've spent on iOS software. period.

 

[cocky jeremy]

Been using this a while. I love it. I just hope they add the ability to do the different portrait modes.

 

[Kram Sacul]

Yes, absolutely.

Focos allows depth capture for portrait shots beyond Apple's 8-foot maximum range. Photos will simply be a non-portrait 2x shot if you try and take pictures like mine below with the stock camera app.

This is the absolute game changer here. This is honestly the best app in years - here's some shots from the past couple months. Without a doubt the biggest step in mobile photography in the last decade.

Some nice shots in there but anything with trees just falls apart.

 

[LunarFalcon]

...

Example of a quick selfie edited there with some of those effects:

View attachment 747849

Great pic!

 

[fs454]

The app is simply impressive. Visualizing the depth map to edit the bokeh, in particular. It does show me where the depth detection has failed in some of the shots, and solved the mystery of why a couple of my portrait mode photos turned out weird. If that depth data could be edited like henrikhelmers wanted, it would be perfect. But in the mean time I could use the app to see what sort of conditions work better in terms of depth detection.

I do wish someone would make a depthmap editor. Just a way to "push" certain areas toward the background would be nice, at least. There must be something standing in the way of making this happen, but I'm not sure what.

 

[fs454]

Some nice shots in there but anything with trees just falls apart.

It does have a hard time with trees and understandably so - it can only resolve so much fine detail to discern individual branches at 12MP and whatever resolution Apple is currently able to calculate the depthmap at in realtime. However I don't think that affected any of my shots except #5 (the widest shot of the Audi from the back, that super tall tree didn't read right) to a degree that anyone would notice unless we were studying them specifically for portrait mode mishaps. I render out my shots to closely resemble the real lenses that I own, which are a set of vintage 1959 Leica primes, and for most of these they feel close enough that I could mix them up with a bunch of actual shots from my A7s/A7rii and you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference unless you looked at them at 100% crop.

The best thing about the era of Portrait mode and computational photography as a whole is that it gets the ball far enough over the line that most aren't going to be fussed with it, but you've got no photography gear on you besides a tiny slab of glass.

 

[freezelighter]

With improved portrait mode in iOS 12, this app is going to change the way people take photos forever.
Its a revolution.

 

[eyeseeyou]

Apple should buy this company and add a “pro” mode to their stock camera app.