Try NightCap

[Qaanol]

NightCap is already excellent, and just keeps getting better with each new version.

Still no real progress on the Volume+ shutter feature + the app review team (I'm working through it with them, but it might take time). So I'm going to release 2.2 without it. Expect it in a week or so, if all goes to plan.

That is odd, just about every camera app I’ve seen has the volume-shutter feature (Camera, Camera+, ProCamera, TopCamera, SlowShutterCam, etc.) It seems strange that Apple would single that out as a reason to deny an app.

I never thought to test it "between" positions. Now I can finally fix it

Glad to help.

The only remaining option is to put the message up, then set the exposure after a delay. I don't really want to add a delay to something that people complain is slow, but hopefully the delay can be so small it's irrelevant anyway. I'll test this later.

A delay of 0.0 should perform the selector on the very next pass through the run loop. Or at least, that is my understanding.

Actually.. this is a good suggestion. Then again, I think if the slider is active but manual is turned off it's quite confusing, because changing the exposure has no effect.

I disagree. I think that as long as the toggle switch is right there and clearly indicates “Off”, everyone will understand that it is off.

I don't want to automatically enable it when the slider is moved either. I'm going to go for a half-way approach: the slider will *look* disabled, but you'll still be able to move it. The new sliders for the burst controls will be the same.

That…sounds like a recipe for getting the app rejected, actually. Having a standard user interface component that looks disabled but is actually enabled? I mean, it is a good idea, and it would do exactly what we want, but I suspect the authoritarians at Apple would not approve. If you can get it through the review process, so much the better, but I certainly wouldn’t count on it.

Anyway, do you have the ability to set the shutter speed to arbitrary values? Just the reciprocal of an unsigned int? Only specific values? When I point the camera at a lightbulb the “EXP” indicator goes off into the ten-thousandths range. Right now, for instance, it says “1/55556”. I don’t know if that is accurate, but it certainly makes photos very dark, and lets me take a decent picture of an LED flashlight head-on.

If possible, it would be nice for “expert mode” to allow me to manually select very fast shutter speeds. The current setup, where it appears the slider value’s reciprocal gets rounded to the nearest integer, is well-suited to this change.

The way I envision it, in “basic” mode the slider would be how it is now, from 1/20 to 1/1. When auto-exposure is active, the shutter speed would be capped at 1/3, but could still go arbitrarily fast. In “expert” mode the slider would go from, say, 1/100000 to 1/1. When auto-exposure is active, the shutter speed would not be capped.

 

[psonice]

That is odd, just about every camera app I’ve seen has the volume-shutter feature (Camera, Camera+, ProCamera, TopCamera, SlowShutterCam, etc.) It seems strange that Apple would single that out as a reason to deny an app.

Yep. It's not just nightcap though, I've heard that this is happening to other devs, and some are being asked to remove the feature after it's been approved. At the same time I'm still seeing new apps + updates being approved with that feature. It's a mystery to say the least

A delay of 0.0 should perform the selector on the very next pass through the run loop. Or at least, that is my understanding.

Yes, but with the threading involved that doesn't guarantee it'll happen in the correct order. 0.02 worked anyway, and should be safe enough. It's 1 frame later.

I disagree. I think that as long as the toggle switch is right there and clearly indicates “Off”, everyone will understand that it is off.

You're overestimating a large part of the market Actually a lot of people don't understand any english, so it helps to show that the sliders are related to the switch.

That…sounds like a recipe for getting the app rejected, actually. Having a standard user interface component that looks disabled but is actually enabled? I mean, it is a good idea, and it would do exactly what we want, but I suspect the authoritarians at Apple would not approve. If you can get it through the review process, so much the better, but I certainly wouldn’t count on it.

I'll see how it goes I think. In this case they don't look 'disabled' - I made them transparent. They're not so much greyed out. They're still there and active, but the transparency indicates that they're not affecting anything. Hopefully apple will accept that.

Anyway, do you have the ability to set the shutter speed to arbitrary values? Just the reciprocal of an unsigned int? Only specific values? When I point the camera at a lightbulb the “EXP” indicator goes off into the ten-thousandths range. Right now, for instance, it says “1/55556”. I don’t know if that is accurate, but it certainly makes photos very dark, and lets me take a decent picture of an LED flashlight head-on.

Yes and no - I can set it to 1/10000 or even 10/1 (10s), but the camera firmware ignores anything outside a certain range and just reverts back to auto. In other cases trying to force a specific value does work, but weird stuff happens (like I've seen blacks turn red on the iPhone 4). The current range is about the best possible, unless I find an alternative way to control it.

And yeah, I've wondered about the accuracy of the shutter speed + ISO reported from the camera. As best as I can tell they are accurate, but sometimes you do see crazy numbers like 1/55556. I guess there's no physical mirror to limit the speed. Check the ISO values for the front camera too - it's common to see 1600 on the 4S, but I'm sure I've seen much higher on the 4/3GS (I seem to recall the ISO hitting 10,000 or something crazy - although the sensor noise did seem to support it!)

 

[Qaanol]

Here’s something I’ve noticed: the auto-exposure in NightCap acts differently depending on whether the focus square has been manually placed.

The biggest difference I’ve seen is when I’m sitting inside, pointing the camera out a window at the bright blue sky. If I have just started NightCap and the focus square is in its original state, then the picture is overexposed and the sky appears white. Right now I’m seeing it go to 1/231s at 64 ISO.

However, if I tap to move the square even a tiny bit, then suddenly the autoexposure becomes much more sensitive and the sky becomes a rich cerulean. In this case, the exposure goes all the way to 1/1672s at 64 ISO, even with the focus box pointed in the exact same part of the sky. That’s nominally more than a 7× speed increase, and the results make that seems plausible.

On the left is what I get leaving the focus square untouched; notice how it is overexposed for where the target is. On the right, after I touch the screen to set the target, the target is exposed properly:

The difference seems to be how big an area the auto-exposure looks at. At least, there is no difference when I actually go outside, I only see this happen when most of the picture is dark but the target is in a bright area.

It would be nice to have a setting to control how large a square the auto-adjust looks at. In any case, the default behavior when the target is untouched should either match the proper behavior when the target is touched, or there ought to be a way to revert to the untouched exposure state without having to quit the app.

On an unrelated note, if it’s possible to determine the current distance at which the camera is focused, it would be useful for that to be displayed next to the shutter speed and ISO. Same goes for temperature of the white point. So, “1/6s, ISO 100, 8.5m, 6400K” or some such.

 

[psonice]

Here’s something I’ve noticed: the auto-exposure in NightCap acts differently depending on whether the focus square has been manually placed.

The biggest difference I’ve seen is when I’m sitting inside, pointing the camera out a window at the bright blue sky. If I have just started NightCap and the focus square is in its original state, then the picture is overexposed and the sky appears white. Right now I’m seeing it go to 1/231s at 64 ISO.

However, if I tap to move the square even a tiny bit, then suddenly the autoexposure becomes much more sensitive and the sky becomes a rich cerulean. In this case, the exposure goes all the way to 1/1672s at 64 ISO, even with the focus box pointed in the exact same part of the sky. That’s nominally more than a 7× speed increase, and the results make that seems plausible.

On the left is what I get leaving the focus square untouched; notice how it is not overexposed for where the target is. On the right, after I touch the screen to set the target, the target is exposed properly:

Looks like the exposure mode isn't being set correctly at startup - I'll check that. Actually while I'm at it I'll have a look at the exposure modes again, it might be possible to switch between spot (which is what nightcap generally uses) and auto (which is what the camera app generally uses).

The difference seems to be how big an area the auto-exposure looks at. At least, there is no difference when I actually go outside, I only see this happen when most of the picture is dark but the target is in a bright area.

It would be nice to have a setting to control how large a square the auto-adjust looks at. In any case, the default behavior when the target is untouched should either match the proper behavior when the target is touched, or there ought to be a way to revert to the untouched exposure state without having to quit the app.

Yep, I'll investigate. Last time I looked at this it seemed that it was possible to set it to spot mode, but not to set it back to auto - but I think I know why now, so maybe this is possible.

On an unrelated note, if it’s possible to determine the current distance at which the camera is focused, it would be useful for that to be displayed next to the shutter speed and ISO. Same goes for temperature of the white point. So, “1/6s, ISO 100, 8.5m, 6400K” or some such.

It's possible to get these details after taking the shot - but that's not a lot of help. I've not seen a way to get them before taking the shot. If I see it though, I'll add it

By the way, the 2.2 update is delayed a little more - I found a really, really nasty memory leak in a new feature I added at the last minute, and it's taken a while to trace that through. Also an evil performance issue that didn't play nicely with the burst mode. After a *lot* of reading of boring technical documents, tons of experimenting, and an age sat in front of the performance analysis tools all of that is now sorted. Just need plenty of testing to nail down a few parameters and it'll be done. I've decided to release this as 3.0 as there are quite a few big new features

 

[Qaanol]

It's possible to get these details after taking the shot - but that's not a lot of help. I've not seen a way to get them before taking the shot. If I see it though, I'll add it

How about an option to view those data in the image browser?

Speaking of the image browser, it would be nice to have these features there:
Auto-rotate picture with screen orientation
Double-tap to zoom out fully (if already zoomed out, then double-tap to zoom in fully).

By the way, the 2.2 update is delayed a little more - I found a really, really nasty memory leak in a new feature I added at the last minute, and it's taken a while to trace that through. Also an evil performance issue that didn't play nicely with the burst mode. After a *lot* of reading of boring technical documents, tons of experimenting, and an age sat in front of the performance analysis tools all of that is now sorted. Just need plenty of testing to nail down a few parameters and it'll be done. I've decided to release this as 3.0 as there are quite a few big new features

Sounds good.

 

[DodgeV83]

Looks like the exposure mode isn't being set correctly at startup - I'll check that. Actually while I'm at it I'll have a look at the exposure modes again, it might be possible to switch between spot (which is what nightcap generally uses) and auto (which is what the camera app generally uses).



Yep, I'll investigate. Last time I looked at this it seemed that it was possible to set it to spot mode, but not to set it back to auto - but I think I know why now, so maybe this is possible.



It's possible to get these details after taking the shot - but that's not a lot of help. I've not seen a way to get them before taking the shot. If I see it though, I'll add it

By the way, the 2.2 update is delayed a little more - I found a really, really nasty memory leak in a new feature I added at the last minute, and it's taken a while to trace that through. Also an evil performance issue that didn't play nicely with the burst mode. After a *lot* of reading of boring technical documents, tons of experimenting, and an age sat in front of the performance analysis tools all of that is now sorted. Just need plenty of testing to nail down a few parameters and it'll be done. I've decided to release this as 3.0 as there are quite a few big new features

Can't wait to get my hands on 3.0

My biggest issue with this app, is trying to blindly find the little button to take a picture when I'm doing the reach-your-arm-out-for-a-self-portrait-with-the-girlfriend-game. The volume shutter button could fix that, but I find the pressure required to push the button might result in blurry photos for a slow shutter-speed app like this. It would be great if you could implement a "tap anywhere on the screen to take the photo" option for these situations.

It's much easier to keep the phone still with a light tap, then pushing a hardware button on the side.

I also love the 1/3 default shutter speed idea, I've started setting it to 1/6 myself, just to improve performance and get better shots of subjects which might be slightly moving.

Thanks for the great app!

 

[psonice]

Can't wait to get my hands on 3.0

It'll be a few more weeks yet I think - been dealing with a really nasty bug that causes part of iOS to leak memory (and then the OS itself kills the app to free memory up after a while) that's proving to be near impossible to nail down ;( Plus, super busy getting my new house sorted out at the moment.

My biggest issue with this app, is trying to blindly find the little button to take a picture when I'm doing the reach-your-arm-out-for-a-self-portrait-with-the-girlfriend-game. The volume shutter button could fix that, but I find the pressure required to push the button might result in blurry photos for a slow shutter-speed app like this. It would be great if you could implement a "tap anywhere on the screen to take the photo" option for these situations.

Problem with this is that the 'tap anywhere' has to work with 'tap to focus'. It would have to switch between the two, which would make things more complex elsewhere.

It's much easier to keep the phone still with a light tap, then pushing a hardware button on the side.

It's even easier if you turn the timer on and don't tap or push at all That's what the timer is for.

I also love the 1/3 default shutter speed idea, I've started setting it to 1/6 myself, just to improve performance and get better shots of subjects which might be slightly moving.

Thanks for the great app!

Thanks, it's useful to know what speeds people find useful too.

 

[DodgeV83]

It'll be a few more weeks yet I think - been dealing with a really nasty bug that causes part of iOS to leak memory (and then the OS itself kills the app to free memory up after a while) that's proving to be near impossible to nail down ;( Plus, super busy getting my new house sorted out at the moment.



Problem with this is that the 'tap anywhere' has to work with 'tap to focus'. It would have to switch between the two, which would make things more complex elsewhere.



It's even easier if you turn the timer on and don't tap or push at all That's what the timer is for.



Thanks, it's useful to know what speeds people find useful too.

Other apps implement this by giving an option to either tap to focus, or tap to take the photo. When you're in tap to take a photo mode, focus is on auto.

The thing about the timer, is the focus locks (unless I'm doing it wrong) when you start the timer. So if I start the timer, then swing the camera around and point it back at myself, I will not be in focus.

Congrats on the new house!

 

[TJ61]

Problem with this is that the 'tap anywhere' has to work with 'tap to focus'. It would have to switch between the two, which would make things more complex elsewhere.

How about if a gesture of sliding the shutter button onto the screen turns the full screen into a one-time shutter button? The focus and exposure locks could obey whatever state they were in prior to this gesture, so focus could still be in auto mode.

I obviously have not learned my lesson about making suggestions that have a low probability of working in iOS.

Regards,
Tom

 

[psonice]

Other apps implement this by giving an option to either tap to focus, or tap to take the photo. When you're in tap to take a photo mode, focus is on auto.

The thing about the timer, is the focus locks (unless I'm doing it wrong) when you start the timer. So if I start the timer, then swing the camera around and point it back at myself, I will not be in focus.

Congrats on the new house!

Thanks, it's a nice place - just a lot of extra work. (The house included 2 cats and 4 chickens, and they all require regular food + attention!)

The timer shouldn't lock focus at all. The focus + exposure lock once the app starts the actual photo taking process, but that only happens when the timer hits 0. (That's the theory, and I did just test it to be sure

On the full-screen shutter option... hmm. That could work out. Touch to focus isn't really needed with the current setup, so maybe this could work out - I'll test a bit and see.

How about if a gesture of sliding the shutter button onto the screen turns the full screen into a one-time shutter button? The focus and exposure locks could obey whatever state they were in prior to this gesture, so focus could still be in auto mode.

I obviously have not learned my lesson about making suggestions that have a low probability of working in iOS.

Regards,
Tom

Nope, not yet Actually I quite like that idea. Drag the shutter button onto the screen to make the screen the button does make sense... only problem is that you're overestimating the average app store customer. With a setup like this, a minority would get it and love it, and the majority would never discover it, and either complain that the feature doesn't work, or accidentally enable it and complain that it does

It's absolutely essential to keep things obvious and easy. If the app takes off in a big way (and sometimes it does, often when you least expect it), support emails go through the roof. Add something non-obvious to the app, or something that confuses people, and the result is a serious avalanche of email. I was chatting to another dev recently, and after apple featured one of his apps he was getting >1000 support emails a day. If you assume a (pretty optimistic!) 2 minutes to reply to each, that's 33 hours. To reply to one day's email. You need 4+ full time staff working 8 hour days just to deal with email. Or you stop doing support, but I really hate companies with poor support.

 

[DodgeV83]

Thanks, it's a nice place - just a lot of extra work. (The house included 2 cats and 4 chickens, and they all require regular food + attention!)

The timer shouldn't lock focus at all. The focus + exposure lock once the app starts the actual photo taking process, but that only happens when the timer hits 0. (That's the theory, and I did just test it to be sure

On the full-screen shutter option... hmm. That could work out. Touch to focus isn't really needed with the current setup, so maybe this could work out - I'll test a bit and see.



Nope, not yet Actually I quite like that idea. Drag the shutter button onto the screen to make the screen the button does make sense... only problem is that you're overestimating the average app store customer. With a setup like this, a minority would get it and love it, and the majority would never discover it, and either complain that the feature doesn't work, or accidentally enable it and complain that it does

It's absolutely essential to keep things obvious and easy. If the app takes off in a big way (and sometimes it does, often when you least expect it), support emails go through the roof. Add something non-obvious to the app, or something that confuses people, and the result is a serious avalanche of email. I was chatting to another dev recently, and after apple featured one of his apps he was getting >1000 support emails a day. If you assume a (pretty optimistic!) 2 minutes to reply to each, that's 33 hours. To reply to one day's email. You need 4+ full time staff working 8 hour days just to deal with email. Or you stop doing support, but I really hate companies with poor support.

You're right, i don't think I gave it enough time. Changing the timer to 5 seconds ensured it had enough time to focus before taking the shot.

Thanks!

 

[DodgeV83]

Thanks, it's a nice place - just a lot of extra work. (The house included 2 cats and 4 chickens, and they all require regular food + attention!)

The timer shouldn't lock focus at all. The focus + exposure lock once the app starts the actual photo taking process, but that only happens when the timer hits 0. (That's the theory, and I did just test it to be sure

On the full-screen shutter option... hmm. That could work out. Touch to focus isn't really needed with the current setup, so maybe this could work out - I'll test a bit and see.



Nope, not yet Actually I quite like that idea. Drag the shutter button onto the screen to make the screen the button does make sense... only problem is that you're overestimating the average app store customer. With a setup like this, a minority would get it and love it, and the majority would never discover it, and either complain that the feature doesn't work, or accidentally enable it and complain that it does

It's absolutely essential to keep things obvious and easy. If the app takes off in a big way (and sometimes it does, often when you least expect it), support emails go through the roof. Add something non-obvious to the app, or something that confuses people, and the result is a serious avalanche of email. I was chatting to another dev recently, and after apple featured one of his apps he was getting >1000 support emails a day. If you assume a (pretty optimistic!) 2 minutes to reply to each, that's 33 hours. To reply to one day's email. You need 4+ full time staff working 8 hour days just to deal with email. Or you stop doing support, but I really hate companies with poor support.

Hey, still looking forward to the update

Quick question for you, are the new camera APIs in iOS6 applicable to this app at all? I'm excited to see what you guys can do in iOS6

 

[rogerbarrett]

Pictures are also looking cool. Amazing wallpapers.

 

[psonice]

Hey, still looking forward to the update

Quick question for you, are the new camera APIs in iOS6 applicable to this app at all? I'm excited to see what you guys can do in iOS6

Yeah, sorry once again for the delay. We've had some big issues with both the building work and a few, let's say "life changes" that were unanticipated in the last couple of months. Because of that I've done very little actual work lately The way it's worked out has actually been good though, and I expect to be a whole lot more productive now.

Regarding iOS 6 - I can't really discuss it much, as it's all under NDA for developers. There were some new features for camera control publicly announced which sound extremely useful, but having looked at what's actually there I don't foresee any changes in nightcap so far. Actually it's all a bit.. mysterious? Ask me again in a couple of months, perhaps things will have changed

 

[Qaanol]

Glad to hear you’re still working on NightCap, it continues to be my favorite photography app. The v2.2 beta version you sent me several months ago is working great, and I’d really like to see one last released version for iOS 5.

Also, as a wish-list feature, one thing that would really help me take pictures of the stars is a “sharpen preview” mode. This would be available in the app settings and would only affect the on-screen preview, not the actual captured image. All it would do is apply an Unsharp Mask to the preview image, perhaps with radius 2 and amount 200% (those are settings I use in Gimp for the full-size images).

The idea is that often when pointing the iPhone at the sky, even in NightCap with max exposure, the preview image is too small and dark to see what stars will appear in the final full-size image. In my experience the Unsharp Mask is the quickest way to make small features more visible. This will make it much easier to properly aim the iPhone at the stars I want to capture, rather than trying to align it blindly.

 

[Qaanol]

Sorry to double-post, but I just found a repeatable bug to do with interrupting the launch process. This is in v2.2 (beta), so it might well not affect the released versions (but then again it might, I haven’t checked.)

What happens is, if I start up the NightCap app while somewhere dark (so the app will default to a long exposure), then wait about 3 seconds, and while the NightCap loading screen is still showing I press either the Home or Power button to leave the app, the follow bug occurs.

Upon returning to NightCap after switching away during launch, it is stuck at 1/20s exposure and 400 ISO, the preview image shows all black, and it will not take a photograph. In order to get the app to work properly I have to quit NightCap entirely and relaunch.

Also, in other news, I took this picture early in the morning (after staying up very late at night) a few weeks ago and I thought it came out well. This is made from 32 NightCap 1s/800ISO exposures merged in ImageFuser and enhanced in the Gimp.

Venus, Jupiter, Aldebaran, the Pleiades, and more
(click for full-size)​

If you look closely you’ll see many of the stars of “stretched” in the image. That’s because the merging process aligned the trees, and the stars visibly moved over the minute or so during which the shots were taken.

For comparison, here are the first and last of the 32 original images from NightCap. In them you can see the distance through which the stars appear to have moved (and the amount the sky brightened.)

 

[psonice]

Getting there - now into the final testing stages

Also, as a wish-list feature, one thing that would really help me take pictures of the stars is a “sharpen preview” mode. This would be available in the app settings and would only affect the on-screen preview, not the actual captured image. All it would do is apply an Unsharp Mask to the preview image, perhaps with radius 2 and amount 200% (those are settings I use in Gimp for the full-size images).

That would be handy, but it'd also be a LOT of work to adapt nightcap for realtime effects. It was never designed for that unfortunately! A future app I have planned might allow things like this, but it won't make it into NightCap.

The idea is that often when pointing the iPhone at the sky, even in NightCap with max exposure, the preview image is too small and dark to see what stars will appear in the final full-size image. In my experience the Unsharp Mask is the quickest way to make small features more visible. This will make it much easier to properly aim the iPhone at the stars I want to capture, rather than trying to align it blindly.

Did I send you a copy of 'true nightvision'? Let me know if not. That uses the same long exposure modes, but has realtime image enhancement and zoom, so it's perfect for aligning shots. It's more of a fun app, and only outputs 1280x720 images, but it's a useful tool for lining up shots for nightcap.

Sorry to double-post, but I just found a repeatable bug to do with interrupting the launch process.

[--snip--]

Upon returning to NightCap after switching away during launch, it is stuck at 1/20s exposure and 400 ISO, the preview image shows all black, and it will not take a photograph. In order to get the app to work properly I have to quit NightCap entirely and relaunch.

I'm unable to reproduce that in the current build, but I do remember fixing a few things related to camera restarts and there was a bug that locked the exposure in strange ways that could be what you're seeing. I've just sent you the current 3.0 beta, so let me know if you still get the issue.

Also, in other news, I took this picture early in the morning (after staying up very late at night) a few weeks ago and I thought it came out well. This is made from 32 NightCap 1s/800ISO exposures merged in ImageFuser and enhanced in the Gimp.

Venus, Jupiter, Aldebaran, the Pleiades, and more
(click for full-size)​

If you look closely you’ll see many of the stars of “stretched” in the image. That’s because the merging process aligned the trees, and the stars visibly moved over the minute or so during which the shots were taken.

For comparison, here are the first and last of the 32 original images from NightCap. In them you can see the distance through which the stars appear to have moved (and the amount the sky brightened.)

That's a lovely shot. I'll be interested to see what you can squeeze out of it with TIFF mode. A lot of the artefacts in the image are caused by JPEG

 

[Qaanol]

That would be handy, but it'd also be a LOT of work to adapt nightcap for realtime effects. It was never designed for that unfortunately! A future app I have planned might allow things like this, but it won't make it into NightCap.

Shucks.

Did I send you a copy of 'true nightvision'? Let me know if not. That uses the same long exposure modes, but has realtime image enhancement and zoom, so it's perfect for aligning shots. It's more of a fun app, and only outputs 1280x720 images, but it's a useful tool for lining up shots for nightcap.

Yes you did. Unfortunately, without the ability to lock focus and exposure, TNV is…unreliable at best. Often when in its brightest mode I’ll point it at the stars, and they will show up on screen, then slowly fade away. And being a separate app from NightCap makes TNV useless for previewing star pictures, because switching apps resets the locked focus in NightCap.

The iPhone’s autofocus consistently fails to pick up on stars, so what I do in NightCap is set and lock the focus distance while indoors, pointing at a well-lit wall some 30 feet away. That way, with focus locked, all the pictures I take will have the same distal focal point. However, if I switch from one app to another, then when I return to NightCap the camera will have forgotten its locked focus, and will do a new autofocus. Being outside at night, it almost always fails to focus at the long distance I need for astrophotography.

Furthermore, switching apps means touching the phone, which when I have a telephoto lens on it, can drastically alter where exactly it is pointing, even when touched very lightly. So for a variety of reasons, TNV cannot provide the functionality of a sharpened preview within NightCap, nor indeed could any separate app succeed in that as things now stand.

That's a lovely shot. I'll be interested to see what you can squeeze out of it with TIFF mode. A lot of the artefacts in the image are caused by JPEG

Thanks, I think TIFF mode will help a lot. I’ll probably be able to get superior shots using far fewer exposures, maybe only 4 or 8. That will give the stars less time to wheel around to different positions, and also make the merging process much faster, having fewer images to deal with.

 

[DodgeV83]

Yeah, sorry once again for the delay. We've had some big issues with both the building work and a few, let's say "life changes" that were unanticipated in the last couple of months. Because of that I've done very little actual work lately The way it's worked out has actually been good though, and I expect to be a whole lot more productive now.

Regarding iOS 6 - I can't really discuss it much, as it's all under NDA for developers. There were some new features for camera control publicly announced which sound extremely useful, but having looked at what's actually there I don't foresee any changes in nightcap so far. Actually it's all a bit.. mysterious? Ask me again in a couple of months, perhaps things will have changed

I'm very excited to read about the iPhone 5's "low light boost mode" that can increase the ISO cap from 800 to 3200! I just read over on Daring Fireball's site, that its' possible for third party apps to implement it:

http://blog.crushapps.com/2012/09/the-iphone-5s-low-light-boost-mode/

While it’s not documented yet in the AVCaptureDevice Class Reference, taking a peek at the “AVCaptureDevice.h” class header reveals the related properties:

lowLightBoostSupported
lowLightBoostEnabled
automaticallyEnablesLowLightBoostWhenAvailable

If there's an app that is poised to take advantage of this, it's NightCap

 

[psonice]

If there's an app that is poised to take advantage of this, it's NightCap

Already there

http://a.yfrog.com/img864/4558/iytjks.jpg

I need to get a Camera Boost update out (should be submitted by the end of the weekend), then finish the iPhone 5 interface for NightCap, so it should be sent to Apple within the next week.

 

[DodgeV83]

Already there

http://a.yfrog.com/img864/4558/iytjks.jpg

I need to get a Camera Boost update out (should be submitted by the end of the weekend), then finish the iPhone 5 interface for NightCap, so it should be sent to Apple within the next week.

You're teasing us psonice!



Just found out yesterday, that if the phone goes into ISO 3200 mode, and you leave it still for a second before taking the photo, it automatically does a noise reduction for you! Very very excited to see how much better NightCap gets with these new features

 

[psonice]

You're teasing us psonice!



Just found out yesterday, that if the phone goes into ISO 3200 mode, and you leave it still for a second before taking the photo, it automatically does a noise reduction for you! Very very excited to see how much better NightCap gets with these new features

Yeah, sorry! Things aren't going exactly smoothly the last few weeks!

I found a really 'small' (but also pretty critical) bug in Camera Boost that turned out to be incredibly hard to fix, because that app works right at the very limits of what the CPU + GPU can do and getting the fix to work within the tiny bit of remaining performance was near impossible. Managed it in the end, and that app is now submitted to apple so done and dusted.

I've also taken a much-needed week off. Went to Istanbul, took about a million photos with the iphone 5 - and I have to say, despite the specs saying it's the same as the 4S, it's actually a major upgrade! I also took 2 "real" cameras with me, and the iphone 5 significantly outperformed both. The only times I ended up using the cameras was when I needed zoom.

Now, I'm kind of back to work on nightcap, but because of the building work we've had done here (and various snags and delays) I've got no heating. It's currently 10ºC... indoors. I'm a whole lot less productive typing with gloves on ;(

The heating should hopefully be fixed today at least, but then I have a minor operation on Friday to remove a small (and totally harmless) lump from my ankle which is pressing on a nerve, so I need to get all the heavy work done in the house that I won't be able to do next week.

On the plus side, it's looking like next week i'll be warm and comfortable and free of distracting building work Hopefully I can get NightCap 3 fully complete and tested by the end of next week, and we'll be good for release a week or so later.

Interesting point about the noise reduction too by the way, I've not noticed that. Going to go experiment, see how it works and if it can be used somehow

 

[DodgeV83]

Yeah, sorry! Things aren't going exactly smoothly the last few weeks!

I found a really 'small' (but also pretty critical) bug in Camera Boost that turned out to be incredibly hard to fix, because that app works right at the very limits of what the CPU + GPU can do and getting the fix to work within the tiny bit of remaining performance was near impossible. Managed it in the end, and that app is now submitted to apple so done and dusted.

I've also taken a much-needed week off. Went to Istanbul, took about a million photos with the iphone 5 - and I have to say, despite the specs saying it's the same as the 4S, it's actually a major upgrade! I also took 2 "real" cameras with me, and the iphone 5 significantly outperformed both. The only times I ended up using the cameras was when I needed zoom.

Now, I'm kind of back to work on nightcap, but because of the building work we've had done here (and various snags and delays) I've got no heating. It's currently 10ºC... indoors. I'm a whole lot less productive typing with gloves on ;(

The heating should hopefully be fixed today at least, but then I have a minor operation on Friday to remove a small (and totally harmless) lump from my ankle which is pressing on a nerve, so I need to get all the heavy work done in the house that I won't be able to do next week.

On the plus side, it's looking like next week i'll be warm and comfortable and free of distracting building work Hopefully I can get NightCap 3 fully complete and tested by the end of next week, and we'll be good for release a week or so later.

Interesting point about the noise reduction too by the way, I've not noticed that. Going to go experiment, see how it works and if it can be used somehow

Wow, hope you can warm up soon, 10 degrees Celcius doens't sound like fun

Yea I'm quite impressed with the noise reduction, it's easy to test out. Point your camera somewhere dark where ISO 3200 mode will activate, and look at all the noise that starts crawling around your screen (kindof like white noise on a TV). Now hold the camera still for 2-3 seconds, and you will see all the noise fade away. I found out about the feature from this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1468846/

Camera+ is the only other camera app I've seen that has implemented ISO 3200 mode so far, and it works the same there. Keep the camera still for a few seconds, and the noise fades away. It is probably a built-in feature of the camera boost mode.

Good luck with your surgery and heat issues

 

[DodgeV83]

Yeah, sorry! Things aren't going exactly smoothly the last few weeks!

I found a really 'small' (but also pretty critical) bug in Camera Boost that turned out to be incredibly hard to fix, because that app works right at the very limits of what the CPU + GPU can do and getting the fix to work within the tiny bit of remaining performance was near impossible. Managed it in the end, and that app is now submitted to apple so done and dusted.

I've also taken a much-needed week off. Went to Istanbul, took about a million photos with the iphone 5 - and I have to say, despite the specs saying it's the same as the 4S, it's actually a major upgrade! I also took 2 "real" cameras with me, and the iphone 5 significantly outperformed both. The only times I ended up using the cameras was when I needed zoom.

Now, I'm kind of back to work on nightcap, but because of the building work we've had done here (and various snags and delays) I've got no heating. It's currently 10ºC... indoors. I'm a whole lot less productive typing with gloves on ;(

The heating should hopefully be fixed today at least, but then I have a minor operation on Friday to remove a small (and totally harmless) lump from my ankle which is pressing on a nerve, so I need to get all the heavy work done in the house that I won't be able to do next week.

On the plus side, it's looking like next week i'll be warm and comfortable and free of distracting building work Hopefully I can get NightCap 3 fully complete and tested by the end of next week, and we'll be good for release a week or so later.

Interesting point about the noise reduction too by the way, I've not noticed that. Going to go experiment, see how it works and if it can be used somehow

Time for my bi-weekly annoying message

Every time I take out my i Phone 5 in low-light conditions, I wish I had your new app

Hope everything is going well!

 

[Qaanol]

I’m also curious how the progress goes. If there’s anything I can do to help I’d be glad to lend a hand.

I’m still on a 4S running 5.0.1, so the new hardware and iOS features are nothing to me, but I look forward to high-quality image formats and a photo review screen that works smoothly. (Plus I’m still hoping for an “enhance preview” option to make stars show up in the viewfinder…)