Artist’s Viewfinder 6.5 Released with iPhone 11 Ultra Wide Camera Support

Version 6.5 of the Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder is now available on the App Store. This release brings long-awaited iPhone 11 ultra wide camera support.

We did face two serious challenges with the new phones.

First, despite being ordered on September 13, our iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max was delivered only on October 16. At first, the estimated delivery date was October 1, which had suddenly slipped to October 25.

After a series of rather angry phone calls, we finally got the devices on the 16th. As I mentioned earlier, Apple doesn’t treat developers equally in each country, putting us at serious competitive disadvantage, and causing excess costs. This is an ongoing issue since we started this business a decade ago, and I’m not going to dissemble it any more.

Second, the ultra wide camera “out of the box” turned out to be grossly inadequate for the task. To begin with, its angle of view differs between live view and taken pictures. And to add insult to injury, Apple’s distortion correction leaves heavy barrel distortion. Unacceptable things for a precision instrument like Artist’s Viewfinder.

Fortunately we have proven, mature distortion correction technology since 2013, so disabling Apple’s stuff and rolling out our own resolved the issue. But at this point we had to buy an iPhone 11 too, just to profile the ultra wide camera…

So after two and a half weeks of hard work the app is ready, and I’m pleased with the results. The ultra wide camera works like a 0.5x-class converter lens and can simulate a 15mm lens on the 35mm format (a 14mm is slightly clipped), or the Rodenstock HR Digaron-S 23mm f/5.6 with a 40x54mm back.

Marketing folks tend to live in an alternate universe where math is distorted. Apple markets the iPhone 11 as having a 13mm and 26mm equivalent (in 35mm terms) camera. The reality is that in 35mm terms, the horizontal (longer side) angles are equivalent to 14.5mm and 28mm lenses. Maybe they are comparing the diagonal angles, which although let them show shorter focal lengths because of the aspect ratio difference (2:3 vs 3:4), is misleading. It’s just like when Canon marketed a 6000×4000 pixel camera having 24.3 megapixels… Where the hell that 0.3 megapixels are coming from? (Well, maybe from the inactive sensor area being included in the megapixels number, but its still cheesy.)

Sorry, I had to vent… Now back on track.

Just like a regular wide converter, the ultra wide camera can be activated with the WIDE icon on the Quick Control Screen or via the Toggle Wide Mode function assigned to a Smart Function Key.

RAW capture, optical image stabilization and focusing is not available with the ultra wide camera due to hardware limitations.

Using external accessory lenses with iPhone 11 models is not supported. You don’t need one, just mention it for the sake of completeness.

The Viewfinder Handbook was also updated to reflect the new features.

This update is free for existing users. New users can purchase the app in the App Store.

Viewfinder iPhone 11 Support Coming

The release of the iPhone 11 series marks the end of an era for me. Six years ago we’ve released the Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder, a new incarnation of our successful Viewfinder Pro app. The Mark II brought first class wide angle conversion lens support, complete with real-time distortion correction. A world’s first tech at that time, and still unmatched.

This opened up a whole new world for landscape and architecture photographers, allowing them to simulate ultra wide shots and stitched panoramas.

But the converter lenses were bulky, expensive, and sourcing them early was a huge problem. We have a big box of lenses for every imaginable phone that are nothing but worthless junk now. So I don’t feel sorry that this is history and that some converter lens manufacturers will go out of business. With the exception of ALPA, they were all a pain to deal with.

We’ve received our 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max two days ago (more than a month after placing the order – sadly Apple doesn’t provide an equal playing field for developers in some European countries). And now I’m happy to report that ultra wide angle camera support is almost complete. Yes, I wrote most of the code in advance.

A screen shot showing the ultra wide camera in action

During the last month we had been asked frequently whether the new ultra wide camera will be able to simulate a Rodenstock HR Digaron-S 23mm f/5.6 on a 40×56 mm sensor, such as the Phase One IQ4 150. Although precise bench measurements still have to be done, based on iOS provided angle of view information the answer is a resounding yes. Just take a look at the screen shot above. For 35mm cameras, this is roughly 15mm equivalent. Sides of a 14mm are slightly clipped, so the 13mm in Apple’s materials seems to be marketing exaggeration. But we’ll see after the measurements.

The ultra wide camera is treated as a permanently present wide converter. That is, activating Wide Mode will switch to the ultra wide camera. There’s nothing else to configure. And there are no workflow changes. The updated app will also provide a separate Frame Size Adjustment slider for the ultra wide camera.

We still have about a week’s worth of work ahead, and thus I expect the updated version to be available by the end of October. The update will be free for existing Mark II users.

Technical Camera : Wide Converter Support

There are occasions when the iPhone camera is not wide enough. A handful of companies (Moment, olloclip, Schneider, Zeiss – just to name  a few) realized that this is an issue, and started making converter lenses that let you shoot wider. These lenses fall into two categories: 1) well corrected for distortion – like the Moment or Zeiss, and 2) uncorrected.

With the latter group you have severe barrel distortion. We started experimenting with these lenses for use with the Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder back in 2013. The barrel distortion basically made them unusable for simulation purposes, so we came up with a solution that’s unmatched even five years later. Maybe because it needs a lot of effort and is quite costly to implement.

The technology behind the solution is real-time distortion correction, and the associated thing in both Artist’s Viewfinder and Technical Camera is Wide Mode.

Let me show it in action before going deeper (veteran Artist’s Viewfinder users can skip this, as it’s exactly the same thing you’re used to in that app).

The top/left half of the image is what you get when attaching an uncorrected converter lens. The lower/right half is what you’ll end up after turning on Wide Mode.

This kind of correction is really important if you want to take architecture or real estate pictures – it may separate an amateurish looking image from a professional looking one.

Since distortion correction is done in software, edges of the resulting image may become soft. This is more pronounced with wider (0.5x-class) converter lenses. One possible mitigation (depending on planned image use) is using JPG Half or JPG Quarter image size for your album.

To use a converter lens with Technical Camera, you need to tell the app which lens you are using with the Wide Converter item in the menu. This will select the appropriate correction profile and conversion factor. We make dedicated profiles for each supported converter/phone combination (this is why it’s a costly endeavor). The list of profiles is continuously expanding, so if you miss something, please let us know.

We also measure the exact conversion factor for the profiles (which is usually more conservative that manufacturers tend to advertise). In Technical Camera this number is used for displaying Framing Previsor corners correctly.

But since we can’t cover every single lens on the market, there’s another neat thing: you can create a “custom converter” yourself. Since the process is exactly same for both apps, I’m not going to replicate here what I wrote about this feature when it was introduced in Artist’s Viewfinder – but I recommend you to read that post.

Ok, you have a converter selected. The lens is already attached to the phone. What’s next?

You have to activate Wide Mode. This is done with either the WIDE icon among camera options (accessed by tapping the circle icon in the corner – shown below).

Wide Mode icon on Camera Options

Or by assigning the Toggle Wide Mode (W) function to a Smart Function Key and operating that key.

That’s it. Until you turn Wide Mode off, the viewfinder, saved JPG images, and even preview images saved in RAW files will be distortion corrected.

All functions (exposure, focus, etc) operate the same way in Wide Mode, with the exception of digital zooming, which is disabled.

Technical Camera is available for pre-oreder now on the App Store, at a 30% discounted price. It will be released tomorrow.

Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder 5.0 Available

Version 5.0 of my Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder app is now available on the App Store. It took quite a bit longer than I first planned, but if you look at the sheer number of new stuff, you’ll understand why. More work went into this update than it took to develop the original version 1.

I wrote about the black & white mode and exposure compensation, and the question of RAW capture in former posts, now it’s time to reveal everything else. I’ll touch a few new things in this post, and highly recommend to take a look on the complete list in the release notes. And pay attention to the “Changes” section.

Quick Control Screen

The are a few subtle visual changes to make it less cluttered, and to make room for two new icons. The half dark/half light icon in the upper right toggles black & white mode. The 2x icon switches to the telephoto camera if you have an iPhone 7 Plus. The telephoto camera and wide converter use are mutually exclusive (as one would logically expect).

Icons for parallax correction/shift simulation and aspect ratio changing are now white when a non-default value is set for these (in the above example I set the 5DS R virtual camera to 16:9 aspect ratio).

Album -> Catalog

We had to rename the Album to Catalog to avoid a name clash with the thing that Apple calls an album in the Photos app. Now ours is named Catalog, since it would be extraordinarily hard to convince Apple that they should change…

And while we are talking about the Catalog, there are performance improvements here and there, meaning that an update may be required to the new format. The app automatically detects if this is the case, and will update the Catalog automatically.

Availability

This is a free update for existing Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder owners. New user can purchase the app from the App Store.

We offer upgrade bundles for former Viewfinder Basic/Pro/Cine edition owners, so they can upgrade for a reduced price.

The Viewfinder Handbook was also updated to cover all the new features.