Manual Focus

In our last tutorial, we learned about the basics of the Halide layout. Now we dive into our powerful manual focus feature set.

What is manual focus? Well, sometimes your iPhone knows what should be in focus, but most of the time you know best. Unlike the regular iPhone camera app, Halide lets you be in control of what is in focus at all times. 

Selectively choosing the exact focal point of your image is sometimes very useful. Perhaps you’re trying to photograph a small insect or a lovely flower - it can be helpful to lock in your focus so that you’re sure the image will be as sharp as possible.

Getting into Manual Focus

Of course, Halide defaults to autofocus. We have to disable that.

Switching into manual focus mode is easy: you have the option of swiping right into it, or tapping to toggle off autofocus by tapping "AF":

You’ll be presented with a dial that functions like a manual focus ring on a real camera lens. 

Much like a real lens, moving the focus ring left or right focuses on objects that are respectively closer or further away from you. You can get quite close! 

It might get tricky to see what is in focus. Don't worry, we've got two things to help with that:

Out of the box, Halide will help you focus with our automatic Focus Loupe. It simply adds a little round lens to the middle of the screen that magnifies what is directly in the middle of the viewfinder. 

It help you achieve sharp focus. If it gets in the way, though, just tap the Focus Loupe icon to disable it. Or...

You could use Focus Peaking, instead.

Say hello to Focus Peaking. Tapping that icon enables a special mode that makes Halide color in areas of the image where the it can detect sharp edges.

Tap it again, and Halide will only turn it on when you adjust focus, so you can see what your shot looks like without all that... green stuff. We call that 'Intelligent Activation'. 

Finally, tap it again to turn it off.

Now you can always nail that tricky to focus shot.

Getting back into Autofocus

If you’d like to switch back to autofocus, swipe right — right back over! — or tap on the AF toggle. 

In our next tutorial, we look at shooting in RAW, a powerful way to get more detail in your images!