Kino is the iPhone camera app I’d recommend to everyone

5 days ago 5

The Halide camera app is one of the hot favorites among folks who take mobile photo and video capture seriously. A fair share of content creators that I know have completely replaced the iPhone’s stock camera app with Halide, all thanks to the deep creative controls that it offers.

The app recently added a fantastic feature called Process Zero, which switches all the AI processing and delivers pristine shots. However, for all the deep controls that Halide has to offer, it also serves up a sharp learning curve. At times, it can even get overwhelming.

That’s where Kino comes into the picture. It’s a new video-centric camera app from the team behind Halide. This one focuses on functional simplicity, without skimping on the fundamental “Pro” controls. It also adds a few cool tricks into the mix to get artistic videos.

What does that all mean? In short, it is the best video camera app I’ve ever used.

Simple software, powerful controls

One of the most striking elements of Kino is that it tries to keep the UI nearly as clean as the iPhone’s stock camera app. At the same time, it makes sure that you get as many core controls for fine-tuning as possible. It’s not exactly for beginners, but it serves up creative controls in a way that a novice would appreciate and be able to understand.

In fact, Apple should take some inspiration from the clean draw-out format offered by Kino to access tools like white balance (both strength and format), grid controls, stabilization, and focus controls.

Kino also stashes the shutter speed and exposure controls neatly in one corner of the screen, where a single tap lets you switch between auto and manual modes, while offering a scale format to do the required adjustments. One of my biggest pet peeves with Apple’s default camera app is the lack of options to get the desired combination of resolution and frame rate. Then there is another set of hoops you need to jump through in order to adjust the color space and the video codec.

And whatever tools are available, they are deeply insufficient. In a nutshell, you will have to pay a visit to the Settings app. Also, it certainly doesn’t help that the native camera app doesn’t let you pick the desired frame rate at all resolutions, despite technically supporting them.

Adjusting video quality presets in Kino.

That’s because a healthy few of them — especially those for ProRes and Log capture — are locked within the Settings app. Now, take a look at the Kino interface, where all four critical controls — resolution, frame rate, codec, and color space — are brought together in a clean drop-down interface.

What you see above is the default format. But if you tap on the Custom option in the list, you will be presented with the pill-shaped bar that has dedicated dropdown boxes for all the controls you need.

Resolution adjustment options in Kino camera app.

Those controls are not only useful for creatives, but also for an average person. You don’t always need a video in 4K at 60 frames per second (fps) or in Apple Log format. But locking certain resolutions and frame rates into a fixed combination, and leaving users to make a pyrrhic decision, isn’t the best route. Kino ends that conundrum in its entirety.

There’s also a thoughtful “Swipe to Lock” system, which locks capture pause behind a swipe gesture. To put it simply, accidental taps on the screen won’t stop the recording. You’ll need to tap on the lock icon and swipe it to pause.

Coming to the focus adjustment system, there’s a slightly curved dial to handle it. To give users an idea of how much edges of objects are gaining or losing in terms of separation and clarity, the app shows green highlights in the frame, which is quite helpful for both novice and expert mobile videography enthusiasts.

The best reason to use Kino

Focus adjustment highlights in Kino camera app.

What I truly love the most in Kino is the Instant Grade system. Earlier this year, I took the iPhone 15 Pro on an extended work trip, with the explicit intention of putting this feature through its paces. I loved the flexibility, but the whole process of applying look up tables (LUTs) is a fairly technical one.

Then there are a few irksome limitations while capturing LOG footage in the first place. There is still some weirdness going on with focus trailing and ISO adjustment in the iPhone’s stock camera app. The local storage situation and external capture requirements for saving hi-res files is another hassle.

Kino saves you all that conundrum with Instant Grade. Think of it as applying filters to your video, but with LUTs. When you shoot LOG format videos with the iPhone’s camera app, what you see during the capture (and in the local storage container) is flat, desaturated footage.

You only see the benefits of LOG capture after you’ve gone through the ordeal of applying an LUT of your choice. In Kino, the LUTs are imported to your LOG capture frame in real time, which means you can see the results while shooting the video and during post-capture playback.

The Kino app comes with over half a dozen LUTs preinstalled by well-known artists and filmmakers, including one by the company’s co-founder, Sebastiaan de With. And here’s the best part. You can import your favorite LUTs directly into the app.

There are multiple repositories on the web where you can get free LUTs that can infuse some serious visual mojo into your iPhone videos. I’d also recommend following professional filmmakers and mobile video experts who often sell their custom presets that deliver droolworthy color chemistry.

At the end of the day, it’s all about convenience. If you can accomplish the complex task of shooting LOG footage and applying artistic LUTs without having to fire up DaVinci Resolve or Premier Pro on a desktop, I’d call that a win. You can also apply the grading presets after capturing a video, which is quite neat.

By default, enabling the Instant Grade toggle tones down ProRes to the more data-frugal HEVC format. However, you can simply disable it while recording in LOG format, experiment with the presets in preview mode, and apply the desired one post-capture.

The trade-off? Shooting with a preset applied takes away the flexibility of making granular adjustments while editing in apps like DaVinci Resolve. But for an average iPhone user, convenience is what matters most.

To that end, I recommend grabbing a LUT of your choice and importing it into the Kino app. Another neat convenience is that Kino lets you pick the video storage destination. You can either use Apple’s Photos app or the in-app storage option.

All these videos are neatly cataloged in a dedicated Kino folder, which can be accessed from within the preinstalled Files app. This approach makes it dramatically easier to find files and import them to a connected computer.

Comparison of flat and color-graded image in Kino.

If you are shooting videos in LOG format or just pushing the quality limits, the best way forward is to record them directly on an external storage. Thankfully, Kino lets you do that automatically. Just make sure you have a sufficiently fast solid-state drive (SSD) and a fittingly powerful cable to handle the data stream.

A few hiccups

Speaking of quality, Kino currently lacks the fancy new 4K 120 fps Dolby Vision capture option that Apple introduced with the iPhone 16 Pro. The maximum you can go to is 60 fps or just return to the default iPhone camera app.

I also wish there was a dedicated dashboard where you could align the iPhone 16’s Camera Control with the capture controls available in the Kino app. However, my experience with Apple’s latest “it” innovation has been a mixed bag, so I’m not particularly bummed out by this oversight.

There are a few other omissions if you really want to push Kino for creative video work. For example, you can’t adjust the intensity of the LUT presets, and there isn’t an option to stack a secondary conversion LUT. The Kino app also has an issue with lens switching. There’s an odd 1 to 2 seconds of delay when switching the camera lens where the viewfinder goes completely blank. It’s not a problem, per se, but an intentional choice.

Recording a scene using the Kino camera app.

“We can either do very quick lens changes without any parameters (i.e., manual focus, exposure, etc.) or have to switch cameras (they’re not just lenses after all, there’s an entire camera attached), which has a cost of ‘starting up’ a new camera,” explains the Halide team.

Furthermore, there is no digital zoom ability. You can only capture videos at the native 0.5x, 1x, 2x, and 5x levels. There is no dial system to achieve an intermediate range, say 2.5x or 3x, to get the desired framing.

pic.twitter.com/gQjFNyXVbO

— Nadeemonics (@nsnadeemsarwar) November 8, 2024

There’s also an issue with the ISO slider, but Lux’s team has confirmed that a fix is in the works. Stabilization uniformity across the zoom and ultrawide lenses remains another weak link if you shoot videos at 60 fps, where you see visible drag and jitters for fast-paced video capture.

For such scenarios, you should stick with Action Mode in the stock iPhone camera app. However, if you have a gimbal or tripod at your disposal, the results from Kino won’t disappoint you. I would strongly recommend investing in a tripod or a gimbal, and while you’re at it, play around with the exposure levels to achieve the best color format.

One of the best iPhone camera apps out there

Person holding an iPhone 16 Pro running the Kino camera app.

Now, let’s address the elephant in the room. Would you pay $20 for a video capture app? Well, that would depend entirely on how much the stock iPhone camera app has troubled you and how desperately you want to capture standout videos.

On the topic of artistic videos, well, they come at a cost: oodles of technical complexity with post-capture editing. Kino solves multiple problems in one go. It offers an adequate set of manual controls and marries them to a pipeline that lets you create beautifully color-graded videos without any trouble.

I would say the pre-saved color-graded presets themselves are worth the price you pay for Kino. Plus, you can get your fill of free LUTs from the internet, or if you’re brave enough, you can create your own graded LUTs in Pixelmator and import them in Kino. Apple has just acquired Pixelmator, so the future looks bright for mobile videography enthusiasts, at least for iPhone die-hards.

There are definitely a few limitations, even compared to the stock camera app. Thankfully, Kino makes up for it with a design that is inherently approachable and rewarding. If the Halide team’s track record and the pace at which they iterate are anything to go by, the upcoming “Casablanca” update of Kino will bring changes worth waiting for. And even before then, Kino is still well worth your time and attention.

Kino is now available in the App Store.

Read Entire Article