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@BorisTheBlade I forgot if the question was answered or brought up, when I took 10x SR of Indigo, it doesn't look like a 10x shot vs the native stock app. It looks like a 8x or so zoom. The native 10x is a true 10x, albeit it being much much worse than Indigo's. Is it possible for the focal lengths to match that of the native's?
By @nhan_8084
If you take a 5x photo and crop it by a factor of 2x, it matches Indigo's 10x capture. In reality, Apple is actually zooming more than 10x for their "10x" capture. This is an easy test to confirm, just turn off EIS in Indigo (as that crops the 5x shot by ~10%).
@BorisTheBlade I have heard that EIS are typically cropped in more yes, and most/if not all of the chinese OEM does it this way, so if you turn off EIS, shouldn't it not crop in? You mentioned turning off EIS for Indigo to crop in more to equal apple's fov. However, on my 15 pro max, the video mode also looks identical at 10x to the photo, and I know for a fact that EIS is enabled for video bc it's definitely not jittery one bit. To prevent confusion coming from other users as myself, can Indigo have the same matching fov as apple's? I know for future iPhone of the rumor 48mp periscope, they would most likely have ISZ 10x from that so maybe that's probably something that's better to adapt to versus the current bayered sensor?
By @nhan_8084
When EIS is active, what actually happens is that the system uses some percentage of the FOV at the borders (say, 10-15%) as a buffer so that if the camera shakes the center of the full sensor FOV (the 85-90%) can be kept steady. So, with EIS on, the effect is that of being zoomed in vs when EIS is off. However, as the user digitally zooms in further (e.g., from 5x to 10x), there already is a large border buffer available since the FOV is simply cropped, so there is no need for the camera to add additional cropping. That is why in Indigo, with EIS off, 10x is exactly the center 50% of the FOV of the 5x. If EIS is on, then 10x remains the same, but 5x is cropped by about 10%. As the user slowly uses pinch-to-zoom to zoom in, the amount of added cropping Indigo does goes from 10% to 0%. Why OEMs choose to add additional crop is not clear to us, but for now we aim to keep Indigo's behavior as "accurate" as possible.
@BorisTheBlade I tried EIS on and off and it looks same! Please look into this. I am on 15 pro max, and I even close app from background. Both shots are 10x, even the native 5x with EIS on or off same fov.
The 082 is EIS off, the other is on.
By @nhan_8084
This is what I tried to explain above, but let me try again:
- With EIS 'off', there is no cropping of the field of view in Indigo at any zoom level, and 10x has the correct FOV (it is exactly 2x zoom from 5x).
- With EIS 'on'
- At 5x Indigo crops by ~10%, so the digital zoom factor is not 1.0 but 1.1 (you can see that in the image metadata in the filmstrip).
- As you pinch-to-zoom, the amount of crop is reduced and by the time you reach 7x zoom, Indigo doesn't crop the FOV by any additional amount: you get exactly the 7x zoom.
- At 10x the same is true, there is no additional cropping of the FOV, and it matches the FOV with EIS' off'. I.e., it is the correct 10x zoom.
- Native camera app matches Indigo at 5x if Indigo has EIS 'off'
- At 10x, native camera app does additional cropping, so they are effectively giving you something like 12x zoom.
We need to separate two things here: whether EIS is on or not does not 100% correlate with whether we need to add additional cropping to the user's selected zoom level. To verify if EIS is active or not you need to look at how stable the viewfinder is when you zoom in. At 10x, the viewfinder will be much more shaky if you turn EIS 'off'.
We'd love to be able to use OIS in Indigo at all times, but unfortunately, for now it is only available AFTER you click on the shutter button in Night mode. During viewfinding we stream raw frames at all times, but those do not use OIS. Apple's native camera app has (on some devices at least) a lower-quality OIS running at all times for ZSL captures, but that is not yet opened for 3rd party apps.
Regarding the WB shift, I'll check with the team. Can you check in the image metadata of the DNG which white balance values were recorded for Indigo shots? Would need to do this on the compute with either something like Lightroom or with the exiftool command line tool.
@BorisTheBlade Thank you for mentioning the filmstrip exif! That helped a lot as I usually don't use that to look at exif, but mainly gphotos. This I will pay attention to now and will try to remember to use to aid in findings. I know EIS is typically used or mostly used in video mainly, and that google was flammed for the Pixel 1 when it did EIS vs OIS. From what you told, it seems like apple is NOT using EIS at 5x since EIS off for Indigo at 5x matches the FOV. Why do Indigo use EIS at 5x vs the 10x to become 12x like Apple. You would think that the longer the focal lengths, the better it is to use EIS to help with shaking. Also I noticed wb shifted from warm to cooler when EIS is on at 5x.
By @nhan_8084
I have an adroid I can transfer the picture to to use exiftool. The wb when I imported the EIS and non-EIS to LRM reported same temperature of 4850K. If that is not correct, please show me the command lines to perform on exiftool.
Thank you for confirming. I imagine two things could be happening here: either the lighting changed but AWB value didn't, so the resulting image has a slight shift in color, or Indigo's post-processing caused the shift in trying to keep the whole FOV in balance. Maybe there are other explanations, but the bottom line is that some small variations of color balance are expected - by editing the DNG one can easily correct for those.
What I mean to ask is why the need to crop into 1.1 even if EIS is used, can it be done at the native 5x since apple do not allow usage of OIS?
This is imply how EIS works - since it's all purely image-based, you need to crop the FOV in order to be able to keep the center area fixed. See for example https://youtu.be/3Wt1gmbCXas?si=OB5jFAfn9SSW_gt3&t=228
Also I noticed wb shifted from warm to cooler when EIS is on at 5x.
By @nhan_8084
I talked to our photographers about this, and there are a few of things to note:
- Indigo relies on Apple to get white balance information, so some of the temporal differences will come from what we get from the system. In post processing Indigo can do some adjusments to colors to try and make the scene closer to "reality", but that may not always be able to improve the results.
- Generally it's difficult to guarantee white balance stability without using manual white balance settings. Small changes in the scene which we as humans may not perceive are harder for cameras to deal with. Things that impact AWB algorithms are stuff like whether there are any human faces entering and exiting the scene, are there subtle illumination color differences (especially in mixed lighting conditions), is there a change in the ratio of dark vs bright image areas, etc.
- In the example you shared above, it seems like there was a change in illumination outside, perhaps due to cloud movement, in addition to the amount of dark area in the scene being larger with larger FOV.
Hello Jim - how are you transferring the images to your computer, and which OS are you using? We know that Windows does this, since it uses PTP/MTP for image transfer, and those protocols are limited to 8 characters for file name + 3 for the extension. If you are encountering this on the Mac, we'd like the know your workflow so we can see if there is a way to address this. Thank you for helping us improve Project Indigo.
Would it be possible to make the file names generated for the images in some way sequential, as they are in a "regular" camera? I know the date is in the metadata, and so they can be sorted by date, but that info isn't always readily displayed (such as in columns of Finder on Mac). The seemingly random letters that change with each image just look confusing, and having Bridge rename them adds an extra step to workflow. Thanks for your work on this app!
By @jimf16377877
Hi Boris - I'm on a mac running OS 15.6 with Bridge 2025 (15.1.0.635) My iphone is a 16 pro. I use 'Import from Device' to connect to my phone and the file names appear in that window and then transfer to the computer with the images. The DNG and the JPG of the same image have different names, all 8 charachters. I get names like TXV15599.DNG and LHN18622.JPG - both the same image, then the next image pair in the sequence (captured just minutes later) is LHAV0676.DNG and DOFG1522.JPG - again versions of the same image. So, there's two images with four different unrelated file names.
By @jimf16377877
Hi Jim - thank you for sharing your setup. I don't use Bridge myself so I am not aware of intricacies when using it. If I undestand you correctly, the 8.3 format file names (e.g., LHAV0676.DNG and DOFG1522.JPG), appear already in the import window before you commence transfer? If so, that would indicate that Bridge also uses PTP/MTP. I can try to confirm that, but in the meantime, perhaps it would help to consult Greg Benz's excellent guide to Indigo. Toward the end of the document there are instructions for how to transfer DNGs off of your iPhone: https://gregbenzphotography.com/photography-reviews/project-indigo-the-best-camera-app-for-smart-pho...
I personally use AirDrop from Apple Photos with the 'All Photos Data' enabled in the 'Options' menu of the share sheet. This will transfer all images as JPG/DNG pairs and much nicer file names. We are working on a DNG-only capture which should hopefully make the workflow easier for most users, though I suspect the file name issue with Bridge may persist.
Hi Boris - Thanks for your reply. Yes, the 8.3 format file names (e.g., LHAV0676.DNG and DOFG1522.JPG), appear already in the import window before I commence transfer. I attached a screenshot of the import window to my previous post. I have read Greg Benz's article and would call myself using the second option he suggests, "Connect the phone via USB and import normally." If I use AirDrop, I get a bunch of folders, each of which contain a dng/jpg pair. The filenames are nicer as you say, but opening the folders and moving the dng's to my external drive is pretty inconvenient. I also tried using Apple's Image Capture app on the Mac and it generates the same kind of file names as Bridge does. I use Photoshop, not Lightroom, so going that route is also extra work. All I want is to be able to get the files onto my external storage hard drive, and at this point it seems that importing through Bridge and then re-naming is the easiest. Since Adobe makes both Indigo and Bridge, perhaps you could pass along a file naming suggestion to the enginering folks. I appreciate the time you've taken to address my concerns.
By @jimf16377877
Hi Jim - no problem: we are a (small) community here and trying to help out. I am following with the Bridge team on what could be done to improve the experience there. You are correct that Greg Benz does suggest that path. There is a tool which can help you there, and it's called Photo Downloader (https://helpx.adobe.com/bridge/using/import-camera-photos-bridge.html). It has an Advanced Rename dialog box which allows you to construct new filenames similar to the IDG_*.{dng,jpg} file names we are used to (see screenshot). So you'd basically download all images to your computer, then you can run this tool to rename everything in the same format as Indigo originally had it, and then you can manipulate them further.
Hi. Will the next update remove the continuous shutter sound on Japanese and Korean iPhone models?
By @Eli Johanson
Hi Eli - thanks for reaching out. We are working with Apple on this, but unfortunately cannot share the exact timeline for when a solution may be available. Thank you for the patience, and please stay tuned.
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