mobile photography technology, culture and community

www.dpreview.com

News Reviews Features Phones Tablets Cameras Apps Forums

FocusTwist app for iOS allows Lytro-like focusing

Lauren Crabbe | Published: Apr 22, 2013 at 17:56:37 UTC


FocusTwist allows you to pick your focal plane by tapping your image after you've taken it.	The images are not 100% identical because I could not hold my phone steady enough.

A newly released app in the iOS App Store will give you the experience of a Lytro camera for a much smaller price tag. FocusTwist takes a series of images with different focal planes and allows you, and your viewers, to choose a focus point after you've taken the photo.

In a quick hands-on with FocusTwist, I found it super easy to use. To start out, you just tap the part of your scene that you want to be your foreground. FocusTwist then takes a bunch of photos over a few seconds while you stay as still as humanly possible. It then takes you to a focusing screen where you pick what your final image will look like.

FocusTwist only shoots in square format. When you share your image via FocusTwist's built-in social sharing that's synced with Twitter, the viewer can tap to refocus again. My first FocusTwist image was a little shaky, but the effect worked overall. The app recommends using subjects that are a few inches from your phone for more dramatic results -- a tripod would also be useful.

Check out (and refocus) my FocusTwist photo here.

FocusTwist is available in the iOS App Store for $1.99.

Comments

Total comments: 11

It would be an interesting option to be able to save all of the images taken in the burst, so as to be able to focus-stack them if needed... all it takes is another line or two in the app, even if it raised the price to $$2.- ;)

0 upvotes

OK. update!

0 upvotes

Its possible send to the camera roll?

0 upvotes

Really a pretty nice ap -- the movement between shots seems to be handled fairly smoothly, which is the hardest part. With the huge DoF of an iPhone, I'm sure there is a little problem with doing this for more normal focus distances, but overall a very nice job.

0 upvotes

With the small sensors that the iPhones have and short focal length. Your typical photo will be everything in focus. So the only use case is for objects that are a few inches away. Really isn't all that useful.

Comment edited 39 seconds after posting

1 upvote

that is correct but the same is true for the Lytro camera. You have to have a subject very close to the lens to get any meaningful effect.

2 upvotes

And another start up company is going to FLIP (pun intended) into oblivion!

0 upvotes

All of the novelty and effectively none of the cost. I see no problem here.

4 upvotes

For such a small cost this is a bit of fun. The sample here is not the best one either. The other ones on the main page of the website for the application are much better. It will be interesting to see which DSLR company builds something similar into their cameras software first.

0 upvotes

Sure.. but I'm still waiting for built in GPS first... Nikon anyone?

1 upvote

It seems to me that a substantial part of the novelty is lost; the most novel Lytro samples are things like splashes of water or spontaneous group shots... this will not be able to do anything similar.