iOS 10 RAW capture long exposure

Question

cheyuanl OP

Created Jul ’16

Replies 2

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Hi developers,

I am new to the iOS and image processing and have some questions.

I saw iOS 10 is going to support the RAW capture, and I wonder if this could make the real long exposure possible?

It looks like the long exposure camera apps in the app store (i.e. slow shutter cam) are doing post-processing based several frames that are not RAW data. Therefore, the image is going to be effect by the post-processing inherit from Apple's algortihm and the compression of JPEG format, which is the part we can't control before iOS 10.

As far as I know, RAW format is basicly everything that CMOS sensor captures (which I assumes to be RGB energy intensities). If we have the several frames of RAWs, I wonder if it is closer to have a real long exposure by summing the intensitiies as what we do in phyiscally long exposure?

Thanks.

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Answer 1

Media Engineer OP

Apple

Jul ’16

No, RAW means you get the image data in its Bayer RAW, unfiltered, unprocessed format. But that doesn't change the length of the exposure. The longest exposure you can do on a particular device has not changed. Check the AVCaptureDeviceFormat maxExposureDuration property, that will tell you how long an exposure you can do. On some formats, the longest exposure is 1 second, on others it's half a second or a third of a second.

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Answer 2

elggem OP

Dec ’17

Actually I really like the idea.

Been doing a lot of RAW capture with my iPhone X recently and the only thing missing for me is exposures over 1/3sec... I think the idea of stacking raw, rather than JPEG images definately has merit and should be explored!

Should be doable with Apple's own SDKs and RAW processing, no?

Who wants to volunteer or join me on a Github repo! Has been a while since I programmed for iOS tho, not really fully Swift ready yet... Have been around in Obj.C times though and know about the basic structures.. Would be happy to contribute in any way possible. 🙂

My Github is @elggem, in case anyone is interested contact me!

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