You probably know Halide, the professional iPhone camera app. But who makes the video apps halal? It turns out that these are the manufacturers of Halide themselves. Lux, the studio behind Halide, is releasing its first professional video app for the iPhone, called Kino. It’s a joy to use, with a design and user experience that matches the quality of iPhone hardware.
First impression
Kino has only been in development since late last year. I got my hands on Kino v1.0 a few hours before release, so my experience is still limited. However, my first impressions are positive:
- Plugging into Kino is as enjoyable as you’d expect from the makers of Halide.
- The app strikes a great balance between professional and affordable — approfessionalavailable!
- Kino displays video-centric elements such as remaining recording duration based on storage, adjustable resolution and format, left and right audio input levels, and more.
- It’s extremely clear when shooting with Kino: a red line wraps around the edge of the display and the shooting time is shown in milliseconds.
- Kino’s app icon is definitely not HAL 9000, is it? right?!
I’d totally add a Halide camera app button to the toolbar (and a Kino button in Halide) if that’s not already possible. This will create quick switching between photo and video capture between professional photography apps.
Instant assessment
Kino is more than just a better user interface for capturing video on the iPhone. Instant Grade is the main feature in Kino v1.0. From the message post:
Kino allows you to simply press record and create a cinematic video with a color preset applied to your recording. This really changes the game with Apple Log: it allows you to capture video with much less processing. A bit of natural grain, a beautiful highlight roll, it just looks gorgeously cinematic. Apple’s camera can shoot Log, but you have to edit it, and it’s encoded in ProRes, resulting in huge files. In Instant Grade, Kino shoots in HEVC for everyday video file size, and your selected color preset is applied directly to your recording.
About these presets: they are made by some of the best experts in the field. Our first release features some from Stu Maschwitz, Sandwich Video, Evan Schneider, Tyler Stalman, and Kevin Ong.
Kino v1.0 also allows you to import your own LUTs. What is a LUT? From Shutterstock:
They are not just filters – a LUT (Lookup Table) is a predefined array of numerical values that offers a convenient way to streamline a particular calculation. In color grading, the LUT converts the input color values (usually from the camera) to the desired output values (ultimately reflected in the final frame).
I like the black and white option for instant grading.
AutoMotion
In addition, Kino can provide a better automatic video capture mode for users who do not shoot manually:
Kino gives you full control in Auto mode and Manual mode, but there’s a bit of clever logic in Auto: our exposure logic includes something we call “AutoMotion”, which allows you to get a 180° shutter angle on your footage without fiddling with the settings. What it means in a nutshell: Nice cinematic video has a bit of motion blur.
If your camera exposes frames too quickly, it looks a bit like a TV with motion smoothing on. It’s just too smooth for our eye. Kino makes it easy to expose things so they look great – just the right amount of blur. When it’s just right, the “Automatic” label is green. Outdoor? Put in an ND filter and watch it lock in and you’re done.
Other features in Kino v1.0:
- Kino saves to the Photos or Files app and works with USB-C memory.
- Kino includes composition guides, levels, audio levels and hardware notifications.
- Kino offers manual focus with focus peaking, WB/AE lock and exposure compensation.
- Kino lets you lock the UI while shooting to avoid interfering with video capture.
Availability
Kino is available as a one-time purchase without a subscription for $19.99 in the App Store. Early adopters can start shooting with Kino for a limited-time starting price of $9.99. Kino works best on the iPhone 15 Pro thanks to Apple Log video capture, but only requires an iPhone with iOS 17.
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