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Q & A about PhotonCam

Hi, thank you for supporting PhotonCam. The evolution and progress of this app wouldn't be possible without the support of all our users. Regarding the functionalities of the app, there are some common questions that arise. Below, I will list some of these questions and provide detailed explanations for each.

Why is the seamless zoom feature not being implemented currently?​

Unlike the system's Camera app, which utilizes multiply camera lens to zoom in or zoom out, PhotonCam uses a dedicated lens when using 0.5×, 1×, 2×, 3× or 5× (The telephoto scale depends on your device). That's, for example, for iPhone 15 Pro, when selecting 3× in PhotonCam, the app will switch to use the telephoto lens.

This logic ensures that when you choose to use the telephoto lens, the photos will indeed be taken with the telephoto lens, rather than potentially being cropped by the wide-angle lens as the system's Camera app might do.

This strategy also constrains that automatically switching to macro mode is not possible because it requires multiple lens support.

Saving 48MP photos with reduced sharpness is too slow​

PhotonCam introduces a feature to help you take photos with reduced sharpness. To enable this feature, you will need to:

  • Enable ProRAW
  • Enable "Save image by the unprocessed RAW file"

By doing so, the photos captured will look great with reduced sharpness, way better than the ones taken by the system Camera. However, saving image by the unprocessed RAW file takes relatively long time, especially for 48MP photos, which currently I haven't found any optimizations to it.

To improve this experience, you will notice that there is another switch "Use system processed HEIF/JPEG when outputting 1× + 48MP". Enabling this will NOT use unprocessed RAW file to save HEIF / JPEG when the photo to be saved is 48MP shot in 1× zoom scale. Since the RAW file is still saved, you can later re-edit it to remove the sharpness.

The 48MP feature operates exclusively at a 1× zoom scale​

For devices equipped with a 48MP wide camera, PhotonCam offers the option to capture photos at the full 48MP resolution only at a 1× zoom scale. Using zoom levels of 1.2× or 1.5× will all result in 12MP photos instead of 36MP or 24MP, which is the intended behavior.

I have already posted a blog about this issue. If we choose to enable maximum photo dimensions of 48MP while capturing photos at a zoom scale other than 1×, the resulting photo will exhibit subtle but noticeable differences in exposure.

As you can see, with the 48MP setting disabled, the exposure of the output image (the one on the right) matches the app preview (the one on the left), whereas the center image shows a different exposure value.

The only known solution to this issue is to disable the 48MP setting when using the wide camera at any zoom level other than 1×. Ultimately, accurate exposure is far more important than photo resolution.

Some Cubes can't be imported​

PhotonCam supports up to 64 dimensions cube files, which is 64×64×64. Larger cubes require longer time to be loaded, thus for best loading experience, it's recommended to import 30+ dimensions cubes to the app.

If you are unable to verify the dimensions of your cube or encounter any other issues with the cubes you are using, please feel free to contact me via email through the app's About page.