iOS 8 will give developers unfettered access to camera controls
Apple at WWDC this year unveiled an endless list of surprises, including 4,000 new APIs developers can take advantage of in iOS 8.
Joshua Ho of AnandTech points us to one in particular that will have interesting ramifications on third party photo apps. With iOS 8's AVCaptureDevice APIs, developers for the first time will have complete access to the most granular of camera controls.
To be clear, iOS 8 will expose just about every manual camera control possible. This means that ISO, shutter speed, focus, white balance, and exposure bias can be manually set within a custom camera application. Outside of these manual controls, Apple has also added gray card functionality to bypass the auto white balance mechanism and both EV bracketing and shutter speed/ISO bracketing.
Ho has a complete rundown of what these changes might have in store for end users. Suffice it to say, the iPhone -- which is already a top of the line camera in its own right -- is poised to become even better. As a quick example, the new camera controls will enable third party photo apps to more ably implement features such as long exposure photography.
As a final note in the wake of WWDC, Cabel Sasser had a rather on-point tweet regarding Apple's seemingly new found perspective with respect to developers.
My 2¢: for the past few years it's felt like Apple's only goal was to put us in our place. Now it feels like they might want to be friends.
- Cabel Sasser (@cabel) June 4, 2014
