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alsetmusicyesterday at 5:59 PM2 repliesview on HN

In 2020, when the sky turned orangish-red in California due to massive wildfires, Apple's phones were unable to accurately capture it (I read Android too, but I use iPhones). It was very frustrating. The camera app kept overcorrecting the images. I remember reading that people using Halide's app were able to capture correctly and seeing examples on blogs and such.

Thank you Halide for making high-quality software, even if I'm not in the target market.


Replies

tshaddoxyesterday at 7:05 PM

The ones I took out my Mid-Market apartment window looked pretty true to my eye. But I had an iPhone X, which was 3 years old at the time. Perhaps the correction had gotten worse in newer iPhones.

astrangeyesterday at 8:54 PM

All cameras behave this way because of how auto white balance works. Some camera apps are just always in AWB mode.

I asked a phone camera engineer about this once and they told me that shooting through windows also causes issues, but I don't remember why.