You probably know Halide, the professional camera app for the iPhone. But who makes the Halide of video apps? It turns out it’s the makers of Halide themselves. Lux, the studio behind Halide, is launching its first professional video app for the iPhone, called Kino. It’s a joy to use, with a design and UI that matches the quality of the iPhone’s hardware.
First Impressions
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. Still, my first impressions are positive:
- The Kino experience is as good as you'd expect from the makers of Halide.
- The app impresses with a great balance of professional and accessible – approachable!
- Kino displays video-focused elements like the remaining shooting time based on memory size, adjustable resolution and format, left and right audio input levels, and more.
- It's crystal clear while you're shooting with Kino: a red line wraps around the edge of the display, and the capture time is displayed down to the millisecond.
- The Kino app icon definitely isn't HAL 9000, right? Right?!
I'd completely add a Halide camera app button to the toolbar (and a Movie button in Halide) if that's not already possible. This will allow you to quickly switch between photo and video shooting between professional shooting applications.
Instant rating
Kino is more than just an improved user experience for shooting video on iPhone. Instant rating is the main feature of Kino v1.0. From the announcement:
Kino allows you to simply press the record button and create a cinematic video with a color preset applied to your recording. Apple Log is a game changer: it allows you to capture video with much less processing effort. There's some natural grain, a nice roll-off of the highlights, and it all just looks superbly cinematic. Apple's camera can capture logs, but you'll have to edit them, and they're encoded in ProRes, which results in giant files. In Instant Grade mode, Kino shoots in HEVC for regular video file size, and the color adjustment you choose is applied directly to your recording.
About these presets: They're created by some of the best experts in the field. . Our first cut features some from Stu Maschwitz, Sandwich Video, Evan Schneider, Tyler Stallman and Kevin Ong.
Kino v1.0 also allows you to import your own LUTs. What is a LUT? From Shutterstock:
These aren't just filters – they're LUTs (lookup tables). ) is a predefined array of numeric values that offers a convenient way to simplify specific calculations. In color grading, a LUT converts input color values (usually from a camera) into desired output values (ultimately reflected in the final footage).
I like the black and white instant grading option.
AutoMotion
In addition, Kino can provide users with an improved automatic video capture mode for those who do not shoot manually:
Kino gives you full control in automatic and manual mode, but has some clever logic in automatic mode: our exposure logic includes a feature we call “AutoMotion“, which allows you to get a 180° shutter angle on your footage without fiddling with the settings. In a nutshell, what this means is that nice, cinematic video has a little motion blur.
If your camera exposes frames too quickly, it's a bit like a TV with motion smoothing turned on. It's too slick in our opinion. Kino makes it easy to display things and looks great – just the right amount of blur. When everything is correct, the Auto label turns just green. On open air? Turn on the ND filter and watch it lock in, and you're done.
Other Kino v1.0 features:
- Kino records to Photos app or Files works with USB-C storage.
- Kino includes composition guides, levels, audio levels, and hardware notifications.
- Kino offers manual focus with focus highlighting, balance white and white balance. AE Lock and Exposure Compensation
- Kino allows you to lock the user interface while shooting so you don't interfere with video capture.
Availability
Kino can be purchased without a subscription and as a one-time purchase for $19.99 on the App Store. Early adopters can start filming with Kino for a limited-time launch 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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