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Héliographe

@heliographe.studio
480 followers 237 following 509 posts

Indie dev making tools for photographers & visual artists Check out AgBr, a black and white film emulator, and 65×24, a panoramic camera, on the App Store heliographe.studio

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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 38m
“Hey lightbulb, show me an award winning book from a female author I haven’t read” Modern computer vision models can read detailed everyday scenes almost instantly & with high accuracy - this enables a lightbulb computer to understand the world around you, and quickly answer complex requests.
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Reposted by Héliographe
Photography by Alfie Goodrich @alfie.photography · 14h
Some super high contrast iPhone shots made back in February of 2025, with the 65x24 app by @heliographe.studio The building on the left has this sort of cantilevered top floor flat which I think looks super cool. But I can't imagine living in it.
Black and white 65x24 aspect ratio iphone photo of two buildings on our street in Tokyo. The white wooden wall around a construction site is in the foreground. Black and white 65x24 aspect ratio iphone photo of two buildings on our street in Tokyo. The white wooden wall around a construction site is in the foreground. It has shadows of nearby trees and telegraph wires on it.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 20h
While I was working on Lightbulb Computer over the summer, I learned that some people use projectors to help with cutting & sewing fabric. Very cool!
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 28/09/2026
A lightbulb computer lets you pin notes, timers, and other widgets in the world around you You can stay focused on what you’re doing, no fussing with a screen (especially nice with wet or messy hands), and everyone in the room can see it too, and join in
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 27/09/2026
We can build a world where people do things with digital information together, in the real world, without tiny screens or awkward smart glasses
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 27/09/2026
With a Lightbulb Computer, you can look up a word in a book you're studying, without taking out your phone or wearing smart glasses.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 26/09/2026
Planning a trip on a table-sized map with someone; pinning recipes, timers, and widgets to the kitchen wall while cooking with messy hands; asking my bookshelf to highlight a book I can’t find; and more - all without a phone or smart glasses.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 24/09/2026
Bayer Cam 2.1 update coming very soon - some fun things for iPhone 18 Pro owners, and some fun things for everyone else too
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 22/09/2026
I’ve been asking non techie people recently what they think of foldable phones, and if they’d consider getting one - and a common response I get is “Bigger screen sounds nice but I’m too afraid it’d break”
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 21/09/2026
I keep hearing iPhone camera reviewers ask why Apple did not include ISO in the Pro controls My best guess: the iPhone processing pipeline works by fusing multiple frames, with different exposure parameters, to form a final image with much better sharpness/contrast/noise reduction/etc.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 21/09/2026
Releasing something big in the next week or so :)
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 20/09/2026
Updated my iPhone Pro camera reference chart Another year with a 1/1.28" Sony 90X sensor, we know what to hope for for next year...
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 19/09/2026
Apple has high-level APIs that make building UI automagical But when experimenting with new hardware I like to rebuild everything from scratch to understand the fundamental building blocks An old habit from when I was a UI prototyper in Apple's Hardware org, with only basic firmware to work with 😄
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 19/09/2026
Well, the whole family's here
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 19/09/2026
On every iOS device until the Duo, the camera sensor orientation matched the screen orientation, which made the elegant design of 65x24.app possible On iPhone Duo this isn't true anymore, and it's going to be a bit of a pain to solve. Luckily, I have lots of ideas...
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Photography by Alfie Goodrich @alfie.photography · 18/09/2026
Kawagoe skies. April, 2025 Two photos made on a day I was put in Kawagoe shooting with a biotech client. Gorgeous skies that day. Grabbed these on a walk between two parts of the campus. Made with the 65x24 app by @heliographe.studio
65x24 aspect ratio photograph of a blue sky above the top of a warehouse. The roof and walls of the warehouse are a sun-bleached orangey pink colour. A few clouds on the deep blue sky and wires running from a telegraph pole on the right side of the scene.A 65x24 aspect ratio photo of an apartment block. Behind it, in a pale blue sky, is a huge clump of distant clouds. Telegraph wires flow through the top of the scene, from two poles one at each side. The pole on the right has vegetation climbing up it. The clouds are reminiscent of those you see in Japanese animated films.
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Photography by Alfie Goodrich @alfie.photography · 17/09/2026
The Kawaramachi Public Housing, Kawasaki, Japan. By architect 大谷 幸夫, Ōtani Sachio. A few shots from a walk there a few years ago, made on my iPhone 12Pro with the 65x24 app by @heliographe.studio #photography #architecture
Detail of the outside of one of the main sections of the Kawaramachi Public Housing complex in Kawasaki. Looking up the east gable end of the building seeing the stairwells and ends of the landings. Black and white photo in 65x24 aspect ratio. Deep black shadows. Stark white of the concrete structure against a jet-black sky.Inside detail of one of the atriums of the Kawaramachi public housing buildings in Kawasaki. Concrete arches spell out the atrium space, on top of which the main structure of the housing block sits. Detail of the outside of several parts of the Kawaramachi Public Housing complex in Kawasaki. Black and white photo in 65x24 aspect ratio. Deep black shadows. Stark white of the concrete structure against a jet-black sky.Looking up in to arched, vaulted ceiling of the atrium in one of the main structures at the Kawaramachi public housing complex in Kawasaki, Japan.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 17/09/2026
Camera app on iPhone Duo fills the front screen- but the camera sensor has a 4:3 (1.33) aspect ratio, whereas the Duo is 1.45 This means there's about 10% of the image's horizontal dimension missing from the preview An odd decision, but I guess they preferred that over having 170px of black edges?
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 16/09/2026
"I wish Apple made an interchangeable lens camera!" is something I hear all the time. Here are camera unit sales (combined, not just ILC) per manufacturer in 2025 (according to Nikkei report). Cameras are a ~10 million units/year market.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 15/09/2026
Artists always sign their work. Bayer Cam lets you easily set the EXIF Artist Name, attaching it to every photo you take.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 15/09/2026
One thing I'll be very curious to find out in coming years is whether Apple adds the variable aperture to the other cameras on the Pro camera system, or if they feel like it only belongs on the wide lens. It wouldn't make much sense on the ultra-wide camera, but the telephoto could benefit from it.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 14/09/2026
The iPhone Duo page has a little QA section at the end, which gives you an idea of the audience they're going for, and the obstacles to adoption they expect to face. Interesting to see which pages have similar sections - eg the iPhone Air has one, but not the MacBook Neo
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 14/09/2026
I will update Bayer Cam with variable aperture support for iPhone 18 Pro (and bonus surprises, too) I want to take the time to make sure the updated design makes sense and is rock solid with the new hardware. It’ll therefore arrive a few weeks after the iPhone release - polished and worth the wait!
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 14/09/2026
Kind of a wild turn of events for Nike - especially so with Tim Cook on their board as Lead Independent Director. I hope one day we get to hear about the behind the scenes drama, because surely there must have been plenty of it
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 14/09/2026
Everyone’s drooling over the Duo status bar redesign, but I’ve always found the network bar display to be a fundamentally flawed visualization Having full bars and no data, or 2 bars and a totally useable connection, is a pretty common experience - so what’s the point?
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 10/09/2026
Reminder that at least for the next few years, less than 0.01% of your iOS users will have an iPhone Duo Putting effort into supporting it can pay off (especially if you want Apple-senpai to notice you) but if you're an already overworked indie dev you probably shouldn't lose too much sleep over it
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 10/09/2026
Pls Apple do Game Boy Color Atomic Purple next year
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 09/09/2026
Joz: “Ok we made the hardcore fanboys buy an Apple Pencil, we made them buy an Apple Pencil Pro; now how do we make them buy an Apple Pencil USB-C?” JT: “Hear me out…”
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 09/09/2026
iPhone Duo is great, but every European knows that iPhone Bueno will be the tastier option
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 09/09/2026
Apple Pencil working with iPhone Duo - but with no way to charge it - is going to be annoying
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 08/09/2026
BitCam 2.1 is out! This is a fun one: you can now install a macOS system extension to use BitCam as a camera in Zoom, PhotoBooth, Google Meet, WebEx... any app that lets you pick a camera.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 06/09/2026
Competition for pro camera apps on iOS is about to get much rougher iOS 27 beta 8 includes (disabled) code & UI for histograms, focus peaking, highlight clipping, manual focus & more Seems like we are getting the long rumored "pro mode" in Camera app next week forums.macrumors.com/threads/the-...
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 03/09/2026
As far as I’m aware, none of the secret BitCam easter eggs have been found yet 👀
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 03/09/2026
Placing my bet now on the name iPhone Folio, or iPhone Duo. iPhone Ultra doesn't make sense given that it will definitely not be Ultra compared to a Pro (no Face ID, no telephoto, battery life less than the Pro Max, etc) Looking forward to being wrong next week 🙃
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 02/09/2026
See you, space cowboy 🫡
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 30/08/2026
A single "art" pixel in BitCam is rendered by 36 real pixels on modern iPhones It's easy to forget how insane the tech in our pockets is: at 1:1 scale, you could fit the original Macintosh display 15 times on an iPhone screen (with room to spare)
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 29/08/2026
My advanced camera apps such as Bayer Cam and 65×24 come with many thousands of words of documentation that will teach you how to use every feature of the app, and how your smartphone's camera actually works. All human written, of course. (it's me, I'm the human)
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 29/08/2026
What is the opposite of the Mac design philosophy? In 1996, Jakob Nielsen published a speculative essay, The Anti-Mac User Interface, exploring exactly this Some of it aged well, some not, but it remains one of my favorite examples of divergent design thinking www.nngroup.com/articles/ant...
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 28/08/2026
The original Macintosh had a 1-bit black or white screen - but it did not have a "dark mode" Working on BitCam was a fun opportunity to imagine what that could look like!
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Norbert Woehnl 📷 @norbertwoehnl.com · 28/08/2026
Made a quick personal trip with my wife up to #Tohoku today. Not a #photography focused endeavor, but I took one quick #panoramic photo of the surrounding #UrbanGaze after arriving at #Ichinoseki Station. Shot with @heliographe.studio’s #65x24 app. #streetphotography #japan @bskyphotos.bsky.social
Panoramic view from the Shinkansen platform at Ichinoseki Station.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 27/08/2026
Thank you all for the lovely BitCam 5-star reviews 🤍🖤
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Norbert Woehnl 📷 @norbertwoehnl.com · 26/08/2026
Good morning from #Japan! This Monday, I shot a few more #panoramic neighborhood evening scenes for my ongoing series about #dailylife in Itabashi, #Tokyo, using @heliographe.studio’s #65x24 app. Please enjoy them in full size on my #website. #photography #streetphotography @bskyphotos.bsky.social
norbertwoehnl.com
Itabashi-juku Evening Panoramas, Tokyo, Japan
On the way home from work this Monday, I took some panoramic photos along Itabashi-juku, a shopping street tracing the old Nakasendō route.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 25/08/2026
If BitCam.app doesn’t speak to you, you’re not hooked up right. Thanks @gruber.foo for the kind words!
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 24/08/2026
I wanted BitCam's editor to be a pixel perfect hommage to Macintosh System 1.0 - but what do you do for the Apple logo? It's going to be an instant App Store rejection. The trick? The app ships with a fruit logo, and users who wish to do so can remove a few pixels to make it what it should be.
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 24/08/2026
BitCam 2's editor comes with a number of gradient presets from @nuevotokyo.bsky.social's fantastic work on traditional Japanese colors. Blending BitCam's dithered output with gradients produces some wonderful results, that remind me a bit of woodblock prints
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 22/08/2026
I thought about translating BitCam to Japanese, based on KanjiTalk But to be honest I don’t find the characters to look that nice and balanced, and a lot of terms remain in English even in the original due to the space constraints Might still add it later as an easter egg if there’s interest…
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 22/08/2026
Some iOS developers spent their summer dissecting every little Liquid Glass tweak I spent mine recreating a 40 year old 1-bit design system from scratch BitCam, free App Store download for iPhone/iPad/Mac
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 22/08/2026
For BitCam’s Settings menu, I knew I had no choice but to base it on the original Macintosh Control Panel. And once I got started adding things to it, it was hard to resist going overboard. Why of course you can design your own wallpaper and set how many times menu items blink when selected
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 21/08/2026
Have fun designing the screens no one will see
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Héliographe @heliographe.studio · 21/08/2026
BitCam v1 & v2 My main goal in this redesign was to keep the charm and familiarity of the original interface intact, all while exposing creative controls (contrast, dither scale, color mode) for immediate experimentation - in the original they live behind the Settings icon, which is a bit fiddly
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