iOS 10.1 Beta Enables New 'Portrait' Depth of Field Camera Mode for iPhone 7 Plus

Apple's iOS 10.1 beta just seeded to developers enables the new 'Portrait' depth of field camera mode for the iPhone 7 Plus.

Depth of field allows you to keep faces sharp while creating a blurred effect in the background. When you take a shot with iPhone 7 Plus, the dual-camera system uses both cameras and advanced machine learning to make your subject sharp while creating the same out-of-focus blur in the background — known as the bokeh effect — previously reserved for DSLR cameras. So no matter what’s behind your subject, it’s easy to create a great portrait.

TechCrunch notes that there is no zoom in portrait mode. Rather, the new camera mode uses the 56mm lens to shoot the image and the wide angle lens to gather perspective data in order to generate a 9-layer depth map.


So, for instance, if the camera analyzes the scene and pins your subject at 8 feet away, it will slice the image and apply a blur effect on a progressive gradient scale across the other layers. Things that are very close to your subject may be sharp — included in that variable-width slice of the in-focus area. Once they get further away they get a little blur, then more, then more — until things in the far foreground or far background are blurred to the “maximum” level.



The site estimates that once objects are further that six feet from the subject they reach maximum blur. A real-time preview of the effect can be seen on screen which runs at about 24 fps.

Developers can get new beta from the link below. Please follow iClarified on Twitter, Facebook, or RSS for updates.


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