Kino - Pro Video Camera

I’ve been using this app for a month now and I love it, the ability to shoot Apple log with HEIC footage is a game changer. And being able to apply pre-baked LUTs into videos is the main draw to this app for me. Unfortunately, there are many software issues with this app that have made it frustrating to use. Multiple times when opening the app it completely freezes, forcing me to close it and reopen it. The lens switching also can be extremely laggy, sometimes taking up to five seconds to switch to the different lenses. And finally, although most of the time the app runs seamlessly. I’ve noticed multiple occasions where the whole user interface becomes glitchy and laggy, forcing another clothes and reopen of the app. These minor hiccups lead to losing important moments that could’ve been caught if the app was properly optimized. I know that Kino is made by a team of two people but for an app this good to be held back by pour optimization, I think it would be worthwhile to hire some software developers to optimize the app. Especially for an app that won the apple app of the year award.

I’m a big fan of this app. I appreciate how the developers have designed it to be user-friendly, with an interface that isn’t cluttered with unnecessary features. The quality of the footage is also impressive. It’s much better than the native footage from the iPhone camera and has a DSLR-like quality. I plan to use this app while traveling, and I’m particularly interested in the Geo-tagging feature. It would be great to be able to see my videos on a map later, which would be very helpful. Additionally, I would appreciate it if you could add the ability to assign the app to the new iPhone camera button. I’ve seen other apps that already have this feature, and it would be a great addition to this app as well.

Pros: The interface is very intuitive, clean, and simple. The automotion and the instant grade features really differentiate this app from the competition and simplify the shooting process. Cons: More than half the grades are only available for log footage so if you don't have an iPhone 15 you won't have access to them. It's a shame they couldn't produce equivalent grades for standard rec709 as well but maybe they will in the future? I also tried to import multiple LUTs from my davinci resolve folder but could not get any to import successfully despite the LUTs working fine in Davinci. The .cube files were within the 33x33 size limit as well so not sure what the issue was there. Also external microphones do not seem to be supported. I tested with the Hollyland Lark m2 Bluetooth microphones and was unable to get it to work. This is a shame given that this is supposed to be a pro app and audio quality from the onboatlrd iphone microphone leaves much to be desired. Hopefully this can be added in the near future. Finally, there is no tap to focus or tap to adjust exposure like there is in the default iphone camera app. This may have been a deliberate design decision but it would be nice to have the option to enable/disable these features for those who want them.