Hydra is a new camera app for iPhone and iPad that offers enhanced HDR, Video-HDR, Zoom, Lo-Light and Hi-Res shooting modes.
Hydra captures more light by merging up to 60 frames to make a single high-quality picture (less noise, more highlights/shadows) on iPhone and iPad. Hydra also goes beyond the 8-megapixel sensor limit, with up to 32-megapixel high-resolution images. It uses the latest evolutions of iPhone and iPad camera hardware, as well as the latest camera APIs and GPU rendering technologies of iOS 8.
There are five shooting modes that you can select from:
• Hydra's High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode is based on an alternate method that captures up to 20 images and that is made to handle even the most difficult lighting conditions.
• Video-HDR uses single-image tonemapping and device-specific sensor mode (iPhone 6) to create stunning videos.
• Lo-light mode removes sensor noise by merging together multiple images and amplifying light by a factor of 10 to provide a better image quality.
• Zoom mode uses real-time, super-resolution technique to recreate missing pixels from hand motion, producing 2x and 4x scale factors with more details than the standard digital zooming technique.
• Hi-res mode produces up to 32MP images from the regular 8MP camera sensor, providing finer details in captured image.
Hydra also features a photo gallery for reviewing images and their metadata, directly linked with built-in iOS photo album (iOS 8 feature), thus avoiding duplicates and allowing to flag as favorites.
It's important to remember that Hydra creates an enhanced photo by taken multiple images and combining them. This means that you will need to keep your device very steady for the best results. In fact, Hydra recommends that you shoot static and distant scenery for hi-res mode, so don't expect good results for subjects in motion.
You can purchase Hydra from the App Store for a limited time price of $2.99.
