MoonCatcher18.1

This is an app that allows you to easily photograph the moon at night, including its pattern. You can also zoom easily.

Usage is simple.
(A) Tap the moon from the menu and tap the closest moon shape among the three.
(B) Point the camera at the moon and zoom.
(C) Release the shutter without moving the smartphone (tripod recommended). The shutter will fire several times, so don't let it slide until the end.
If you cannot take any of the photos with the moon in focus, you can try "changing the center of focus" as many times as you like below.

Tap the manual mode button (second button from the bottom right) to enter manual mode, where you can manually set focus, ISO/shutter speed, white balance, and multiple exposure parameters.

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The features of this app are
(1) Fully automatic function
- If you select "Moon", the exposure will be automatically darkened in response to the bright moon in the night sky, and the focus will be adjusted to the distance.
Since it fires continuously while changing the focus multiple times, you can choose the best result among them. (The number of consecutive shots and the center of focus can be changed with the slider)

*"Change the focus center": Tap "Moon" on the shooting screen to display the moon shape selection segment, the number of consecutive shots slider, and the focus center slider. Now you can change each value.
Because the moon is far away, it is difficult to focus when zoomed in. Therefore, if you take pictures while changing the focus little by little, you can expect the moon to be in focus at some point.
The focus range is from 0 (nearby) to 1 (far), but in reality, the focus is shifted by 1/5 when shooting. For example, 0.7 to 0.9 (0.8 in the center). By changing the center of focus, you can shift the focus within any range and fire continuously.

- There are two types of night views.
・"Night Scene 1" brightens a dark night scene by one level.
・“Night Scene 2” brightens the image one step brighter than “Night Scene 1”.
It fires continuously while changing the brightness 4 times.

- If you select "HDR", multiple consecutive images with different exposures will be combined to create a pseudo-large dynamic range.
　Multiple exposure 3 times.
(2) Full manual function
You can take photos by manually setting the focal length, exposure, white balance, photo composition method, and number of photos.

・Tap "Focus", "ISO/SS", and "WB" to select auto or manual. 

・Tap "Multiple Exposure" to select the multiple exposure composition method and set the number of composite images (up to 100).
The synthesis methods are as following.
Bright: Screen composit (Screen Blend)
Normal: Comparison(light) composition (Lighten Blend)
Dark: Comparison (dark) composition (Darken Blend)
HDR: Special composition (Special Blend)

(３) Other camera functions

・Zoom function: Achieving a zoom ratio of 40 time
・A camera position: The LCD screen side or the back camera is selectable.
・Focus position specification
・Mesh display
・Aspect selection
・Deviation correction selection

(４) Filter function just after the photography
To display the photograph just after photography and the following filtering are possible by slider operation.
・Purity (sharpness)
・Comparison degree (contrast)
・Luminosity (exposure)

・Display list function
The photos taken in this app is stored in the camera roll and in app itself too and you can see the list of them with the shooting date and time information.

・Image processing function
When you tap the image on the list, it displays the list of filters for image processing.
It has about 70 filters such as 'Brightness','Contrast','Blur','Sharpening','Sepia','Monochrome','Edge detection','Sketch' and so on.

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This app include the following open sources.
- GPUImage (Copyright (c) 2012, Brad Larson, Ben Cochran, Hugues Lismonde, Keitaroh Kobayashi, Alaric Cole, Matthew Clark, Jacob Gundersen, Chris Williams. All rights reserved.)

Version History The following function has been added:
When shooting the moon with focus shift, the center of focus is set to the focus point immediately before shooting. 18.1 03/21/2025 - Display improvements (moon photography results display: makes it easy to see which image is in focus)
(Focus seeking is ideal for focusing on extremely small objects at extremely long distances, as it is difficult to do so using normal methods.)
- Slight processing speed improvements 18.0 11/14/2024 The zoom function has been revised.
The default focus center during moon burst shooting has been shifted farther away. (0.7-> 0.85) 17.1 07/18/2024 - The shutter sound has been made quieter.
- When photographing the moon, you can now easily take photos that are in focus by shooting continuously and changing the focal length continuously.
The center focal length can be changed on the pop-up screen displayed by tapping the moon segment on the shooting screen.
- Removed low resolution (2K or 4K) shooting function. A similar effect can be achieved by using the image cropping function (CROP).
-The almost whole code was rewritten in swift. 17.0 05/04/2024 The following improvements have been made.
-It is now possible to distinguish between automatic focus and exposure control by the color of the knob on the slider.
(Automatic: white knob, manual: pink knob)
-It is now possible to return directly to the shooting screen from the back screen.
-Fixed a bug in the exposure setting when shooting 4K (2K). 16.1 06/22/2022 - The focus and brightness can be easily adjusted with the slider. This makes it possible to shoot clearer moons than ever before.
- Supports the back side wide-angle and telephoto lenses as well as the front lens. 16.0 02/07/2020 ・ Changed the display method of moon age.
・ Some improvements were made. 15.3 09/18/2019 - Improved sequential display of continuous shooting results.
- Fixed the problem that photos are not saved if the number of shutters is 1 at manual mode. 15.2 06/18/2019 -Improved the image quality of digital zoom.
-Improved the operation on the old terminal. 15.1 06/07/2019 - The screen display has been renewed.
- The camera function has been enhanced.
Focus position specification
Mesh display
Aspect selection
Deviation correction selection
- The zoom magnification is up to 40 times. When you zoom in too much, you lose sight of the moon, so the zoom is up to 6 times, and the zoom beyond that is represented by a green frame.
- Focusing has become more accurate by specifying the focus position.
If you find it difficult to focus, you can tap on the screen to specify where the focus will be. 15.0 05/29/2019 - Processing speeded up.
- Improved shutter sound (Volume needs to be lowered)
- Improved image editing.
- Improve slider operation during manual shooting. 14.0 01/24/2019 The zoom magnification in 4K photo mode is increased up to 30 times.
When the magnification becomes large, the image acquisition range is now displayed in green frame without enlarging the preview screen.(only iPhoneX) 13.1 07/24/2018 - Moon shooting in 4K photo mode is now available (Note). (Tap the "4K" button on the upper right of the initial screen to switch to that mode.) In 4K photo mode, the resolution is 8 million pixels, but the shutter sound is quiet. Also, since the shutter interval becomes relatively short, the shooting time can be shortened.
(Note) 2K photo mode (2 million pixels) is available for models that do not support 4K video.
- Various defects are corrected. 13.0 06/23/2018 - Fixed display disruption on iPhoneX.
- Only the highest resolution was applied.
- Shutter speed, ISO and F value at shooting are displayed. 12.0 02/01/2018 Every day, a notification of moon day is presented.
(You can ban this by choosing this application from the "Settings" of the system and changing it so that notification is not permitted.) 11.2 07/14/2017 · As you can see how the current moon looks, the moon's age is shown with icons and numerical values.
- When shooting the moon, we made it possible to set the number of composures. Reducing the number of times reduces camera shake. By increasing the number of times you can clarify the pattern of the moon. 11.1 06/29/2017 - Improved the operation to select the moon types.
- Fixed small bugs. 11.0 06/28/2016 - Improved the exposure setting on the Night Views. 1.9 11/21/2015 - Fixed small bugs related to iPhone6s(plus). 1.8 10/14/2015 Supporting iOS 9. 1.7 09/25/2015 Adding recovery processing for the camera permission.
If the access right to the camera device is not allowed by the system, app will show that and lead you to the setting window(iOS8 only). 1.6 08/20/2015 Added the following moon auto-shooting modes,
- Crescent moon
- Half-moon
- Full moon. 1.5 07/31/2015 - Fixed zooming bug relating to iPhone4s. 1.4 05/14/2015 Improved memory management. (The processing at the highest resolution becomes available for low power devices.) 1.3 04/15/2015 Added a function that makes it possible to watch the taken photos continuously by swiping them on the photo display screen.
Fixed some small bugs. 1.2 04/01/2015