Comparison

Halide Mark III vs Blackmagic Camera

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Halide Mark III

This professional camera app offers advanced manual controls and powerful tools for deliberate photography. Capture stunning RAW images, utilize Neural Macro for close-ups on any iPhone, and access features like focus peaking and histograms. Learn photography with included lessons and customize your shooting experience.

Highlights
  • Manual exposure and focus controls
  • Neural Macro for close-up shots
  • 14-bit RAW and ProRAW capture
  • Exposure tools: histograms, waveform, zebras
  • Focus peaking and loupe
  • Gesture-based interface
  • Included photography lessons
Features
Read full description

Halide unleashes your iPhone’s camera. Disable iPhone processing for natural photos, apply powerful film situations, access manual controls, and more. Halide has over 24,000 5-star ratings and is an App Store Editors’ Choice and Apple Design Award winner. Halide’s Looks are built into the camera itself, changing how your photo is captured and processed - not just a color filter applied after the fact. These are the best photos you can get out of an iPhone. Start with Process Zero for natural, film-like results, without any AI or computational photography. Explore our rich set of creative Looks developed with Hollywood colorist Cullen Kelly, and powered by sophisticated film simulation. For nine years, Halide has set the standard for professional iPhone camera control. Nail your manual focus with Focus Peaking and the Focus Loupe. Compose your shots with intention using sophisticated framing guides, from a basic grid and rule of thirds, to the golden ratio and rabatment of the rectangle. Get perfect macro shots with Halide's dedicated Macro Mode. Hate editing? Halide gives you amazing results straight out of the camera. But when you need to fine-tune, Photo Lab makes it fast and intuitive. Try dramatically different Looks, adjust framing and exposure, experiment with film simulation, or rescue details in highlights and shadows with Tone Fusion. You can even import and load RAWs from other apps, such as Apple’s own camera app, or standalone cameras by Canon, Nikon, Sony, Leica, Fujifilm, and Hasselblad. Specific formats are listed below. *Halide is a paid app. Try it free for 7 days with an annual membership, or buy it outright with a one-time purchase — no subscription required.* Features: - Shoot without Apple’s computational photography for stronger contrast and more natural results. - Photographic Looks developed in collaboration with esteemed Hollywood colorist Cullen Kelly. - Rescue details in shadows and highlights with a Tone Fusion slider inspired by darkroom dodging and burning. - Try any Look on existing ProRAW files - including photos shot in Apple’s camera app. - Become a better photographer by signing up for our 10-day tutorial directly from the app. - Full manual exposure controls including shutter speed, ISO and white balance. - Technical Readout to view all details of your iPhone camera hardware. - Also runs on iPad, for an amazing Photo Lab experience. RAW File Support: - DNG (iPhone, Leica) - CR2 (Canon) - CR3 (Canon) - NEF (Nikon) - RAF (Fujifilm) - ARW (Sony) - FFF (Hasselblad) Terms of Use can be found here: https://halide.cam/terms Privacy: https://www.lux.camera/privacy/

About

Blackmagic Camera

Transform your iPhone or iPad into a professional digital film camera. Achieve a cinematic look with Hollywood-grade controls, including frame rate, shutter angle, and ISO adjustments. Record in industry-standard formats directly to cloud storage for seamless global collaboration.

Highlights
  • Digital film camera controls
  • Cinematic 'look' for Hollywood films
  • Adjust frame rate, shutter angle, white balance, ISO
  • Record to Blackmagic Cloud
  • Industry standard 10-bit Apple ProRes files up to 4K
  • Interactive Heads Up Display (HUD)
  • Professional audio options
Features
Read full description

Introducing Digital Film for iPhone and iPad! Blackmagic Camera unlocks the power of your iPhone and iPad by adding digital film camera controls and operating systems! Now you can create the same cinematic ‘look’ as Hollywood feature films. You get the same intuitive and user friendly interface as Blackmagic Design’s award winning cameras. So it’s just like using a professional digital film camera! This means you can adjust settings such as frame rate, shutter angle, white balance and ISO all in a single tap. Or record directly to Blackmagic Cloud in industry standard 10-bit Apple ProRes files up to 4K! Recording to Blackmagic Cloud Storage lets you collaborate on DaVinci Resolve projects with editors anywhere in the world, all at the same time! Get the "Hollywood Look" with Digital Film! Blackmagic Camera puts the professional features you need for feature film, television and documentaries in your pocket. Now you can create YouTube and TikTok content with a cinematic look, and broadcast quality ENG! Imagine having a run and gun camera on hand to capture breaking news whenever it happens! Or use Blackmagic Camera as a B Cam to capture angles that are difficult to reach with traditional cameras, while still retaining control of important settings. Best of all, recording to Blackmagic Cloud allows you to get your footage to the newsroom or post production studio in minutes. Interactive Controls for Fast Setup Blackmagic Camera has all the controls you need to quickly setup and start shooting! Everything is interactive, so you can tap any item and instantly change settings without searching through confusing menus! The HUD shows status and record parameters, histogram, focus peaking indicators, levels, frame guides and more. Show or hide the HUD by swiping up or down. You can auto focus by tapping the screen in the area you want to focus. You can shoot in 16:9 or vertical aspect ratios, plus you can shoot 16:9 while holding your phone vertically if you want to shoot unobtrusively. On Screen Heads Up Display The heads up display, or HUD, controls have the most important camera controls such as lens selection, frame rate, shutter angle, timecode, ISO, white balance, gain and audio levels. You can adjust settings such as exposure by touching the ISO indicator, or you can change the audio levels simply by touching the audio meters. Everything is interactive, so if you tap any item you can instantaneously change its settings without having to search through complex menus! Camera Setup Menus The settings tab unlocks the full power of your phone’s camera, with quick access to advanced settings such as monitoring, audio, camera setup, recording and more! The record tab gives you total control over video resolution and recording format including industry standard Apple ProRes or space efficient H.264 and H.265. Plus, you can set anamorphic de-squeeze and lens correction settings. Professional audio options include AAC and PCM format and VU or PPM audio metering. You can even add external microphones! Or add 3D LUTs to recreate film looks! Media The Blackmagic Camera media tab has all the controls you need to browse or scrub clips for quick review, search and sort and view the upload status of your media. Access your media from Blackmagic Camera’s all clips folder by choosing the Media button to see the thumbnails for each clip you have stored. Plus, you can save to the files folder on the phone, send it to Blackmagic Cloud Storage via Blackmagic Cloud or manually choose which clips to upload to a project library. You can even sync media from Blackmagic Camera directly into the DaVinci Resolve project so you’re ready to edit! Live Sync to Blackmagic Cloud Storage When shooting with Blackmagic Camera, the video you capture can be instantly uploaded as a proxy file, followed by the camera originals, and saved to Blackmagic Cloud Storage. This means you can start editing quickly using your proxies, speeding up your workflow.

Screenshots

Halide Mark III4 screens
Blackmagic Camera4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Blackmagic Camera at none against Halide Mark III's 3. Blackmagic Camera also leads on rating (4.8 vs 4.4) and review sentiment (69% vs 41%). Halide Mark III's advantage is update cadence (every 11 days vs monthly). On price, ratings volume, ads and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Halide Mark III sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $9.99 per month. Blackmagic Camera asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

Blackmagic Camera holds the better App Store score, 4.8 against 4.4. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 13K and 23K respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 41% of Halide Mark III's written reviews are positive against 69% of Blackmagic Camera's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Halide Mark III ships an update every 11 days, Blackmagic Camera monthly. The most recent releases landed on September 30, 2026 and October 1, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard6 real differences · 5 level
Halide Mark III versus Blackmagic Camera: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterHalide Mark IIIBlackmagic Camera
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.4 (13K ratings)4.8 (23K ratings) — better
Positive reviews41.1% of reviews69.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings13K23K — better
Update frequencyEvery 11 days — betterMonthly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
Best chart rank#133#30 — better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS18.018.0
Further details — not scored
Size84 MB203 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperLux Optics IncorporatedBlackmagic Design Inc

Customer experience

Halide Mark III

All ratings13,365 ratings
Positive86.4%
Neutral2.5%
Negative11.1%
Written reviews864 reviews
Positive41.1%
Neutral8.0%
Negative50.9%

Blackmagic Camera

All ratings22,917 ratings
Positive95.9%
Neutral1.5%
Negative2.6%
Written reviews1,116 reviews
Positive69.0%
Neutral9.6%
Negative21.4%

User reviews

Halide Mark III

From 13K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Powerful manual controls
  • 👍 Intuitive and clean interface
  • 🔍 Excellent RAW capture and editing
  • 📷 Macro and depth features
  • 🎨 Great image quality and color

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Occasional crashes and bugs
  • 🔍 Depth/portrait mode limitations
  • 🕰️ Slow performance on older devices
  • 💰 Expensive subscription model
  • 🔒 Lack of free trial or demo

Blackmagic Camera

From 23K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Powerful camera controls
  • 👍 Intuitive and well-designed UI
  • 🎥 Cinematic video quality
  • 💰 Free app with professional features
  • 🔗 Integration with Blackmagic ecosystem

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Stability issues and crashes
  • 🔍 Inaccurate storage indicator
  • 🔀 Orientation issues when switching cameras
  • 🔊 Audio input issues
  • 🔒 Lack of remote control/monitoring options

Bugs and requests

Halide Mark III

Reported bugs

3 issues
  • Photos not saving properly
  • Zoom functionality issues
  • Landscape mode UI problems

Requested features

5 requests
  • Shutter speed adjustment
  • Live depth/bokeh preview
  • Custom white balance
  • Time-lapse and video recording
  • Ability to save settings/presets

Blackmagic Camera

Reported bugs

5 issues
  • Stabilization issues in certain recording modes
  • Exposure and focus settings not staying locked
  • Timelapse mode not clearly indicated
  • HDMI output not working reliably
  • Audio source randomly switching to 'None'

Requested features

6 requests
  • Add log/flat color profiles
  • Implement waveform and vectorscope monitors
  • Allow locking shutter speed with auto ISO
  • Provide preset options for common settings
  • Add support for external accessories (e.g., gimbals)
Show 1 more
  • Integrate Apple Watch remote control

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Halide Mark III

Subscriptions2
  • Pro Camera, Editor, and Lessons$9.991 Month
  • Pro Camera, Editor, and Lessons7 Days trial$19.991 Year
One-time1
  • One Time Purchase$69.99
None

Blackmagic Camera

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Halide Mark III free?
Halide Mark III is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Blackmagic Camera free?
Blackmagic Camera is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Halide Mark III or Blackmagic Camera?
Blackmagic Camera is rated higher. Halide Mark III averages 4.4 out of 5 from 13K ratings, while Blackmagic Camera averages 4.8 from 23K ratings.
Do Halide Mark III or Blackmagic Camera have ads?
Neither Halide Mark III nor Blackmagic Camera shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Halide Mark III or Blackmagic Camera?
Halide Mark III ships an update every 11 days, and Blackmagic Camera monthly. Most recently, Halide Mark III was updated on September 30, 2026 and Blackmagic Camera on October 1, 2026.
Which is more popular, Halide Mark III or Blackmagic Camera?
Halide Mark III currently peaks at #133 in the App Store charts, and Blackmagic Camera at #30. Chart position reflects recent download velocity rather than total install base.

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