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Comment by waleedamer | Hacker News Reader

This is a neat concept. It could potentially solve the vertical videos problem we have lately with smartphone cameras in everyone's pockets. My only nitpick is the "tap to take a picture/hold to record a video" control scheme. A viable alternative would be: tap to focus, tap and hold for a menu (think Galaxy Note 4 Air Command) where you can toggle flash, choose photo or video, etc.

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I'm borrowing from snapchat here which uses a similar concept (tap for pics, hold for video) and tried to cut/avoid additional steps. As for focussing: why must focus and trigger be two distinct actions?

I sometimes play with the focus when I'm taking videos. Sometimes I'd want the focus to be very up close at first and then focus more on the background while recording. Also, it's not always easy to tell if the object is too close/far to focus on, so the picture might not come out too well.

If you're thinking Snapchat and the video lasts until you release, the focus could perhaps be controlled by dragging over the area rather than tapping.

Overall, the focus isn't that big of a deal, but, to make as many people as possible happy, I would find a way to include as many features as possible. Flash is also a very important feature that wasn't accounted for. On top of that, how would the user go about toggling between the front and back facing cameras?

Good Points. Maybe something like a Lytro-Focus-slider could be implemented.

Front/back and Flash can be adjusted on the panel I the left.

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