ReeHeld – The Power Is In The Magic

Long Exposure in Mobile Photography

Long exposure photography has been around since the first ever photograph was taken. Since that time, as we all know, photography has evolved to what we know it to be today and it will surely continue to evolve as much as technology will allow. Camera manufacturers try to push things to the limit, technologically, to make their cameras better than the rest. This may be with hardware components or with the software built into their products. The same can be said for the cameras in the mobile space. 

There’s been a friendly, but fierce, ongoing battle between Android and iPhone for who has the best camera system and I’ll tell you right now, it’s completely subjective. There are no losers. We’re all winners with these things because we use what we like and what makes us happy, period. As you know, for me it’s the iPhone, and the reason I like the iPhone is because there are a lot of choices for photography apps. What a good time to be a mobile photographer. 

My photography app of choice as a replacement for the Apple Camera is Reeflex, but of course you know that by now too. As a podcaster, I have a plethora of photography related apps on my iPhone but they rarely see the light of the pixels on my screen unless they’re part of my editing workflow or they have a green app icon and the name starts with “Ree”. In this article, I’m going to talk about ReeHeld, an app I use almost every time I go out, and the power of ReeHeld is in the magic behind the app.

If you’re reading this right now, you’ve likely already heard of ReeHeld, but you may not know all that much about it. Sure, you know it can take long exposures without a tripod, but there’s much more to the app than that, and the more you know about it, the more you can capitalize on its abilities.

The Simple Details

Let’s start with the user interface. It’s one of the simplest camera app screens I’ve seen, and quite frankly, it works just fine the way it is. I do have one wish for a feature but I’ll get to that shortly. The largest portion of the screen is taken up by the viewfinder, and rightly so, and in the lower third of the screen you have the controls, which are all accessible with your thumb for one handed use, at least I can do it on my 15 Pro Max. The dead simple UI includes a slider for setting the exposure time, a three second timer button, a camera selector, the shutter button, the image preview thumbnail, and the settings icon. You won’t find a file type option because ReeHeld shoots in JPG only. Let’s jump into the settings first. 

Since this app is such a simplified yet powerful camera, the team at Reeflex have taken the opportunity to include some very useful links and information in the settings screen. At the top is a large button that takes you to their Facebook Group where users of their apps and other products can share and discuss their experiences with each other. This community is quickly growing and the photos shared by the members are amazing. 

Below the Community link is the actual settings for the app, and like the app itself, they’re simple and straight forward. You have two toggles; one for the Smart Indicator and one to enable GPS Location. I elect to have both of these turned on. The Smart Indicator is your best friend when using ReeHeld and I’ll explain why later, and I always geotag my photos and videos because I use the iCloud Photos Library and its Memories feature uses location data to produce some really cool Memory videos. Plus I like to save location data in case I want to return to a place I don’t often explore. 

After the settings you’ll see links to the other two camera apps that Reeflex has to offer. These links take you directly to the App Store entries for Reeflex Pro Camera and ReeXpose. And finally, the Reeflex team have included some very helpful links to other resources like leaving an App Store review, subscribing to their newsletter, links to their website and much more. I could delve into that stuff more but you’re here to read about ReeHeld so let’s quickly cover the rest of the UI then find out what the magic is all about. 

The exposure time slider is pretty straight forward. You swipe sideways to select the length of time you want your exposure to last. The self timer button delays the exposure start for three seconds, which gives you time to brace for the shot. The camera selector simply switches to the camera you wish to use and toggles between each one. The shutter button initiates the exposure and the line around the outside of it travels around it to indicate the time as the exposure builds. 

The Magic

So what sets ReeHeld apart from other apps? It’s that magic I keep hinting at. I don’t know of any other app that does things the same way. Maybe there is, but I’m not aware of any. The way long exposures work in the iPhone is not the same as a traditional camera where the shutter stays open, or active in the case of an electronic shutter like that of the iPhone, for the duration of the exposure. The iPhone will take a series of images, stack them and blend them together while applying whatever amount of noise reduction, Deep Fusion and Smart HDR is necessary to create a good exposure. This is virtually an instant alternative to the image stacking process done by photographers who take a number of images and stack them in Photoshop.

What ReeHeld does is use Artificial Intelligence to align the frames of the images taken during the exposure sequence. One might think that the app should use the image stabilization built into the iPhone’s camera system but I think the frame alignment process works much better. The secret to a good quality image in ReeHeld is to make sure you have a static object somewhere in the frame so the algorithm can latch onto it to better line up the images. This is crucial to succeeding with each shot because if there isn’t something stationary and the AI can’t align the frames, you will end up with a blurry image. And that’s not all bad because some very interesting abstract art can be made that way. 

Now let’s look at how we can harness the power of this magic. The most common type of long exposure photo taken with the iPhone is the silky water effect. I’ve taken dozens of photos like this with ReeHeld and have discovered that certain situations call for certain exposure lengths. Water flows at different speeds with each location you experience. The faster the water flow, the less time you need for your exposure to make a good image, but you need to be careful not to cut it too short. A one second exposure of a waterfall could be a viable choice to show that the water is moving and it gives a sense of that motion, but a more artistic look can be given to the image when the motion of the water is captured over a longer period. If the water is flowing extremely fast, like that of a spring run off caused by the melting of snow, five to 10 seconds  should be sufficient, but if it’s a small creek with a lot slower flow, you may want to extend the exposure time to 30 seconds. Of course this is all subjective, but it also serves as a guideline to achieving a good result. 

I know I’ve mentioned it already, but it’s probably the most important part of using ReeHeld, and that is to make sure you have a static object in the frame. In the case of a waterfall or river, a rock, the shoreline, a tree or even some grass growing out of the water will be ideal for static objects. Trying to get the water movement of a beach scene will fail miserably if you just try to show waves coming up on the sand. What you will get is just a lot of blur because the frames will be scattering all over the place looking for something to line up, and if it’s just water and sand with no object large enough to register as something static, well therein lies the problem. 

I certainly don’t think the Reeflex team has put a design flaw in the app by making it this way because having the requirement for a static object actually aids in making the image sharper. I’ve taken images with the 120mm (5x) camera on my 15 Pro Max, which is probably the hardest of the three cameras to keep steady, and they come out tack sharp, which is very cool because that’s the camera I use most. 

Hold Steady

Speaking of keeping the camera steady, like I mentioned earlier, the Smart Indicator is going to be your best friend when shooting with ReeHeld. It is made up of two crosshairs, one green and one white. The white crosshair is stationary, but the green one shows you when you are moving the iPhone and knocking things out of alignment. If the green crosshair goes to the right, shift the iPhone to the left ever so slightly to line them back up. That’s pretty intuitive to me. However, if the crosshair goes up or down, it’s actually reverse to what you might think it should be. If the green crosshair drops slightly below the white one, you actually have to tilt the iPhone down to line them up again. A word of caution about tilting or rotating the phone: be careful not to move it too much or you may get an image where most of it could be sharp, but something in the frame could end up misaligned, causing it to be blurry. 

Not Just For Moving Water

Other use cases for ReeHeld are urban shots where you can photograph a scene with people in it. If you expose long enough and the people are moving fast enough, they will either be so blurred they’ll hardly be seen or they may disappear altogether. Showing cloud movement is another favourite of mine but it works best when there is a lot of motion in the clouds, and a 30 second exposure is almost a must for a good result. 

Now, you might be asking yourself if ReeHeld is good for doing light trails. I’d have to say I don’t recommend trying light trails because you will end up with what I call “braiding” in the streak of light. The reason this happens is since ReeHeld shoots a series of images and stacks them, each exposure will be short, or shall I say, taken with a fast shutter speed and the light source is most likely moving too fast for the light trail portion of the images to blend in properly. 

Oh, and about that wish I have for a feature in ReeHeld, I think it would be nice if you can adjust the brightness of the exposure. It does such a good job getting the exposure right while shooting, though, so it’s not the end of the world if it isn’t there.

Conclusion

The app is so easy to use. Point your camera to the subject, set your exposure time, tap to focus if you wish but the app seems to do well with that on its own, and brace yourself for the magic that is ReeHeld. I have a fairly steady set of hands so getting a sharp image seems to come easy for me but there are times when I’ll lean on something or rest the iPhone on a railing or tree to steady it, and that’s still better than carrying a tripod around. Be sure to experiment with different exposure times to see how the length of the shot affects the outcome, and also be sure to look up the hashtag #reeheld on Instagram for some inspiration. Don’t get discouraged when starting out with ReeHeld because once you get on to how it works, you’ll be hooked!

Images Taken With ReeHeld