iOS Camera View Finder with Descriptions on

By OldBear, 16 June, 2025

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

This morning, I tried to take a picture of a mockingbird performing at the top of a power pole in my backyard. I didn't have a tripod, and held the phone up near my face to aim. The zoom just wasn't powerful enough to get him, but VO certainly identified the power pole and lines, then the trees and walls and houses. Had a little difficulty holding the camera steady, and it gave me a fairly real-time description as I jostled the phone.
So I left the focus on the view finder and walked around the side of my house, where a few ancient trees in the abandon, neighboring yard harbor lots of birds. Predictably, they all went silent, then flew away when I approached. It did locate one bird in one brief description. I did like being able to get descriptions of the tree tops to find out that they aren't completely dead up there. It also described dirt and rocks and sticks on the ground as I walked.
The down side is it used up a lot of battery. The real-time feel of getting glimpses of the surroundings was fun, and might even be useful. Guess I could always use a battery pack.

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Comments

By Brian on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 09:13

What do you mean by descriptions, though? Do you mean image descriptions? Or were you using the Live Recognition feature?

By OldBear on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 11:03

On the rotor, I turned to describe images, which got set to off for the app somehow, and set them to on. Then I put VO focus on the view finder. It starts describing what the camera is pointed at, in brief terms.
I also activated the zoom by turning off VO, making a pinch gesture, then turning on VO. That puts a zoom control on the screen that you can flick to change. The zoom control on the rotor doesn't seem to work right, or maybe it doesn't have anything to do with the camera. I set it as high as it would go, 100%,, which I guess is twice the regular size. I need a lot more than that for birds in trees and such.

By OldBear on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 14:28

I experimented with it again this morning. If you move the camera too quickly or too much, the descriptions lag and almost seem to get stuck on past images. You can touch the view finder area again to catch them up.
I'm disappointed in the zoom feature. It reverts back to regular for what ever reason, and it's an ordeal to shut off VO, pinch, then turn VO back on. I can get certain birds to come right up to the camera if I put it where I put their seeds, and use bluetooth keyboards, clickers and earphones, but I want to point the camera at a bird that's calling and zoom it in enough to get a picture. There might be a way to crop and zoom an already existing picture, but I'm not sure how to use the handles in that feature of the Photos app.

By Brian on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 16:51

While I am admittedly not into birdwatching, I think this has definitely been one of the more clever ideas, utilizing the iPhone camera and VoiceOver, that I have read about in a very long time. πŸ˜ŽπŸ‘

By Dave Nason on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 17:40

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Indeed it is a useful feature. Although if you’re trying to record a video, it makes it necessary to turn off VoiceOver as it keeps chattering away.
There is a zoom control on the screen that VoiceOver can access. In iOS 18, simply swipe right once from the view finder, then swipe up or down on the zoom control to change the level.
Dave

By OldBear on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 19:04

I'm on the latest iOS. For some reason, that zoom control will not appear until I've gone through the ritual of turning off VO, making the pinch gesture, then turning VO back on. Then it is where you said. But it goes away from shifting the view or something. It's been that way for a long, long time.
Maybe because I have a 2022 SE?

By OldBear on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 19:20

I do lots of bird listening, and can identify most of the local birds, including the feral parrots in my neighborhood.
It's actually bird photography that I want to do. I even have an album I carry around in my backpack with physical printouts of them, though it's just one page at this point. I have much more bird video footage, which get some sound too. I suppose the thing I should look into is extracting a frame from a video as a photo while being blind. I like being able to pull out the album, not my phone, and show people pictures.

By Bruce Harrell on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 20:42

Merlin Bird ID is an app my wife and I use for bird watching/listening. Capture bird song with your iPhone microphone, even if faint and distant, and the Merlin bird ID app will tell you which bird it is and a bunch of interesting facts about that species. Smile. You can also use your camera.

There is a similar app for plants, but with that one we haven't had much luck using our iPhone microphones.

I understand that with ios 18.4 and an iPhone 16, you can use live viewer (or something like that) which gets a description from your camera viewer on command.

By OldBear on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 - 23:38

What is the name of the plant identification app. That might be useful. I've been using Seeing AI to check if my pumpkins are getting orange and the peppers red. I usually go through a horrific ordeal of google searches to identify plants, but it's been fairly successful.
It turned out to be very easy to pause a video, tap it to make it full-screen, then take a screen shot. It's in PNG format, but I assume that can be printed from the photos app. I should be able to increase my bird album quite a bit that way.

By Bruce Harrell on Wednesday, June 18, 2025 - 17:02

The plant ID app is easy to find with a google or app store search. I googled it last night but already forgot the name again. It's in the apple app store, though.