The kind of mobile portraiture photography popularized by Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X may soon be coming to the world’s top photo-sharing service, Instagram.
TechCrunch reported Monday that Facebook-owned Instagram is developing its own Portrait mode-like camera feature, as evidenced by an icon for a Portrait shutter for the Stories camera hidden in the Instagram application file for Android.
The publication speculates that this unreleased capability might potentially let people shoot stylized portraits with bokeh effect-blurred backgrounds or other lighting effects.
I’m definitely OK with that.
This curious icon would presumably show up overlaid on the Instagram Stories camera shutter button when you swipe to the corresponding mode, expanding Instagram’s collection of shutter modes beyond options like Boomerang and Superzoom.
When asked about this, Instagram declined to comment.
Although dual-lens iPhone owners can easily upload their depth-of-field photographs to Instagram, many people use the in-app Instagram camera to record video content and take photos for the Stories feature. From that perspective, it makes perfect sense to bring Portrait mode-like shooting mode to the Stories camera in Instagram.
Other noteworthy icons were discovered in Instagram for Android, strongly suggesting that voice and video functions might be in the works for the app’s direct-messaging feature.