Question

i’m using UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera in my app, but a want to add the camera view a subview. not as modal view.

now i’m using

UIImagePickerController * picker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];
picker.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera;
picker.delegate = self;
[self presentModalViewController:picker animated:YES];   

i want to use it like this, but doesn’t seem to work ..

UIImagePickerController * picker = [[UIImagePickerController alloc] init];
picker.sourceType = UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera;
picker.delegate = self;
[picker.view setFrame:CGRectMake(300, 40, 300, 200)];
[self.view addSubview:picker.view];

i know that the UIImagePickerControllerSourceTypeCamera only can be used as modal view.
How is for example Hipstamatic using this for example?

Answer 1

This is possible in iOS 4+ using the AVCaptureSession framework. It’s much more complicated than using UIImagePickerController, but you have complete control over input and output. The key to having the camera view as a subview is the following code. Assume you have a subview called previewView that you want to show the camera view:

AVCaptureSession *session = [[AVCaptureSession alloc] init];
AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer *previewLayer = [AVCaptureVideoPreviewLayer layerWithSession:session];
previewLayer.frame = self.previewView.bounds; 
[self.previewView.layer addSublayer:previewLayer];

There is more setup work to do to give your AVCaptureSession object the correct input and output devices and to actually capture the photos. That can be found in the documentation and examples on the web.