I knew the day would come to start talking about the iPhone as a professional filmmaking tool.
We've seen how its cameras have gradually improved over the years and how Apple dedicates big portions of its keynotes to pro photography and video.
But as a DP for all these years,
I couldn't help but see the very obvious challenges and issues I will have to deal with when using the iPhone in a commercial setting.
But that fact, Finally change with the release of the iPhone 15.
In this episode, I'll share the 7 pro filmmaking features that might finally bring iPhone filmmaking back to Hollywood.
If this 2015 movie rings any bells, how about these?
What's common between all those movies, besides all being Hollywood productions directed by well acclaimed directors, is they're all fully and exclusively shot on iPhones.
Tangerine, directed by Sean Baker, is probably the first movie behind the iPhone's breakthrough
into the Hollywood scene, and that was using the very old That the and very incapable iPhone 5s.
Honestly, it still had a very B-movie raw documentary look to it, but that was the intentional vibe he went for anyway.
Steven the director behind both on Sane and High Flying Bird, said in an interview that phones are the future of filmmaking.
Many other filmmakers also saw the same potential and the problems they can solve, and shot many of their minds.
movie scenes using the iPhone.
Once again, we see Sean Baker here.
He publicly shared super valuable lessons from his experience by stating all the pros and cons about using iPhones in such productions.
And these are the kind of drawbacks that probably made those directors stop using the iPhones in their future productions till this day.
But this can change again,
because those drawbacks were nothing but the roadmap that Apple slowly addressed to finally check them all in the latest iPhone 15.
Looking at the big picture,
all those other movies were also shot using relatively older iPhone generations, and it seems Hollywood lost interest after the iPhone 8.
With a couple of exceptions from music videos sponsored by Apple, which don't count.
I'm sure Hollywood had enough of dealing with all those deal breaker drawbacks,
But the iPhone 15 is by far the first serious step to address all these concerns and offer professional features for pro filmmakers.
And confident these features will renew Hollywood's interest in iPhone filmmaking.
Starting with the external recording,
that was made possible with the introduction of the USB-C to its iPhones and thanks to the dedicated USB controller which gave us USB
three data transfer speeds peaking at 10 gigabit per second.
That's over 20 times faster over the 11 years old lighting port that still uses the antiquated USB 2 protocol.
It's a huge deal for filmmakers as it opens two awesome features.
First and most important,
the ability to record externally over USB-C,
which was the main issue everyone had with the previous iPhones,
simply because you don't have to empty internal storage anymore for your videos,
especially when recording 10-bit ProRes that's pretty massive compared to other compressed formats.
And second,
even if you decided to record internally and had to dump footage frequently due to the massive size,
you can now do it 20 times faster than what you had before with the lightning cable.
cable.
Of course, this external recording feature is reminiscent of the Blackmagic and the J-6 cameras.
Both stood out from all cameras for being able to record externally direct on SSDs.
And I'm sure we're going to start seeing third-party brands building iPhone cages with integrated SSD slots like with those ones.
Moving to the second pro filmmaker feature, Log Encoding.
And that's a huge deal.
what's called ProRes Log for the very first time to its footage.
I'm surprised they didn't say or show much about it during the keynote,
other than the photo of the colors working on DaVinci and what we saw in the promo of another colorist working on it on set.
The closest thing to Log we had for all these years was from Filmic ProApp that kind of
created a fake log look and you even had to pay for it.
The only couple of questions I have,
first, whether they're gonna let Log trickle down to the previous ProRes enabled iPhones, I hope they do, second, I'm wondering which version
of Log will Apple bring and how well will it perform,
considering they invented the ProRes codec itself,
and they pretty well know how to get the best out of it,
which leads us to the third point about how ProRes logged by default.
will support the Academy's color encoding system, also known as ACES.
Making Diphone 15,
the first phone to produce colors that fits within the universal color workflow standards, created by the Academy for all motion picture productions.
I would encourage you to check what ACES is all about.
It's designed to make filmmakers life much easier when it comes to color grading, and the thought of having an ACES.
This compliant ProRes lock capable camera that you can carry in your pocket, seems like a big deal to me.
And it's even a bigger deal because now it can shoot this ProRes at 60 frames per second.
So following their tradition, Apple boosted the iPhone's performance up a notch since last year.
But now they added a dedicated hardware engine for ProRes to push for higher 4K frame rates from 30 to 60 frames,
but keep in mind, this frame rate is only possible via external USB-C recording.
Just think about it for a second.
Connecting your phone to an external drive will give you 4K, 6DP and ProRes Log.
Just like what you get from GH6 when connected to an Ninja V, or what you get from the Pocket 4K internally.
Another small note about the 4K resolution across the three sensors.
The main camera has 48 megapixel sensor size,
which is 4 times the resolution of 4K of course,
so based on their explanation,
they do some pixel binning to reduce it to 4K, which should give us better results than the other two sensors, especially in low light.
Again, I gotta test it to confirm.
Moving on from sensors to their corresponding lenses and the brand new 120 megapixel sensor millimeter lens.
We have a couple of very important points I want to clarify first,
since marketing language can be pretty misleading,
and even though we're smart filmmakers to understand that,
I've seen many very experienced DPs do the same mistake I'll tell you about it in a second.
So when they talked about the macro capability in the keynote,
they said,
macro is one of the seven lenses of the new pro camera system with a 10x optical zoom range
going from 13 to 120 millimeter focal length.
Of course, these are not seven physical lenses.
It's clear we only have three lenses in the back,
the ultrawide,
the new 120mm tele,
and the white 24mm,
which they call the main lens,
simply because with the 48MP sensor,
you can simply crop into it to give you a virtual equivalent field of view of 28,
35, and 48 lenses, which we also call windowed frames.
These are the typical focal lengths you find in a typical cinema landscape,
which shows you how Apple is appearing to filmmakers with those focal lengths.
But don't be fooled, they do not have the optical look, spatial compression or distortion you get from those lenses.
Remember, these are just crops, not lenses.
I also saw how they featured the 24, 28 and 35mm options on their website.
But to my eyes, if I'm standing in the same position, I agree this could be a 24 equivalent.
But the difference between 24 and 28 is for sure not being able This would be more of a 50mm at say, not 28.
Then this is more like an 85mm, definitely not 35.
Also about the ultrawide 30mm lens,
it was claimed to be a macro lens, but by all means, based on their image here, I wouldn't call this macro.
Maybe what they really meant is more like having a close focus distance, so you can get a bit closer to subjects than before.
But keep in mind that by design,
ultrawide lenses in general have very close focus distances compared to standard ones, so I gotta try it myself before judging anyway.
I was happy to see how they kind of clarified the confusion about having 7 lenses in their separate promo video,
with the animation video visualizing how their 3 lens lenses being three physical and four virtual.
Now about this very important point where I found the experience dps make that mistake.
The focal length they're mentioning here are only based on the equivalent field of view on a full frame sensor.
So, in other words, what they call the 24mm lens on the iPhone will only give you a similar
frame from the same distance to a 24mm on a full frame.
But again, optically, they will look different.
Simply because what they call 24mm on the iPhone is in fact a 6.9mm ultrawide lens shooting
on a much smaller sensor size resulting in a much higher crop factor.
To get a bit technical about it, if we expose the sensor, the 24mm.
project an image that covers the full sensor, giving us the optical characteristics and field of view of a 24mm.
When we compare this to the iPhone's tiny sensor size,
we'll need to use a 6.9mm lens to give you a similar field of view of a 24mm on a full frame,
but by all means it will not give you the optical characteristics of a 24mm.
I know this might be confusing and you don't need to waste your time on the technicalities honestly.
But you need to know is to avoid the common mistake of using viewfinder apps that simulate
the focal lengths of other cameras and lens combinations and believe that the optical characteristics
and special compression or depth of field will look the same on both your phone and the camera.
These apps are only good as rough framing references.
nothing more.
That's one of the main reasons why Hollywood directors and DPs still use optical viewfinders on set.
So when they explained how they managed to fit this big 120mm lens into a phone that fits in your pocket,
that wasn't by breaking the laws of physics,
but simply by using a tiny wide lens with some very clever prism technology to increase its focal distance.
beyond the phone's physical thickness,
and projecting the image on another tiny sensor with a very high crop factor to give you the equivalent field of view to a typical 120mm
lens.
This prism technology is not new by the way.
It was introduced for the first time by the light L16 camera back in 2015 if you remember.
It was a much more complex camera which was probably the reason why
They just didn't have the kind of Apple resources you need to make such a complex innovation work and succeed.
With all that said, I'm really happy they finally introduced this new optical focal length equivalent to the iPhone.
It's pretty impressive how close you can get now to subjects without cropping into the sensor and losing resolution like before.
So now you probably won't need to buy any of those clips.
on telelenses anymore.
Still talking about lenses, Apple now is introducing stereoscopic filmmaking aka spatial video in Apple's language, also more commonly known as 3D videos.
Basically you can record 3D videos by shooting in landscape mode to make use of the two top lenses offering you a stereoscopic image.
Then you can later watch it in 3D on their new vision Pro headset.
While this sounds amazing, I'm a bit skeptical on how the final result will look for a couple of reasons.
First, stereoscopic images are usually captured by two identical lenses and sensors.
But the lenses we're using here are the 13mm and the 24mm, shooting on 12 megapixel and 48 megapixel sensors.
Also, to get the parallax needed to give you a proper 3D effect familiar to the way we
see the world, ideally the distance between both lenses should be close to the average human pupillary distance.
That's basically the distance between our pupils, which averages to 2.5 inches, but on the iPhone it's only 3 quarters of an inch.
That's too short to create the parallax needed for a proper 3D effect.
Apple figured out a way to make it work,
but I'm sure it's not with a true optical effect,
but rather through a computational process to create a fake 3D effect,
using a combination of the lens information and the LiDAR to create some sort of a 3D depth map to get that 3D effect.
Like what they did with the fake shell depth of field effect we already have,
that in many cases doesn't look very convincing around the edges still.
And thus the problem with computational effects that simulate optical ones, they'll never look as good or as believable as the real thing.
I believe this can be solved if they place the third lens on the other side of the phone
here to get a pupillary distance of 2 inches, close enough to the human vision, and this way will get a true optical 3D effect.
identical lenses as well.
This pretty much what they already did with the Vision Pro by the way.
They used the two lenses in the front of the headset to capture 3D photos and videos.
So I'm curious to see the difference between 3D from the phone and the one from the video Vision Pro.
At the end of the day, I'm very excited about Apple getting into the 3D world and see how we creatively use it as filmmakers.
Next comes the Super Retina XDR display, or the screen in Simple English.
There's so many things about it that makes it perfect for filmmakers.
We have two sizes, but I'll be focusing on the 6.7 inches from the 15 Pro Max.
The bigger size makes more sense for us.
So as filmmakers, we can use the screen in two different ways.
First obvious one is to monitor what you should...
One second used the phone as an external monitor by connecting it to your camera using the Axu and Simo Pro.
In case you don't know what that is,
it's a device that converts the signal from your camera and sends it directly to any of your connected smart devices,
turning them into professional monitors basically.
In both cases, this screen has a lot of awesome features that makes it stand out from pretty much any external device.
monitor out there,
starting with a brand new feature of reaching up to 2000 nitspeak brightness,
which is great for shooting outdoors,
that's equal to the brand new 7-inch Shogun Ultra, and double the peak brightness of the brand new Ninja V Ultra.
Looking at those similar size screens,
the iPhone is also much more compact monitor compared to the Ninja, also much lighter weight, and it has much limit.
profile of course, keep in mind it has a built-in battery as well.
This is also an HDR monitor that supports Dolby Vision,
and you know you can already shoot and replay ProRes in HDR on your phone,
something you can find in any camera with built-in monitor for example,
also it has the most popular white-color P3 standard, which was created by Apple as well.
It offers you perfect color workflow consistency.
between monitoring, grading and digital publishing.
The has an OLED panel meaning you have much deeper blacks than all the standard LCD panels in the market,
with the very few and very expensive exceptions that have OLED screens.
OLED makes a huge difference when adjusting your lift and black levels on set by the way.
When it comes to durability, the screen has what Apple calls a protective ceramic.
shield with water and dust resistance, making it much more durable than all external monitor panels we use.
Of course I would still add a cage for extra protection.
Autorick the Simo Pro if I'm using the phone as an external monitor.
Going back to the size,
the Pro Max has a 6.7 inch screen, but the 16 by 9 area for our video monitoring would be 5.7 inch.
Still bigger than that.
the 5.2 from the Ninja Ultra,
and even higher in resolution,
since the Ninja is full HD,
while the iPhone has a resolution of almost 2.3K in 16 by land portion of the screen,
and almost 2.8K when we add the sides.
Those sides are actually pretty useful for filmmaking apps such as the brand new black magic camera app.
It dedicated the whole right side for all camera control.
and settings.
This app is such a blessing for filmmakers.
First, it's because the only free professional filmmaking app out there, it unlocks the full
potential of your phone, and offers you all the tools and controls you need.
Second, you can upload all your footage directly to Blackmagic Cloud to let your editor start
editing in the case of a very fast turnaround project for example.
With all that said,
here's a great tip,
I decided to dedicate a spare work phone for all my film projects, whether for filmmaking apps, shooting or for uploading clips to the cloud.
All I need is to set up a reliable and affordable unlimited data plan with a number that nobody knows,
so no one would interrupt my shoots with text or calls,
which happens quite often on set when using my personal phone,
and that's why I'm found and partnered up with Mint Mobile to bring you a perfect carrier solution for this film maker scenario.
You might already know Mint Mobile if you've seen the funny ads from Ryan Reynolds,
who is also an owner and funny enough is a film maker too.
So Mint Mobile offers for a limited time data plans for as low as $15 a month and you don't have to sacrifice any coverage,
speed or data.
That's because they're users.
T-Mobile's network.
The unlimited plan is the one that makes more sense for filmmakers,
of course,
especially if you're planning to upload to the cloud,
for example, and with a limited time offer of 50% discount, it's the same price as all other plans anyway.
So it's a no-brainer.
If you shine up for three months, you won't only be getting a great deal, but you'd also be greatly helping the channel.
So thank you in advance!
You can simply scan the QR code here, or click the link in the description for a super easy setup.
Thanks to their digital ECIM cards, you can sign up and activate immediately right on your phone.
Again, it makes your life easier on set, and it will greatly help the channel.
Moving on to the honourable mentions.
These are the filmmaker friendly features that we already had in recent iPhones that slowly paved the way to where we are now.
First, they mentioned the low-light performance has been improved by two folds on the main
24mm lens, and what they called a better low-light mode for the ultra-wide lenses.
well.
Second is stabilization.
We already had gyro stabilization and the action mode from before, which worked really well.
But now with the new 120mm lens,
they added a much needed 3-axis sensor shift stabilization,
and they also claimed it to perform 10,000 micro adjustments per second, which is double what they had with the iPhone 14.
This made me think,
how many adjustments do our stabilized lenses perform per second, just to have a frame of reference and know how to react to this number.
These are all things that I need to test in all cases.
from before, which introduced depth of field and videos so you can rack focus between your subjects.
It's not perfect around the edges still, just because it's a computational process rather than optical as I explained before.
They didn't say anything about it during this keynote,
but it's worth mentioning it became the standard in all photos where you can adjust your focus and post.
Carrying on from the iPhone 14 you can record in true 24p, the cinema frame rate standard all true cinema cameras use.
Something self-proclaimed cinema cameras like the Sony FX3 didn't have for a very long time.
I still haven't received my iPhone order but I'm really looking forward to digging a lot
deeper and stress testing all those features to see how they compare in performance to the most popular cinema.
cinema cameras we use in a professional setting so stay tuned for that in
the meantime let me know in the comments which feature are you most excited about
hope you like this episode thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time
