Edit: because it apparently needs explaining: "that rig is so big yet comes with so many limitations that it's foolish to not just use any normal camera body"
Yes other rigs might make more sense, but that’s not the point. The point is that they’re putting their money where their mouth is, and proving that it’s capable enough.
I see apple's point being that an iPhone can compete with standalone camera bodies of today if you put a good lens on them. Something that was not true 10 years ago for phones, and only slightly older than that for any camera.
- Dynamic range - Colour science - Video output (as in, what codec is actually worked on in the editing room)
The idea that even a higher-end phone can put out ~12 stops of dynamic range while outputting ProRes with a log colour profile is notable, no matter how much work a Panavision lens is doing. It makes editing with industry-standard tools and getting a product comparable to what you'd get with dedicated photo/video equipment easier.
Factually, it is shot on an iPhone. This is no more a lie than when a film says it’s shot on an Arri or if a Sony commercial says it’s shot on an FX3.
None of the results are possible without the rest of the equation.
It’s a professional shoot. End of story. It’s factual that it’s shot on an iPhone. If you replaced it with a full frame body, you’d still not achieve this.
If your entire point is that a customer might buy the device and think they can achieve the same results, then why does that not extend to anything else?
That's so disingenuous. The iPhone has a lens, and no one expects to put another lens on it. In fact, I'd wager a large amount that >99.9% of consumers have never even considered that it's possible. Whereas 100% of FX3 customers expect to use a lens.
I could probably make a pretty sweet setup to record a Netflix movie in awesome quality on my iPhone camera and there would be the perfect depth-of-field that comes with the professional gear that Netflix uses. And it would be factually shot on an iPhone.
When you buy an iPhone for photography and video, you're buying the sensor, lenses, shutter, focusing system, and onboard image processing in a single package. Changing that package by using an aerial image from a different lens is a material change in the system because whole chunks of the iPhone image system are no longer doing the work.
Theres been a ton of press about this, because, yeah, it is hella rare. And yeah usually there's some dude pulling focus on a $20k+ monitor (the brightness these things need to work in even shaded daylight is absurd).
I think it's worth assessing what impacts the look and feel versus what is for production sake; there's a lot of ways to spend more but more to help production than to affect look. A talented camera operator probably could hold focus themselves on many scenes without the focus operator (especially with modern autofocus) and get similar output. But if you're making a $100m+ movie, heck yeah you rent gear & hire the focus puller, way less risk (although the autofocus probably is more precise & reliable in many ways now!), way less need to make sure you pick the right expert operator. Ditto for a lot of this stuff; just rent the most badass stabilizers and camera mounts, for that little extra edge of stability. Having good/expensive synced time-codes, having better position tracking; they speed production, not necessarily super improve it's output.
It's pretty awesome seeing the Netflix approved pipelines keep getting more in reach. There's really good options now. Even a $1000 lens can be super impressive. There's really good budget cine lens sets now. But yeah the rest of production stuff is never cheap. Lighting is the key thing that keeps coming to mind for me, where light budget can easily get to camera budget and then some, and boy does that make a huge difference; improve the output of the scene that your camera is set to input.
Assessing by weight seems like a pretty obvious-ish way to assess.
We could also do by volume? That would probably be even worse on iPhone's claim; I feel like phones are pretty dense? Lenses certainly can be, filled with heavy glass, but now a days there's also a big drive to make lenses lighter; reviews these days often have people surprised how relatively lightweight even a sizable lens is. It'd be fun to have total volume as a standard consumer spec item, so we could calculate average density.
Regardless of what you are thinking, the "not a full frame sensor" in the phone is kind of the point. As well as all of the "AI" processing done to the photons captured by whatever piece of glass is in front of it. It's this processing that makes the phone they are showcasing different than an "modern FF body" that you are suggesting.
You've clearly missed the point
The iPhone in this use case has multiple limitations that make no sense in the use case where it is a glorified sensor.
You can't swap the memory out, the memory is limited to begin with, you can't use attachments like monitors and other gear, etc.
If you're going to end up renting a huge professional rig to attach a sensor to it to get the same results as a typical FF or even APS-C camera, you've lost the message.
In other words, "that rig is so big yet comes with so many limitations that it's foolish to not just use any normal camera body"
Today, what is a normal camera body? BlackMagic's cinema cameras are not much larger than an iPhone Pro Max Ultra+ model. I have seen the BMD 16mm format camera with giant Angénieux lenses attached to them. The camera is barely noticeable. Not really sure what you're point about the camera size is, and why you're so focused on it. The fact that a small device like a phone can create the clean log ProRes file is the point.
iPhone has a lot of things that other bodies won't have. A chip powerful enough to do on-device editing, a top-tier calibrated OLED screen with 1600 nits HDR brightness, an extensive suite of apps, on-board AI, etc etc.
I think it's really cool to see these devices become even more capable.
For that matter, does Apple still not offer a way to get regular RAW files from your phone, or are we still stuck in proprietary candyland?
https://petapixel.com/2020/12/21/understanding-apple-proraw/
- can afford the rig showcased here
- use an iphone to shoot professional videos
- edit their videos in a mobile device
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