The iPhone 15 Pro has big video camera upgrades, but only for pro shooters

Date:
Thu, 14 Sep 2023 11:35:32 +0000

Description:
The iPhone 15 Pro has shown off its powerful video upgrades in Olivia Rodrigo's new music video. But how many people will use them?

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Apple has repeated its traditional shot on iPhone trick by using the iPhone
15 Pro to shoot the whole of Olivia Rodrigos new music video (below). And the three big upgrades behind that video's professional sheen show that Apple's flagship phones are becoming genuinely 'Pro' video cameras if you know how
to use them.

Beyond the headline arrival of a 5x optical zoom, the iPhone 15 Pro Max 's main camera upgrades were aimed at advanced video shooters. One of those is the ability to shoot video in Apples new Log (short for logarithmic) color profile as shown by Olivia Rodrigo's new video, which was shot in a new Pro Res 4K Log format. (Image credit: Apple)

Like the best video cameras , Log lets you shoot flat footage a bit like
film negatives which preserves a wide dynamic range and gives you much more color-grading flexibility in post-production apps like Final Cut Pro.

The idea of shooting in a Log profile on iPhones isnt brand new its been (kind of) possible using apps like Filmic Pro. But these apps havent offered true Log profiles, as theyve effectively desaturated an image thats already been compressed by your iPhone. Apples new Log profile for the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max promises to instead draw all of that information directly from the sensor.

This helps explain the professional look of Olivia Rodrigos new get him back! music video , which lacks the noticeable hallmarks of a typical iPhone video. While Apples video processing is pretty good for a phone, it often looks crunchy or oversharpened compared to dedicated video cameras at least.

Of course, pro editors have also worked their magic on that final music video (a disclaimer states additional hardware and software used, edited on a Mac). But iPhone 15 Pro owners at least know theyll get a much more malleable, higher-quality image from their phone as long as they know how to edit it.

The second big upgrade that lets filmmakers shoot for longer periods, rather than just short clips, is the arrival of that USB-3 port. While the iPhone 15 is left stranded on ancient USB 2.0 speeds , the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max
can now transfer files to a Mac or directly to external storage at a speedy
10 gigabits per second. On the right-hand side of this clip from Apple's behind-the-scenes of Olivia Rodrigo's video you can see it recording directly to an external SSD. (Image credit: Apple)

You can see this in action in the behind-the-scenes montage of Olivia
Rodrigos music video (above), where an external drive is plugged directly
into the iPhone 15 Pro. Alongside the arrival of Log shooting, that really does unlock Apples new flagships as video tools that are worthy of their Pro name.

Related to this is the arrival of that third video boost on the new Pro series; improved ProRes recording. Apple ProRes , an industry standard video format commonly used in the best video editing apps , had already arrived in the iPhone 13 Pro two years ago. But the files are massive and it was a pain to actually get them off your iPhone and into an editor.

On Apples new flagships, you can now not only record the video straight to an external SSD drive, but also in 4K/60p ProRes with HDR (the previous limit
was 4K/30p). Thats again impressive for a smartphone, as is the iPhone 15
Pros new support for ACES (or the Academy Color Encoding System), a video standard developed by the group behind the Oscars. A more practical Pro video camera (Image credit: Apple)

These new features clearly arent aimed at point and shoot creators and the behind-the-scenes clips of Olivia Rodrigos music video show that its definitely helpful to have professional cages, lights, computer-controlled rigs and tripods (not to mention elite video editing skills) to get the kind of final result you can see above.

But if you do want to use an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max as either a filmmaking sidekick or part of a production alongside mirrorless or video cameras,
theyre now far more practical tools for those scenarios. And it seems Apple
is now focusing on these features, rather than amateur-friendly ones like Cinematic Mode (a computational trick that again wasn't mentioned during the iPhone 15 launch). (Image credit: Apple)

The ability to shoot in a proper Log profile means color-matching an iPhones footage with dedicated cameras should now be much easier. Direct recording to an external SSD will (battery permitting) also let filmmakers quickly offload footage without having to worry about filling up internal storage or spending hours wireless transferring video files.

Of course, the iPhone 15 Pros actual video quality will still lag behind professional video cameras. After all, it cant beat the physics of tiny sensors and lenses. But as Olivia Rodrigos new video shows, it will be able
to hold its own on the big screen and more closely match the color of proper' cameras and thats another pretty impressive step forward for a phone. You might also like Hands on: iPhone 15 Pro Max review a subtle shift into the future 7 top new iPhone 15 features Thunderbolt 5 reveal makes Apples archaic iPhone 15 USB-C choice even more insulting



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/phones/iphone/the-iphone-15-pro-has-big-video-camera -upgrades-but-only-for-pro-shooters


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