What does and doesn't matter about Apple shooting their October event on iPhone

I think there are 2 parts to this:

One is "iPhone camera sensors are competitive with commercial offerings in some cases". I think this is what Apple was trying to go for with the entire thing including the behind the scenes.

The other is "If you (edit:just) have an iPhone you too can make such a video". Which is what anyone who isn't affiliated with the film industry (aka 99% of the population) might think, especially if they didn't see the behind the scenes.

"Shot on iPhone" hence has 2 perspectives.

The other is "If you have an iPhone you too can make such a video". Which is what anyone who isn't affiliated with the film industry (aka 99% of the population) might think, especially if they didn't see the behind the scenes.

I honestly don't think it's a reasonable takeaway for anyone who is at all interested in creating highly produced video with their iPhone. Even if you're an absolute beginner, it's abundantly clear that these Apple videos are serious productions.

It's not significantly different than hearing that an accomplished journalist wrote a column on their iPad, or a successful entrepreneur manages their schedule with their iPhone calendar, or a famous musician uses GarageBand for songwriting (or even full production).

The point in all of these examples is never that you can accomplish these things with an iPhone anddon'tneed talent, creativity, years of practice, other gear, etc. The only point is that the iPhone is not a significant limiting factor on the quality of results you can achieve.

Yep. As any photographer or videographer will tell you, it's not the camera that makes the difference, it's the person operating it. Do they understand the importance of lighting? Can they get around the technical limitations of the device?

We all know that Apple demos take place under the most regimented of conditions. Jobs' iPhone demo had full reception bars hard-coded into it. I imagine the iPhone cameras were used in similarly generous conditions.

I think beyond “it’s not the camera that makes the difference” we need to have a discussion about lighting.

A shitty camera and shitty lens in fantastic lighting will give good results. The best camera with the best lens in awful lighting will give bad results.

Kind of like microphones, that way. Like how the Apple video was shot on an iPhone (except it had great lighting and a ton of production work), there are hit songs with parts recorded on iPhone. They aren’t advertised like that. But it happens. The advantage of the iPhone is that it’s already in your pocket, and for something as intimate as singing, that proves to be a major, major advantage. Your producer may try to get you to recreate that beautiful performance in the studio, but audio quality doesn’t matter as much when you compare the recording of a good performance to the recording of a much better performance.

The amount a good camera can tolerate bad lighting has significantly improved over time, as has the minimum quality of an average camera.

Not that long ago you needed a great camera and great lighting to get a great result, now there’s a lot more flexibility available. Decent camera + great lighting or decent lighting + great camera both work well enough for the general public not to notice anything wrong.

I think people are using "lighting" two different ways in this conversation.

Assuming there are decent lightlevelsto begin with, "lighting" means the play of light and shadow that makes your subject pop, that makes their face look like it has depth, then generally makes everything look attractive. This has nothing to do with your camera, and cameras have not gotten better at this, because cameras are irrelevant to it. When TV shows are lit welltoday, this is the lighting that's usually being talked about.

The other thing "lighting" means is "light that isn't too low". This was harsh studio lighting in the 1920's for example, and why even in the 1960's studio scenes couldn't be "naturally" lit -- and which was a major focus of lighting TV shows well in the 1960's, for example. But which we don't worry about anymore -- TV shows are generally shot at "real life" brightness levels today.

The larger point is thattoday, when we say that it's the lighting that matters for a shot more than the camera, we're usually referring to the first type I'm describing -- theartisticlighting. Cameras havenotgotten any "better" at that. What has happened is that they've enabled shots atlowlighting that weren't possible before, but that's only relevant in low-light conditions -- and youstillneed to distinguish between good/bad artistic lighting even when the light is low.

Light levels and “artistic Lighting” are linked through a camera’s dynamic range.

Harsh studio lighting wasn’t just about the total amount of light it was also attempting to compensate for limited dynamic ranges. Getting everything evenly lit was an exacting process which has simply become less demanding.

The artistic side of lighting is just as complex and relevant as it ever was. However, as sensors get closer to human capabilities setting things up gets closer to what you see is what you get, which is extremely helpful. There is still a disconnect which must be accounted for to get the best results, and plenty of new options to play with. But fewer gotchas mean decent lighting is generally fine.

I think what probably confuses people is that since everything was so dark they think that "wow the iPhone handles low light really well", but actually that only has to do with exposure. If you look at the behind the scenes shots they still had massive LED panels lighting the scenes.

A lot depends on how you're viewing the content too. Lots of stuff that looks good on a tiny phone screen looks like trash on a monitor.

And forget about printing, not that anyone other than dedicated photographers do that these days.

Lighting is also over-emphasised, in my opinion. The unfortunate truth is that it'severything. Production design and talent are HUGELY important. If you have an amazing art department, costume design and beautiful people your camera and lighting team can be on autopilot and it will still look pretty great.

Grip is also huge for high production value camera movement — and you'll see on the BTS video Apple absolutely don't skimp here. Pretty funny putting a $1000 phone on a $200,000 (at least! I'm not a grip guy, but that's the region) crane.

I think the point here is not the effort it takes to make good lighting - but the cost. A normal person will not have 10x2000w ARRI panels. But they will look at this production and think that they will get the same result because hey it was shot on an iPhone.

Absolutely. I suppose what I was commenting on was a pattern I’ve observed that goes something like:

1. My videos don’t look good, it must be because I don’t have a good camera/lens 2. I have a good camera lens, but my videos still don’t look good, it must be because I don’t have good lights

And a lot of people just stop there because lighting is a lot more work and a lot less fun (for most people) than buying expensive cameras, but for those that do pursue lighting, there’s a third stage:

3. I’ve got a good camera, good lights AND I know how to use them AND STILL my video looks a bit underwhelming

That’s when you realise location, art, talent etc are massively important too.

Ie you could have a truck full of Arri lights and if you have bad production design and inappropriate talent it will still look bad.

True true :)

Your producer may try to get you to recreate that beautiful performance in the studio, but audio quality doesn’t matter as much when you compare the recording of a good performance to the recording of a much better performance.

Nobody is going to keep your iphone recorded song in their playlist.

Eheh, you have no idea what I keep in my playlists.

I've seen bands perform where the harmonica guy sounded like a feedback loop, the guitarists didn't agree if they had to play major or major chords and people still clapped.

However when you're not drinking and dancing you care more for the actual quality of what you're hearing.

Is a laptop mic close enough?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathconsciousness#Composition...

it's not the camera that makes the difference, it's the person operating it

Mostly yes, but the phone cameras are easier to operate (in a way to get really nice photos) than more traditional cameras. My mom had this exact remark about her iPhone (and her ability to take nice photos) on a recent vacation.

I hate this type of argument; it is very often nonsense. Sure, someone is not good because of its tools, but those enable him to be good it is not an either/or relation. A lot of the time, some skills are indissociable from the necessary tooling, and it does not matter how good you are if you do not get the tool to enable it.

I had this argument with a friend about darts. I recently started playing with him and he has a lot more experience than I do, thus he is quite a bit better than me no matter what darts we use. But after we broke some darts, I decided to look at what the pro uses and buy something similar. He said the same thing about skills not requiring a particular dart. Yet since we have had the new darts, we are both more consistent in our shots and hit the targets way more often, the consistency is extremely obvious considering how grouped the darts land compared to cheaper one. I did not become magically better than he is, he still wins more often than I do. However, with those darts I improved a lot more than he did and if the end goal is proficiency, it seems logical to use as close the "end game" tooling as is reasonable for training.

Sometimes people feel like others are trying to minimize their achievements, but this is not about that at all. The tools are a major part of the road to expertise and anyone pretending otherwise is lying and I would be very suspicious. It reads like: "yeah I achieved my skill with this high level, performant tool, but just use this much worse one, it will be fine." I feel like it is disingenuous and most of the time, people trying to prevent new competitions in their fields.

And this is exactly why Apple's marketing is extremely deceptive at best. Sure, if you are an accomplished videographer and understand all the limitations coming from working with such a tool, you will work around/with those limitations, because you already know. But if you are starting out or still an amateur the iPhone is a poor choice as it will make your work harder than it would be with a more specialized camera (that can be had for cheaper than a brand-new iPhone, that most people do not need...).

This is categorically not true. If it were true professional photographers wouldn't waste six figures on high-end equipment.

Not only there are visible differences - smoothness, sharpness, colour balance, the overalllook- but some effects and looks are impossible without expensive tools. Especially in difficult light, or challenging shooting situations.

And then there's the workflow.

The difference is more that amateurs and prosumers never reach the point where the equipment limits their talent. Top professionals reach that point fairly quickly because they just can't do some of the things they want to do.

The iPhone is no different. It's a decent video camera and may be starting to edge against some of the mirrorless/SLR prosumer cams. But it doesn't have features that are standard on ARRI and RED.

You can makesomevideos with it, and if you have talent they'll be good. But you can't makeall currently possiblevideos with it.

No-compromise professionals are going to understand the difference.

"musician uses GarageBand for songwriting (or even full production

Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles' masterpiece, one of the most highly-regarded and influential albums of all time) was recorded on an analog 4-track.

An extremely high quality analog 4 track. Not to be confused with (not even in the same universe as) the cheap 1980s or 90s tascam 4-track cassette tape recorder that people are much more likely to have encountered.

Not really if you compare it the 1969's Abbey road, which sounds quite a bit better. American productions were sounding much better though the mid to late 60s as well.

Abbey Road sounds clearer because it was the first Beatles to be produced with a transistorized mixer. The mixer used in Sgt. Pepper had vacuum tubes.

It's less "tinny" sounding than the earlier albums. Interesting because tubes are the alleged choice for a warmer sound today. So there must be additional factors in the new equipment.

By now solid state equipment can do everything tubes do, only better. I think only nostalgia and audiophile stupidity remain as reasons for tube equipment to continue existing. Certainly there is no reason to build new tube gear.

Admittedly cheap solid state gear sounds worse than high quality tube gear but that has way more to do with good design and quality components than the tubes themselves.

Any idea how much the device cost at the time?

That device is just the recording medium used for those recordings, don't forget the £100k in microphones and signal routing, plus the £1M in the building itself.

Not sure about at the time, but I have had the opportunity to record onto one of the tape machines they used (they had multiple) and the studio had paid around £30,000 for it.

At the time it was recorded, that was cutting edge tech, wasn't it?

Yes, in that everything was being recorded on analog tape in that era because it was the best quality recording format available.

The album is a little unusual in that by 1967 tape recorders with larger channel counts were becoming more common, allowing separate recording of most of the original channels. But linear editing of audio was very difficult, recording engineers still did the mix as live, so there were recording studios that hadn't seen a reason to make the upgrade or were attached to older equipment that they were very familiar with. Especially with analog equipment prominent recording engineers were often averse to new equipment since they would learn how to get the best results out of their particulat setup - and things like frequency response could vary noticeably from one model to another.

2 track recording isstilla rare & deluxe feature inmostconsumer gear!

Even in professional gear, it's usually a ridiculous jump in price - often double - to much fancier hardware to get more channels.

It makes sense as few people do need it, but I do wish there were more assorted consumer electronics that would throw in more channel recording just because. Rather than as an upsell to way more expensive gear.

... and no amount of money or technology can make "Now and Then" a good song.

I honestly don't think it's a reasonable takeaway for anyone who is at all interested in creating highly produced video with their iPhone. Even if you're an absolute beginner, it's abundantly clear that these Apple videos are serious productions.

I agree that that's how it is in reality, but that's not something many people really know or understand. Apple also likes to sell their products as "see how good our x product is that we used in-house" which likely further may make some people think an iPhone is enough to make a high quality video.

(I think the funny thing is that even without extra hardware an iPhone can shoot very good/near professional quality video but this debate is only about Apple using very fancy hardware. I also made a small edit to my comment.)

Yes, but did you make the edit with an iphone?

The behind the scenes video had lavish scenes of the editor working on the footage shot on iPhone ... with Adobe Premiere.

Lots of shots of Davinci Resolve, didn't spot any Premier at a quick glance? But it's not unusual for both to be used on the same production

Further, Resolve is available on iPad now, and Black Magic have a film app on iPhone (that I think was shown in the BTS). So technically they could've edited on iOS if necessary.

On the photo side, Lightroom on iOS is pretty decent.

I honestly don't think it's a reasonable takeaway for anyone who is at all interested in creating highly produced video with their iPhone.

That isn't who this marketing is aimed at though. Apple are acutely aware that 'camera quality' is a key selling point for consumers. People want to point their phone at something and take a good looking photo. That isn't 'people interested in creating highly produced video'; it's people who want their selfies to look nice. By showing a professionally shot production where the camera is an iPhone and everything else is pro video production Apple make people believe their non-pro photos will be much higher quality than other people's photos.

The fact Apple released a behind the scenes video should tell you that they've thought about a scenario where someone makes a video with an iPhone to show it's not as good as Apple's marketing demonstrates. The behind the scenes video is Apple covering their ass because they know as well as we do that buying an iPhone isn't going to get you pro video quality footage.

If anything Apple's marketing makes me think that selfies on a Google or Samsung phone are probably better than an iPhone just because Google and Samsung don't seem to need to tell me "you can make this video with our phone! (but wait, not like that..)"

By showing a professionally shot production where the camera is an iPhone and everything else is pro video production Apple make people believe their non-pro photos will be much higher quality than other people's photos.

Whichistrue. The pictures from my phone are just as good as those taken with my semi-professional DSLR. The phone loses in some specific situations (typically low-light, small depth of field, and long-range) because it does not have the same glass and the sensor is smaller, but that’s about it.

I guarantee you that if you were to give a professional medium format camera to random people on the street, they would take much worse pictures than with their phones (assuming somewhat high-end devices).

Well, Samsung did hire Ridley Scott to make a short movie using S23 Ultra.

The only point is that the iPhone is not a significant limiting factor on the quality of results you can achieve.

Which is a big deal.

Right, and I thought the line in the article:

[before this] Apple was effectively saying “pro enough for you, but not for us.”

summed that up nicely

I have worked in some moderate level video production and the iPhone is potentially a game changer. It significantly reduces the kit you need to produce a professional looking video.

This is an extreme use case, but what the iPhone really has the potential to replace are all of the videos being shot on DSLRs and Mirrorless cameras. It is getting closer and closer to these cameras and is significantly easier to use.

If you have an iPhone you too can make such a video

You can though.

What it showed was that the real limitation to making high quality content is skill and knowledge. You can get away with just your iPhone, iPad and cheap lighting from AliExpress for 99% of the shots.

Having expensive equipment simply allows you to deliver that quality fast and at a consistent level. Which is what commercial clients demand.

Professional photography and videography gear hasalwaysonly been about that though. It broadens the range of shots you can get and/or the efficiency of the process (and usually puts up with more abuse).

It helps, sometimes. There are plenty of shooters running around with elite gear and getting slightly above average images of the classic (read: cliche) sunset, etc.

Scarcity is the spark that ignites creativity.

Put another way, look how many shite films Hollywood makes, and they have top gear.

Great gear will never save a lack of creativity, lack of vision, etc.

Other than robustness, 'pro' gear mostly expands the range of parameters you can push and still get a decent shot. It's not going to give you an eye.

Elsewhere in thread it's correctly noted that in a lot of cases lighting is more important that cameras anyway. But similarly, you have to know how to set up - same applies though, the gear can't do the setup for you.

look how many shite films Hollywood makes, and they have top gear.

You can't even judge the output of the gear by what Hollywood puts out. Maybe the gear does make a huge difference. For all we know every shot out of the camera is breathtaking, but it doesn't matter if by the time it gets to the screen they've barfed orange and teal all over it, darkened it to the hide bad CGI, and edited it to assault the viewer with a muddy blur of special effects and fast cutting.

Not completely. You could always make certain types of excellent creative works with cheap gear, but cheap gear would limit you to more lo-fi aesthetics. It also requires more careful attention to everything else from lighting to acoustics to work around deficiencies of the gear.

For example, cheaper camera gear would have worse low light sensitivity, meaning you’re either getting grainy images or you need extra lighting. As cameras improved, fewer compromises need to be made and you can get the result you want.

With infinite creativity and luck you can always get something get if you try long enough, but great gear really does open the door to more options and opportunities to catch a good shot.

Another good example is sports photography, where fast imaging is mandatory for capturing movement shots. With slower cameras your only option would be to catch slower, more stationary moments.

“Broadens the range of shots”

We aren’t disagreeing. But it’s mostly at the fringe where you can’t do anything at all with meh gear.

I’m not even remotely close to being a professional photographer or videographer, but I’ve used camera phones (including old iPhones) with amazingly poor performance in anything but the brightest light. Careful attention to lighting might have involved lighting scenes painfully brightly, which causes its own problems.

Modern phone cameras seem to perform at least as well as I remember early fancy digital cameras performing, and they really are good enough for a lot of purposes. (But they still can’t do a good job of blurring the background. I keep expecting ML advances to improve this, but even latest-generation iPhones produce pretty bad results IMO in portrait mode.)

The professional gear can also be too good. I remember when the first Hobbit film came out the picture was so crystal clear it was distracting - like a very high end BBC drama.

That wasn't the issue. The Hobbit was shot at 48 FPS in true 3-D. While it might have seemed "too clear," it was a truly remarkable movie experience that set a new standard of quality that we should get used to. It was higher-quality motion.

I hate the fake interpolated frame rates on recent TVs. But if we started legitimately shooting at 48 FPS, I think we'd get over the "video"-ness of it.

It can. But sometimes the important thing is not the gear, but rather being in the right place and having the skill to frame a good composition or get good footage.

Yeah like while getting a good shot is obviously a skill, there are shots of, for example, wildlife, that I fully can't capture because it's just too far away and I don't have a zoom lens.

Gear matters for things like that.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/2023/10/behind-the-sce...

iPhone, knowledge, skill, another half million in fancy equipment, and you are good to go!

Seriously though, there was an astounding amount of cool gear in the behind the scenes. If it was just a guy shooting handheld iPhone using his skill and knowledge, that's one thing. It seems to be a different value proposition to take all the equipment, and crew, from a multi million dollar production company, and just swap the camera for an iPhone. It is extremely impressive quality demonstration, but not clearly accessible to the typical iPhone purchaser.

There is an astounding amount of cool gear. None of it is mandatory.

You will be surprised what a DJI gimbal, duct tape and house hold objects could accomplish.

The limiting factor is now very much creativity and passion.

Sure, a company milking its customer with a Pro laptop starting with 8GB of RAM to save at best 20$ per unit is willing to pay up to a million dollar of gear "just because". No no no, totally unnecessary. Apple apologists should really listen to themselves, like seriously.

I was just on a poorly planned shoot where the iPhone saved us. The camera we used was too big and heavy to actually get the camera movements we had planned. We had just gotten a new DJI phone gimbal to test and we ended up using it with the iPhone. This was on a green screen stage so we didn’t want character from the lens or a shallow depth of field. All the shots were within the focal range of the phone too. I’m guessing about 70% of the final shots were shot on the phone. And because it’s LOG and ProRes, the footage fits right into the pipeline. Now even though we shot on a phone, we didn’t turn off the lights or send the actors home so maybe that’s cheating…

My takeaway from the article was that most of that gear either wasn't necessary or was only necessary because of Apple's specific self-imposed production requirements. And also due to the fact that they just hired a production team like they always do for these things, but this time they had them slap the iphone into the usual equipment in place of their regular camera.

This is why this whole thing felt like a loss for Apple. They're 100% right, it was shot on an iPhone, but they also had 99% of the population believing something which seemed really cool, and then turned out to "appear" misleading.

Maybe this whole stunt was aimed at the 1%, and if so good for them, they succeeded. From a branding and PR perspective, I wouldn't be happy if that was how my company was perceived to the general public.

There have been people shooting terrific pictures and great movies on phones for years now. Nobody is under the illusion that your holiday pictures will be great as well just because you used the same camera phone as a famous hip videographer.

It does not appear misleading unless you really want it to.

Nobody is under the illusion that your holiday pictures will be great as well just because you used the same camera phone as a famous hip videographer.

Unfortunately (fortunately?) that kind of marketing does work though. Going slightly tangential but collaborations with Leica/Zeiss etc often are major marketing points in phone sales.

My vague understanding is those are often real, ie Leica/Zeiss actually do collaborate on lenses, coatings and camera tuning.

And while they do say the camera isn't the most important thing for a photo, one reason for that is the lens is more important :)

It’s broader than that, but simpler: it’s just what you can get out of a platform VS what you can get out of a platformunder controlled conditions.

It is no different than Intel or AMD benchmarking their chips, car companies and their mpg, electric cars and their ranges, etc.

This is much ado about nothing. It’s just journalistic framing that has caused this discussion.

Ifthis is PR, which it’s likely not, it’sbrilliant.

I thought that everything apple does is PR (well mostly, everything else is a secret)

I agree on both points.

From a still photos perspective, unless you're using very wide or very long lenses, and/or otherwise have relatively specific requirements that require burst shooting/a viewfinder/etc. phones can handle a lot. No-brainer ISO range is good enough for most things these days--and would have been unthinkable in the film era.

I increasingly think about whether Ireallyneed anything other than my phone traveling even given I have a couple of good cameras and a lot of glass. I'll still bring (mostly my mirrorless) camera if I'm doing a relatively photogenic "exotic" trip but often I don't.

Same. I'll often use my iPhone for general shots and leave a zoom on my z5 for other shots.

When I was a kid just having a camera at all was a big deal. Now, every person has a great camera in their pocket almost 100% of the time. It's pretty amazing to be honest.

The other is "If you (edit: just) have an iPhone you too can make such a video". Which is what anyone who isn't affiliated with the film industry (aka 99% of the population) might think

no, 99% of the population doesn't watch iphone launch events, and doesn't care whether it was shot on iPhone or not. they have literally no opinion about this. of the 1% who cares that it was shot on iPhone, i'd guess roughly 95% understand that a professional photo shoot requires more than a camera, and the 5% who didn't saw the behind the scenes video. nobody was mislead into thinking that Tim Cook's assistant just pulled their phone out of their pocket and shot the launch video.

the whole discussion around this video being shot on iPhone seems to have imagined a huge class of people who both care about this, and are dumb. presumably for the sole purpose of feeling smug about having the special insight of knowing the things communicated by the behind the scenes video that apple published and heavily promoted. those people you're imagining might have been misled by this do not exist.

"Shot on iPhone" hence has 2 perspectives.

Apple's perspective is that they want to sell a lot of iPhones. They don't care what 1% who have access to professional gear do. There are a huge number of young people who can afford iPhones and can't afford much additional gear, and want to be "creators". They'll do all the learning and work they have to do.

This will sell more iPhones, whether it makes better content or not (it will because more people trying, but that's not Apple's business)

"If you just have an iPhone you too can make such a video"

I do not think that most people before thought that if they got a professional camera they could just start shooting professional movies.

I think a better way to express this--that captures both perspectives--is that, if you have an iPhone, it's not your camera that's holding you back.

Not yet getting professional results? It's your skill level, it's your lights, it's your other gear, it's your talent, it's your script, etc. Not your camera.

I'm almost certain that everyone has this story entirely backwards because people are used to thinking in a linear sequence of this happened, then that happened. Apple famously works backward from that process.

Reading the story behind the story, I think what happened is that several years ago, Apple execs were looking at a range of plausible technologies that were becoming feasible and were trying to find some kind of coherence among them through the story they wanted to tell. The story that was really speaking to them, as Gruber identified [1], was that finally the professional and consumer market were about to merge in really interesting ways.

I think what happened was at that point in time, they decided that the iPhone 15 Pro was going to be used to film the keynote for the iPhone 15 Pro and that this was the target given to all teams to give them clarity and focus to deliver a coherent end product.

Even tiny things like, why did they delay the introduction of USB-C for so long? Start making sense under this framework. If you're not used to this mode of thinking, a lot of the things I'm saying can sound like a stretch but if you adopt the framework, a lot of tiny things they mention suddenly make sense.

People are focusing on the specific output which is a single video but the power comes not from the output but from understanding the process that resulted in that output. Apple knows that other companies will always struggle to reproduce their exact process which is the core source of a durable sustaining advantage.

[1]https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/10/31/downplaying-sho...

So under this framework, whydidthey delay the introduction of USB-C for so long?

Prior launches had more important priorities to include so it was easy for teams to push this feature back knowing that the only mandatory launch date for it to hit was the iPhone 15 Pro launch.

Having the clarity over what's important allows teams to perform rather than endlessly debate over tradeoffs.

I question the complexity of the switch from lightning to USB-C, do you have any resources or knowledge to help clarify that part for me?

It still feels like a shaky premise to me because had USB-C not been mandated, they'd never have prioritized it. I think they waited until the last minute simply because they could.

The iPhone 15 doesn't have 3.0 USB-C because the silicon was only introduced in the A17. Hardware revs are set in stone many moons before so being able to push USB3 support a generation later allows engineers to focus on other tasks.

Again, all speculation but the point is how a defined end point allowed teams to receive clarity over tradeoffs and move quickly. It's very typical of how Apple works (which you can see in Vision 1.0 where certain things were wildly overspecified and other were wildly under for that reason). The exact details may be wrong but the logic of how they got to this placefeelsright.

Because they promised thr connector wouldn't change again quickly when they introduced lighting.

And consequently broke that promise by not using Lightning on Mac?

Mac never had a 30-pin adapter, so lightning makes no sense. Mac also had Thunderbolt 2 with the miniDP port, and switched to Thunderbolt 3 with a USB-C port.

Because they make money off every Lightning accessory sold.

Another variation of this approach is the Amazon Press release method, where internal product pitches start with what the press release would look like, and they walk through the step backwards to see what is needed to make that happen.

PS: A summary of the methodhttps://www.productplan.com/glossary/working-backward-amazon...

they decided that the iPhone 15 Pro was going to be used to film the keynote for the iPhone 15 Pro

And they didn’t do that: as far as we know, the keynote for the iPhone 15 Pro was not shot with iPhone 15 Pro.

It doesn't seem that complicated. It's as simple as "The camera is pretty good now, what if we marketed its quality by shooting our event with it and hyping it up that way?"

Likewise USB-C: "We can make more money if we have a special proprietary charger". It's never that complicated really, it's all in execution.

Really interesting blog post!

It seems like iPhones really can do serious filmmaking (with the help of the equipment mentioned in the blog post). I'm curious how this translates to photography.

How much would you need to spend on a dedicated camera to shoot better photos than an iPhone can?

As a pro photographer, I can say that an iPhone would be useless for 95% of my work. Even a used $500 camera would be more suitable....

Can you please elaborate? What is it that a used $500 cameracando which an iPhonecannot? This is a genuine question, not a challenge.

- Truly controllable depth of field without software artifacts

- Better IQ

- Use with flash

- A variety of focal lengths that the iPhone doesn't have for more flattering perspective (200mm and up)

For me, I have a telescope, and I like taking photos of distant galaxies and the such. The difference in quality between a camera phone and a proper (even APS-C format) DSLR or mirrorless camera is absolutely massive. Probably mostly for two reasons - firstly the ability to take the lens off, and secondly because the larger sensor allows collecting more light.

Wedding photography costs $600 to $1000 over here, the equipment is typically 4 to 8 years old and costs about $1500 (body + 24-70mm lens + flashes, MPB.com prices).

Where is over here? I’ve done a few weddings back in the day, the lenses I’d use (24-70 f/2.8 and 70-200 f/2.8) each cost over $2000 new in today’s US dollars… Then you have backup lenses, backup SLRs, etc. (but I’d usually borrow gear (still pro gear) as backup from people I knew which made things a bit cheaper, and I’d lend stuff to them when they needed)

It depends on what kind of photographs you're taking and the conditions.

If you're going to be taking pictures of people indoors with bad lighting you need a lens with an aperture of 2.8 or less, probably a 1.4.

If you're going to be taking group pictures indoors you'll probably need a wider angle 2.8 lens.

If you're going to be doing indoor sports a 70-200mm 2.8 is probably the minimum.

If you're going to be doing outdoor sports with good lighting a 4.0+ is probably fine.

If you're doing outdoor landscapes you just need a wide lens, like 10-30mm and a tripod.

I'm not a pro by any means, so take this with as much salt as you want.

Any camera that can handle this will do fine. There are tons of cheap full-frame cameras out there now. But lenses generally don't drop in price, even if they're really old - which is quite aggravating.

Oh, the great thing about 1.4 lenses is you don't need a flash - but smaller apertures get weird because the depth of focus gets really short, so you have to learn out how to deal with that.

Example: with a 1.4 lens if you focus on the G key on your keyboard the T and B keys will be out of focus. Some 1.4 lenses have back/front focus issues, where you focus on G but the picture is actually focused on T (back focus) or B (front focus). This gets more complicated the further away you are from your subject, since the DoF will be small; you might accidentally focus on someone's nose instead of their chin, etc.

OTOH you can take great pictures with a 1.4 in 1 lumen (essentially 1 candle).

I only use certain other cameras to get into some rooms and be taken seriously to photograph people

I don't need them for anything at the moment, I haven’t taken a dedicated camera on a sightseeing tour or hike in 12 years despite my enthusiast interest in camera gear and my ability to appreciate focal lengths

interestingly, if you do to the trendiest hipster hangouts, people have point and shoots now, having graduated from polaroids in the most contrived “Y2K” rerun possible

I was deliberating between purchasing a new iPhone or a camera. I opted for a camera because of its more affordable price and longer lifespan. Bought an almost new, second-hand Sony full-frame camera complete with a lens, It was less than $1.5k.

“Shot on iPhone” doesn’t promise “and you can do it too” any more than Stanley Kubrick lighting Barry Lyndon with candlelight means anyone with candles can make Barry Lyndon.

What a beautiful way of describing the fallacy of the converse!

anyone with candles can make Barry Lyndon

Anyone with candles and NASA lenses

Very good lenses are more accessible than they sound; there are decent cheap f0.95 mirrorless lenses out there, and even if you want an expensive one you can rent it. Just don't drop it.

Kubrick used f/0.7 in 1973

That's only about half a stop brighter. The increased sensitivity of digital sensors more than makes up for that.

Anyone with candles and NASA lenses

It isn't the 1970s anymore: Robert Eggers was able to shoot candle-list scenes forThe Witchwithout NASA lenses:

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtb0qAu-Hjc

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witch_(2015_film)

The entire movie cost US$ 4M, which was less the $6M for Wiseau'sThe Room.

You and I have watched the same Youtube video

I vaguely remember reading about special low f-stop lenses.

Here it is:

Kubrick was "determined not to reproduce the set-bound, artificially lit look of other costume dramas from that time." After "tinkering with different combinations of lenses and film stock," the production obtained three super-fast 50mm lenses (Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7) developed by Zeiss for use by NASA in the Apollo Moon landings, which Kubrick had discovered. These super-fast lenses "with their huge aperture (the film actually features the lowest f-stop in film history) and fixed focal length" were problematic to mount, and were extensively modified into three versions by Cinema Products Corp. for Kubrick to gain a wider angle of view, with input from optics expert Richard Vetter of Todd-AO. The rear element of the lens had to be 2.5 mm away from the film plane, requiring special modification to the rotating camera shutter. This allowed Kubrick and Alcott to shoot scenes lit in candlelight to an average lighting volume of only three candela, "recreating the huddle and glow of a pre-electrical age." In addition, Kubrick had the entire film push-developed by one stop.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lyndon#Cinematography

Light sensitivity of modern digital sensors is far superior to any film, especially for the quality delivered. Like, really far. You won't be able to get every characteristic of that lens, such as the absurdly shallow depth of field, but you can get close with a much less exotic (but still rare) lens around f/1.

People were admiring how closely you could reproduce the look of the candlelit scene all the way back when Canon inadvertently kicked off the low-cost ciné phenomenon with the EOS 5D Mark II.

I think most know that the major barrier to making a movie proper is the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars spent on everything else. Even ignoring paying for talent, the outrageous budgets of even lower-tier films are widely publicized.

But many are also tickled pink to make something out of ordinary life that has some of that Hollywood look.

I don’t know how the pros use the iPhone to shoot such amazing photos. I have the iPhone 12 Pro and the photos I shoot are mediocre at best and out of focus or weird lightning at worst. Did they use a tripod everywhere they go?

I'd be curious what subjects you pick.

I've been very happy with my iPhone photographs for the last 10+ years, to the point that I stopped using my DSLR. But, and it's a big but, lighting and subject and distance matter a great deal.

Everyday objects and street photos. I don’t shoot in a controlled environment.

Have you taken a photography class?

You don’t need an MFA or much experience, just a set of guidelines, how to conform to them and knowing when to break them

The classic shot on iPhone 3GS! behind the scenes.

https://fstoppers.com/commercial/iphone-fashion-shoot-lee-mo...

out of focus or weird lightning at worst

Yep that's the problem. Not the camera.

Fix your focus and fix your lighting. That's 95% of professional-quality footage, in most cases.

Good indoor lighting, by the way, isn't cheap, and that's the part they didn't tell you they probably spent tens of thousands on.

Yeah, if you shoot with your IKEA lights and your bedroom mess in the background, it's going to look like it was "shot on a shitty phone" even if you have an Arri camera.

Oh and here's the other killer thing pros don't tell you -- broad sunny daylight looks like shit on any camera. But it's the time 95% of the population likes to go outdoors.

You want some dramatic clouds? Chase a storm. You want that crack of dawn effect? Get up 2 hours before the crack of dawn to set up.

Did they use a tripod everywhere they go?

Yep, there's a whole world of tools designed to avoid camera shake¹: Tripods, monopods, gimbals, dollies, suction mounts, etc.

¹ Unless that's what you're going for, e.g.Blair Witch Project

Of course there is more to it than just the phone.

If I gave you a 100k Alexa camera, could you make the apple event without all the other gadgets?

Sure the camera is capable, but there’s so much more around it. I think this tech allows the currently 18 year old next Spielberg to shot some cool video with relatively low budget.

For 99% of people buying this phone they were not even thinking of making a film of the keynotes quality to start. So talking about the extra gear is a moot point.

For the few that want to accomplish something like that, know they can buy a 1.5K phone, and film something that will look decent. Maybe not like the keynote, but good enough to be comparable with the quality of a movie shot 10 years ago. Which is pretty good especially if you’re not projecting it on a huge screen.

The other thing that will be coming in the not too distant future is ai enhanced filming. You film in questionable quality, and you feed that to the machine model to spit out something in higher resolution( both pixels per inch, but also color/light depth) in which case this phone quality will be plenty.

ai enhanced filming. You film in questionable quality, and you feed that to the machine model

that is a promised "coming soon" feature of the new google phone. as it is "coming soon" nobody knows whether it delivers on that promise.

That’s ok.

Even if Google phone does not deliver, there will be software that will deliver, if not next year in the next five.

We already have the technology to do it for a single photo. Making it possible for a whole movie is just an optimization problem. I have no doubt we will get there.

Someone who is into making movies can also build cheap lighting. High end photography/videography is more accessible than ever before.

Yes it is, see YouTube, TikTok etc. some of those videos are high quality.

This is all just marketing. Many cameras use log profiles, and Hollywood has been using non-traditional cameras for decades.

Black Swan used a Canon 7D:https://nofilmschool.com/2010/12/darren-aronofskys-black-swa...

The funny part is I would not want to shoot a professional film with a phone. How would I recharge it? Dedicated cameras offer pop-out batteries and storage. iPhone won't let you do that.

This is all just marketing. Many cameras use log profiles, and Hollywood has been using non-traditional cameras for decades.

I think you completely misunderstood the message. It’s not “professional high-end cameras are going to die”. It’s “you can have a wonderful camera in your pocket”.

How would I recharge it? Dedicated cameras offer pop-out batteries and storage. iPhone won't let you do that.

Batteries packs on the dollies. You’d know, had you read the article.

I read the article, they used a lot of adapters. Does that fit in your pocket?

I think you miss my point. There's fancy tech but really nothing new, therefore it's all marketing. GoPro can be used for movie magic, as well, and it fits on a helmet. I've edited on reel-to-reel film once, so I've seen the digital evolution. It's been great!

Also, my other point is Apple will keep designing it as a multi-use touch device, so it won't EVER be a dedicated device for movie making. When will the device be antiquated? When will the apps and OS need updating? When you use it, is there telemetry?

Magsafe batteries make it pretty easy actually

Wasn't that part of the selling point of USB-C. Hook it right up to whatever other equipment to offload video as you shoot, hook up external batteries that can be swapped out whenever mid-shot. How is swapping a USB-C battery back any different than a pop-out battery, other than having a cable?

The biggest takeaways:

There is one single feature of the iPhone 15 Pro that made this stunt possible: Log.

They Used the [free] Blackmagic Camera App: Matters as Much as Log

Lighting matters more than any camera, more than any lens... Big, soft LED lighting is actually quite affordable these days. [with a specific product mentioned]

Apple used the myriad options in the Blackmagic Camera App to prioritize image quality above everything else.

Apple decided that they must shoot at ISO 55 (the lowest, although possibly not the native ISO of the 1x camera) for the highest image quality, and with a 180º shutter for the most pro-camera look

Apple had the log footage they shot professionally color graded.

The lighting/ISO bits are where I'd call it "deception". You use the same phone to snap your lil Johnny having breakfast and end up with just as grainy/blurry denoised picture as any other mom. Proper cameras with thousands of times the lens area are at least not trying to make you believe it's that cheap and easy.

They were never claiming that the lens and sensor were magic, though.

Yep, deception by omission.

They did not mention that it would not make you rich and protect against the flu, either. And yet it does not! So unconscionable.

A little bit of tangential, but I sometimes wonder if HN has any bias against Samsung or Android in general. Samsung showed they shot short movies with their latest flagship and yet I didn't see that much discussion here about it. Now, Apple does a miserable keynote with their flagship phones, and here we are with 146 comments about it.

Even searching S23 doesn't bring that much results. If HN or its users has any bias it should be clearly stated.

Bring on the downvotes....

I noticed you yourself didn't post any articles about that. Why is that, if you want to see more of it on HN?

That's a good question. I don't usually create posts about products in general, but I can comment in one. Having said that, when I create posts it is more understanding things for my knowledge.

because HN is predominantly american and most use iphones

That was an excellent explanation of doing a pro video shoot/post-prod.

As they noted, the camera, itself, wasalmostirrelevant (except for that ProRes Log thing).

It shows how much work goes into video/movie production.

The formula I heard from a video editor, was that every second of final, is about a half hour of post.

As they noted, the camera, itself, was almost irrelevant (except for that ProRes Log thing).

As mentioned, the "ProRes Log thing" was the single most important feature for enabling professional use cases.

A prior post from the same author explaining the whole "ProRes Log thing" in more detail:

https://prolost.com/blog/applelog

I know. I was being a bit "tongue in cheek" about it.

I used to work for a camera company. I'm familiar with it.

And yet, while almost irrelevant, Apple fawned over that aspect of it. As did all the other usual sites, including this one, that decided that any negative take on the topic was "a bad one". Thanks, Prolost.

One question: couldn't the 180° look be created algorithmically after the fact, freeing them up to use a wider ISO range?

Fake motion blur? Seems challenging.

I've heard that it is indeed challenging:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34065048

I previously had a rudimentary understanding of log, but the author's other recent piece devoted to it in the context of the iPhone 15 pro (https://prolost.com/blog/applelog) gave me a much better appreciation of its importance to professional-looking video. From that article:

> But with this iPhone 15 Pro Max footage shot in Apple Log, I can recover all the detail — or just let it overexpose gracefully into this ACES output transform, for a smooth, film-like look. This soft highlight rolloff in the log-to-video conversion is called a “shoulder” in film, describing the upper part of the classic s-curve. A nice shoulder for your highlights is a big part of what makes footage look “pro” — especially when your grading happens underneath it.

is called a “shoulder” in film

It's called that no matter the medium

Log does improve things a lot. Being able to do proper 10bit/14bit+ video recording is also a bonus. But you have had the ability to use various color spaces and various non-linear recording formats for awhile on various devices (multiple androids have had this from stock for years plus 3rd party software really unlocks the sensor potential).

But Apple markets it better :P

They Used the [free] Blackmagic Camera App: Matters as Much as Log

One thing I'm really excited about from this is timecode. I only dabble in videos, things like my kids performances, but I always like to have a couple cameras (gives some variety, in case someone walks or stands in front of one of the cameras). I've been using cheap action cams and syncing them is the bane of my existence. Being able to get timecode out of a couple iPhones would be fantastic!

I've been eyeing the GoPros, they have "labs" firmware that can do time sync, and the latest camera has that built in. But it also sounds like they have overheating problems and can't really record more than ~20 minutes without a break.

I doubt you can shoot 20+ minutes on iphone when everything is maxed out. My iphone 14 was overheating after 10 minutes of 4k recording.

You can already do timecode on iOS using an UltraSync Blue device and the MAVIS recording app.

"Lighting matters more than any camera, more than any lens."

This.

But often lighting is what it is. I can use a camera (and lenses) to compensate for a lot of crappy lighting that would otherwise make it tough to get a decent shot.

I sometimes shoot photos at corporate events and the difference between "real" cameras and photos shot on phones is often pretty obvious. Sometimes it's a matter of the phones being too far from the subjects or not optimally used but not always.

I thought this was going to be similar to all the hot take stuff it references at the start about the event being shot on an iPhone... but rather this is a nice technical walk through on some features and what they mean. Very good read.

His resume is insane and he's been blogging for like 20 years. He literally wrote the book on "rebel filmmaking" with low-cost cameras before HD cameras became so cheap.https://www.amazon.com/DV-Rebels-Guide-All-Digital-Approach/...

One thing I'm curious about is how they avoided lens flair from small bright lights - the iPhone's lenses in my experience produce multiple very pronounced lens flares when shooting bright lights (and older iPhones used to produce one large green flare as well, but I think that's been reduced in the 14 and 15 - I'm sure other phones do as well, I'm just only familiar with iPhones these days).

Very large light sources likely helped (as did the matte boxes), but maybe they carefully chose the camera angles as well to minimise this?

Very large light sources likely helped (as did the matte boxes), but maybe they carefully chose the camera angles as well to minimise this?

All of it, I think. In my experience these ugly flares come mostly from point sources (things like streetlights), so large, soft light sources should help. Also, the matte boxes help controlling where the light that hits the lens comes from, so in effect it makes it easier to have a good angle, on top of making sure that nothing hits the glass at a small angle.

Lighting matters more than any camera, more than any lens.

Was essentially my comment, the log processing is pretty awesome though

The skills of the photographers are way more important than the small difference in the quality of Iphone camera sensor vs sensor in some high end camera.

I used to work with producing professional videos for companies and was fascinated by how some small details made so big difference. I remember once we sat up the camera and lights for an interview.

The camera guy asked me to adjust the light literally like a few millimetres and I thought it was silly because how can that matter? Made the picture at least 50% better. I would never hade made that call.

Great article! I'll definitely try playing with some of these settings in the blackmagic camera app. His practical examples like blocking the light with his hand are quite inspiring!

And yet i find the videos entirely cheesy.

But Apple will probably release the iCrane, for only $99999

It reads like a fanboy's list of excuses for an extremely misleading statement. Considering everything he said, what you could call it, is "shooting on a top of the line Sony smartphone sensor, embedded in an iOS carrier, running a 3rd party software". Even ignoring all the massive amount of gear that is used to make this possible (and where the camera is in fact not the most crucial factor as is the case in most productions) it is not anything like what people think when you tell them shot on iPhone.

You could tell them, "you need a bit more hardware to make this decent"; but imposing such limitations and specific settings/apps means it is nowhere near what Apple advertise as a camera and it doesn't match at all with what one would think when hearing "shot on iPhone.

It is at best a gross mischaracterization of a minor detail but in reality, it is a massive marketing lie. The truth is that if you cannot mobilise such heavy production tooling, your money would be better spent on a better camera, because such camera would have much better results without entirely relying on those tools thanks to much better flexibility because of a wider native ability. A bigger sensor wouldn't have to rely so hard on lightning in the first place, since you could shoot at higher ISO without gaining to much noise.

What he said about Final Cut is kinda funny. Considering recent Apple behavior I would not put it past them to deprecate Final Cut if it does not make enough money. Or do something like make a new version that would be required in the newer OSs but that you could only subscribe to, not outright buy. That would be on brand with the current Apple ways...

I really do not understand the level of justification/excuses Apple get for their deceptions even though they are a trillion-dollar company. Especially when their competitors get teared a new ass for the most minors things, that routinely get mischaracterized by Apple fans... People need to wake up, Apple is not a startup, nor the weak challenger anymore, they should get zero sympathy for their deceptive behavior.

I think this fuss about this "Shot on iPhone" event is completely overblown, and while Log-support et al is great, it's yet another achievement of orchestrated Apple-Marketing.

The much simpler conclusion of all this "Shot on iPhone" event is:

If you have a full video production setup including the necessary (post-)production workflow, youMAYbe able to replace the camera with one or many iPhone 15 Pro now.

In reality, your mileage will vary, for example due to the unspoken matter of iPhones overheating when constantly recording AND charging AND streaming video to USB-C.

Regardless of the camera, these things have started to have such a bizarre visual quality to them. Like some kind of tech-bro fever dream of an AI imagined utopia. So far gone from the days of Steve standing on a stage and actually talking to people. Kudos to folks like Zuckerberg not doing product announcements from an alien spaceship orbiting earth. Just look at the contrast:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CpHrNNIzs4

Back in 2010, these two stop-motion shorts were each shot on the Nokia N8: Dot [1] Gulp [2]

Then in 2011, a short film and a feature-length were shot on the Nokia N8: Splitscreen: A Love Story [3] Olive [4]

Oh, and back when Apple announced their first iPhone, Steve Lichfield was already filming his Phone Show episode 22 on a smartphone, the Nokia N93. [5] For years he filmed with an N8, then a Nokia 808, and eventually Apple's camera tech caught up and he finished out his Phone Show filming on an iPhone.

[1]https://www.aardman.com/short-form-commercials/nokia-dot/[2]https://aardman.com/short-form-commercials/nokia-gulp/[3]https://vimeo.com/25451551/description[4]http://blog.gsmarena.com/olive-is-the-first-full-length-feat...[5]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7FMHcG-M_FY.

Where's the ablation chart. Desk reject

Hasn't Apple been caught before saying "shot on iPhone" but really it was in a studio with a modified iPhone with a proper lens on it?https://www.dpreview.com/videos/7189460551/video-those-shot-...etc

Although for this one from the pictures I've seen it does seems like they used the phone + lighting equipment which is fine.

I think I'll still stick to my mirrorless + large & heavy but absolutely stellar lenses. I like getting actual raw footage from a sensor and not computational photography (which is only really good for out & about shots aka "the best camera you have is the one you have with you").

"onaniPhone"

Honestly surprised that none of these conversations have yet pointed out that Apple was one of the first large businesses to publicly engage in "dogfooding" with their February 1980 decision to purge all typewriters from their offices in favor of their own computers, and that this event nearly 34 years later continues the tradition of eating their own dog food quite successfully.

Much classical production equipment is bulky. You need stability, but not support for fifty kilos at the camera end.[1] Here's a Louma crane from 2012. It's beautifully controlled, but huge. It looks like something you'd use to move bricks to an upper floor of a building site. That was needed with a Panavision camera and a TV camera for aiming at the business end. Now you can lighten up.

Half of those Louma crane shots could be done today with a DJI Mini 4 drone.

What do pros use today when you need a precisely controlled boom for quiet indoor use and the camera only weighs a few hundred grams? There must be something more compact than the Louma monsters.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q_Dam9nD0E