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the iPhone 17 Pro It has a powerful video setup with three cameras, large image sensors (for a phone), ProRes raw codecs And record color profiles for advanced editing. It makes the phone one of the most powerful and reliable video capture tools among today’s devices Smartphones.
Apple is often proud of this Famous directors Using an iPhone for Film shooting and Music videos. The company even records its data Event videos For new products with iPhone.
But is the iPhone really good enough at shooting video to replace a traditional movie camera? To see how good the iPhone 17 Pro is for professional use, I put it to the test.
I shot a video where I pitted my $1,000 iPhone against a full-fledged professional movie camera rig, worth thousands of dollars, to see how well Apple’s phone holds up. I’ve planned to produce a video at my favorite coffee roaster in Edinburgh, titled Saintwhich is located in a stunning building that I knew would look great on camera.
To give both cameras the best chance, I worked with the director of photography Cal Hallowswho has been responsible for producing major shoots around the world, working with brands including Aston Martin, BBC, IBM and Hilton Hotels.
Here’s what happened.
Our photography equipment
We didn’t use any external lenses with the iPhone; Instead, we relied on the main built-in, ultra-wide, or telephoto options. I shot the footage using Blackmagic camera app. I had Crucial X10 External SSD Since I was recording using Apple’s ProRes raw codec, which creates large files.
I also had a variable neutral density filter to achieve a constant shutter speed. For some shots, I used SuperCage moment To help give the curve a better grip – and therefore smoother shots. But for other shots, I used the phone alone to make it easier to get into tight spaces. More on that later.
The BlackMagic camera, when fully equipped, was bulky and heavy. This meant we had to be more selective about the shots we used them in.
The iPhone’s competition was the $3,300 iPhone Blackmagic Pixis 6K. It’s a professional cinema camera with a full-frame 6K image sensor and raw video capabilities. I’ve paired that with some amazing professional cine lenses, including a set of Arles primethe XTract Probe Lens from DZO Film And two choices Prime Cine from Sigma. It’s a massive and expensive setup for any cinematographer.
Filming day
We shot over the course of one day. I already created a rough storyboard of the shots I wanted to take, which helped me plan my angles and lens choices. I wanted to try to replicate some of the angles directly with both cameras.
I love this angle and the great reveal when the door opens and the light hits the coffee bags. While this is a screenshot from BlackMagic’s footage, the iPhone image looks quite good.
This shot of the store room opening (above), for example, was a beautiful sight, and I didn’t see much difference in quality between the iPhone video and the BlackMagic video. This was the case with a few of the scenes we replicated. Apple’s ProRes raw codec on iPhone offers a wide range of color adjustment, allowing us to create beautiful tones that look just as stunning as footage from a Blackmagic camera.
Sure, you could say they were variousbut I couldn’t honestly say whether that was the case better From the other.
The iPhone’s main camera was too narrow for this scene, and the ultra-wide camera was too wide, resulting in a light stand — and another employee — appearing along the edge of the frame.
Other shots were more difficult to replicate. I love this low angle of the roaster’s owner, Washington, pulling his cart across the scene. On the iPhone, the main lens wasn’t wide enough to capture everything we wanted but switching to the ultra-wide lens was too much in the other direction and we ended up having spare gear and other people in the frame.
This made replicating many shots a challenge since the iPhone’s fixed zoom ranges simply didn’t translate to the same fields of view provided by our lenses on the BlackMagic camera. As a result, getting the right frame for shots from my iPhone was more difficult than I expected. But focal length wasn’t the only reason “real” lenses were better to use.
The wide apertures of DZO Film’s prime cine lenses allowed us to get some beautiful background bokeh in shots like this.
The DZO Arles Primes are great cine lenses that offer wide apertures that allow us to shoot with gorgeous, natural bokeh. We’ve used this to our advantage in many shots where we really wanted to isolate the subject against an out-of-focus background.
Secret weapons
This was especially the case when we used our secret weapon: the DZO Films Xtract Probe Lens. This long, thin, exotic-looking lens provides a wide-angle perspective combined with a close focus distance.
The iPhone shots (right) are almost completely in focus which means background elements are clearly visible and quite distracting. Using the DZO Film probe lens on the BlackMagic camera (left) allowed those background details to fall out of focus, keeping attention solely on the subject.
I loved the use of the probe lens in this shot, especially as we focused on exactly where Washington was using the bean mill. I tried to replicate it on the iPhone using the close-focus ultra-wide lens and the shot looked good, but lacked the optical sophistication I can get from a large professional camera. Especially since the lack of background blur makes it easier to see distracting background elements stored under the table that are “hidden” in the blurring on the main camera.
But the iPhone has its own secret weapon, too. Its size. The iPhone’s small dimensions—even with a filter and an SSD drive crudely attached to it—are so small that we were able to get shots that we simply couldn’t achieve with a large cinema camera.
The iPhone’s small size meant it could be mounted on one of the arms of the bean cooler — something I couldn’t do with my large camera and lens. I monitored the footage using SmallRig’s wireless iPhone monitor.
In particular, this shot, where I mounted the iPhone on an arm inside the cooling machine so that it moved while churning the beans. I love this shot – I captured a top down view of the arms moving downwards. Both angles give this amazing energy to the film and I think they are my favorite scenes in the entire production. It was not easy to see the phone screen in these modes however SmallRig Wireless iPhone Display It made it much easier to get my angles right. Trying to rig a large, heavy camera and lens to get the same shots was simply out of the question.
How good is the iPhone compared?
I really liked both cameras on this project, but our experienced director of photography, Cal, had some ideas as well.
Cal explained, “The thing I’ve really found with the iPhone is simply the creative freedom to take shots that I wouldn’t have time to prepare. There’s only so much time in the day and only so long do you have access to sets or actors, so the fact that you can just grab your iPhone and get these shots is amazing.”
The initial DZO film kit we had for the movie camera gave us great flexibility back in the day.
“I’ve used my iPhone for professional shots before,” Cal said. “One time in particular I was driving away from the set and saw this gorgeous sunset. If I had spent time setting up my regular camera, I would have missed the sunset. So I shot it on my phone and the client loved it — it ended up being the final shot of the movie. At the end of the day, a good shot is a good shot and it doesn’t matter what you shot it with.”
So was it all good for the iPhone?
“The depth of field and overall look of cine lenses is still at the forefront — and you won’t get that on a phone,” Cal explained. “When it came to grading the footage, I had to use a lot of little workarounds to make the iPhones compatible. The quality quickly started to break down in some difficult scenes that wasn’t an issue with BlackMagic.”
So, it’s not a complete win for the iPhone, but then, I didn’t expect it to be. iPhone will never do that replace The professional camera on this shoot instead allowed us to enhance our video with shots we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.
I love the creative angles we found using just the phone, and while Cal struggled to balance his colors with ease, the shots fit well with the rest of the video and make it more dynamic and engaging as a result.
Here director of photography, Cal Hallows, rushes into the café room and sets up the camera to take the shot. Bless him.
This does not mean that the shots we did not use were not good. I was really impressed with the way the iPhone handled most things we threw at it.
So don’t assume that if you want to get into filmmaking, you need to spend tens of thousands on a professional movie camera and a set of primer films. Your iPhone has everything you need to get started, and will allow you to showcase your creativity more easily.
The days of shooting, editing and grading have proven that the iPhone is not yet ready to be the best only The camera you need in a professional kit. But combine its small size with your other cameras, and… then You’ve got a really powerful production setup.