Filming with an iphone

[John Simpson]

The quality of using the iphone for filming is a huge subject. But the sharpness and auto focus of the image using an iphone 11 seems unbelievable! People are saying that now the auto stabalisation on the iphone 14 takes it up to another level - how is it done? What are the drawbacks?

[Albert Noble]

There's nothing to beat the romance and thrills of using the great Bolex 16mm
film camera on a substantial tripod with pan and tilt head.
Those were the days.
I still have mine, but the gentle whirl of it running is not heard anymore.

[Dave Watterson]

A professional cameraman once told me: "Ideally you should stick a reel of film in your head and blink 24 times a second."

But that doesn't help John ... we must have someone around who can answer him.

[ned c]

Lot's of information on YouTube about how phones work as cameras along with advantages and disadvantages. Several feature length films have been shot on iPhones including Tangerine; probably the best known. Local film maker Sean Labreque uses his iPhone for everything and his work has been screened in a local cinema and it is impossible to differentiate from traditional cameras. For $1500 you get a DSLR or mirrorless camera but then add lenses, batteries etc, for the same cost of an iPhone you get a telephone/still camera/video camera/computer/photo album! How much longer will the traditional video camera last?
ned c

[John Simpson]

If a film is intended to be watched on the big screen it is important to watch a preview on as big a screen as possible, or the place where it is going to be shown, because sometimes unnoticed stuff like picture break up and lighting changes can only be seen then. I suppose the old addage of always going for the best possible (within budget) still applies!

It is a pity when watching a good bit of drama and the watcher is brought back to normal life by some technical imperfection.

[Dave Watterson]

Keep an ear out for the sound quality - again using the best equipment you can get gold of. Now and then a film appears at a festival, and the sound is "thin" or has other problems. The film maker probably checked on his computer or home tv and found no problems.

[John Simpson]

Yes I agree about poor sound, also it seem actors are often encouraged to speak softly and run words together, that linked to background music can cause problems for the large and small screen. At least with TV the viewer can put subtitles on, but they have to be well synced. To make a really good professional style film is a huge task.

[Albert Noble]

Not forgetting animation on an iphone too.....single shots, of course.
Make a square grid matrix, transparent numbered screen to cover iphones capture area..

Objects can thus be animated frame by frame using the screen's grid to register
correct and smooth movement.

If it's an old phone glue a block to it to house a pan and tilt head.....
....useful for normal filming too. The iphone thus becomes a dedicated
video/animation all round camera.

[Michael Slowe]

I also shot a film on an i phone but that was because it was just a holiday 'travelogue' and I would not attempt anything serious with it. Why not? Pure prejudice probably, but there are some technical factors. Audio might be the first doubt. Can proper mics be connected to an i phone? Certainly not with professional inputs surely. For sole operation how do you attach a proper mic? Then there is the question of focus, is it all auto? Is it easy to adjust aperture or is that automatic? What codecs can one shoot and how compressed are they?

I'm with Noble, a nice solid 16mm film Bolex, or, in my case Beaulieu, feels more comfortable! No, seriously, the pro Sony, Pana, Canon & Arri will not be superseded by the i phone for serious film making, although to be sure, wonderful media can be shot on one.

[John Simpson]

Charles Dowding is a "No DIg" gardener in Somerset, near me. He gets his sons or other followers to make videos of his activities, he has 580k subscribers on YouTube. They have gone over to filming with an iphone with Bluetooth radio mic. iphone needs something extra for sound.

There are interfaces for the iphone like "Beastcam" which give movie camera facilities, There are also people who run courses on how to make movies with iphone. Here is a quote from one such person,

"Learn Pro Mobile Video Skills
My name is Simon Horrocks and I’ve been an indie filmmaker for about 25 years. I’ve shot films with 16mm film cameras and digital cinema cameras. But over the last 3 and a half years I’ve shot all my movies just with smartphones."

[tom hardwick]

To come back to your original question John, all the latest smartphones use a combination of optical image stabilisation (where the lens assembly vibrates 'out of phase' to counteract the camera person's vibrations), along with digital smoothing as a clean-up operation.

This real-time processing does have its own brand of side effects, but most people accept these far more readily than wobbly pictures. Look at my Insta OneX camera spinning on the record turntable in the October issue of FVM - for what I consider the ultimate in image stabilisation.

But to the point that iPhones are used for feature films - have you seen the set-up photos? The phone is practically invisible inside its cage, surrounded by a plethora of hardware that's there to overcome the huge compromises that have to be made simply to say, 'shot on an iPhone'.

All phones use incredibly short focal length lenses and very small image sensors because of space restrictions, so you're not (easily) able to obtain differential focus. This 'everything sharp in the frame, all the bleeding time' can get a bit wearying. All phones cameras shoot at maximum aperture too, and the laws of optics mean that the inevitable vignetting and CA have to be corrected in real time.

It all makes purists shudder.