[HN Gopher] What does and doesn't matter about Apple shooting th...
___________________________________________________________________
What does and doesn't matter about Apple shooting their October
event on iPhone
Author : robenkleene
Score : 119 points
Date : 2023-11-07 21:08 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (prolost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (prolost.com)
| simbolit wrote:
| "Lighting matters more than any camera, more than any lens."
|
| This.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| duxup wrote:
| 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.
| user_7832 wrote:
| 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.
| threeseed wrote:
| > 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.
| ska wrote:
| Professional photography and videography gear has _always_
| only 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).
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| 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.
| ska wrote:
| 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.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| 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.
| threeseed wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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 I _really_ need 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.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| 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.
| kergonath wrote:
| 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.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > 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.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > 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 and _don 't_ need
| 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.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > 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.)
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "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.
| jkaptur wrote:
| At the time it was recorded, that was cutting edge tech,
| wasn't it?
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| >2 track recording is _still_ a rare & deluxe feature in
| _most_ consumer 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.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| 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.
| happytiger wrote:
| 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 platform _under
| 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.
|
| _If_ this is PR, which it's likely not, it's _brilliant_.
| great_psy wrote:
| 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.
| simbolit wrote:
| > 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.
| berkut wrote:
| 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?
| kergonath wrote:
| > 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.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| 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._
| reqo wrote:
| >"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!
| drexlspivey wrote:
| > anyone with candles can make Barry Lyndon
|
| Anyone with candles and NASA lenses
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| 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?
| GeekyBear wrote:
| 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.
| tehnub wrote:
| 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!
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That was an excellent explanation of doing a pro video
| shoot/post-prod.
|
| As they noted, the camera, itself, was _almost_ irrelevant
| (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.
| mrbonner wrote:
| 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?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-07 23:00 UTC)