Apple the iPhone 12 Pro Max with ProRAW photos, LiDar and Dolby HDR

You know how people use selfie sticks? Like hundreds of thousands, maybe millions?

What's stopping phone gimbals to become just as normal?

So then you're now moving with your phone that's stabilized which focuses, exposes, and possibly reframes your footage as we get into 8K+ resolutions.

LOL, I mean...like literally - and I'm not trying to be funny - a monkey or another trained specimen might be able to capture you usable footage as a C camera.
 
Let me put it this way - it's easy to do a basic job filming a wedding. If you do better, you can make more money. I've seen some badass wedding films that surpass my wedding cinematography (although usually not in every area). Its not because they have a better camera. It's because they have more experience or have put more thought and effort into the shoot or are just smarter in some ways. The results differ not for lack of control of stability focus exposure... and people will pay for that difference. Maybe one day everyone will be shooting on iPhones. And then people will finally credit the cameraman and not the camera.
 
I'll split the difference here. More people learn how to "properly" use the camera and, with everyone in attendance having smartphones (except Grandma Ikhva, who forgot her Leica), the non-professional footage will become more accepted to the point that the professional photographers/videographers will be responsible for an ever decreasing percentage of the eventual footage.

I might have a limited sample to which to go by. I have husband and wife friends/neighbors. Each has an iPhone. The husband has been sending me photos via FB (including my own, but I won't go there) and, within the last couple of years, has gotten pretty good. When I post one of his photos on my FB page, people make very positive comments.

His wife, on the other hand, is a lost cause. Both in video and stills.

And the overall point is, a wedding with a dozen guys like above, will give you a superior coverage to three professional cameras. There'll be some photos and some video clips that simply can not be taken with three-four cams. And that is understood. And then someone will indeed upload it to a cloud server and some dude/lady in the Philippines or Belarus will provide the final edit for $150. And that's that.
 
BTW, PureDrifting once mentioned he used the externally mounted lenses (I think he had Moment) on his iPhone. Anyone else had tried them?
 
They've been around forever, but internal IQ needs to get better before seriously considering anything else.
 
Apple can add all the processing in the world but the darn things still don't have apertures or built in ND filtering.

As good as photos look from an iPhone the one area it will never compete is speed of capturing an image. Even my supposed to be pathetic GH4 shoots vastly better looking stills than my iPhone 11 Pro max and it does so in milliseconds vs how long it takes an iPhone to get the shot. Thats not even counting the time it takes to unlock the phone, open the photo app and let it figure out what's going on to get a decent shot. I would rather use a crappy $500 DSLR to shoot stills vs a phone just due to the speed to click the button and get a solid image quickly. The iPhone is great when shooting something happy to pose for 5-10 seconds.

I will say my iPhone 11 Pro max shoots stills much faster than my iPhone X did but its still a process and time to get there vs my older DSLR cameras. Heck my GH1 shot better and faster stills.

I also still hate how Apple just masks parts of the image for DOF in portrait mode. Its basically a crude computer masking job and nowhere near what DOF done optically will look like. Its all heavy image processing and while it may look nice to consumers its a long way off matching what professionals consider good enough. At the end of the day unless phones get much larger its always going to be massive processing. Good luck getting portrait like DOF with video on an iPhone which has kind of been the entire point of people wanting bigger sensors for video.

Everything is still a compromise. Its awesome what Apple can do with processing and they should win an engineering award for it but its still an overly digital and processed image. Something we have all tried to get far away from for years.
 
DLD said:
BTW, PureDrifting once mentioned he used the externally mounted lenses (I think he had Moment) on his iPhone. Anyone else had tried them?
Click to expand...

Yep, still have the Moment wide angle and the Moment case. As cell phone lenses go, it's probably the best. But still very susceptible to flaring when shooting exteriors.
 
DLD said:
professional photographers/videographers will be responsible for an ever decreasing percentage of the eventual footage.
Click to expand...

Maybe. Not sure how that differs from today with instagram.

People will still need to hire someone to make sure the ceremony gets covered in full. And the photographers usually go in the aisle, and to the sides and behind the ceremony as well. Places seated guests are not. And if the couple wants shots like these, they will still need to hire a pro even if they get tons of good shots from everyone else:

985f438c6e9a0b4b749620e90d0ec935.jpg

bf422810b3e21e528c9ac16bb51bfeb2.jpg
 
puredrifting said:
Yep, still have the Moment wide angle and the Moment case. As cell phone lenses go, it's probably the best. But still very susceptible to flaring when shooting exteriors.
Click to expand...
Do you still retain the auto focus with the external lens?

BTW, the new iPhone has a 24mm-62mm optical zoom equivalent. Huawei/OPPO/Xiaomi/Samsung all have Samsung's 24mm-120mm. I once predicted here that the first smartphone with an externally mounted AF lens would win the "professional" race. The periscope zooms have probably rendered that moot.

ahalpert said:
Maybe. Not sure how that differs from today with instagram...
Click to expand...
Which is why I said, "An ever decreasing share". More Instagram, less Abe.

And the posted photos can be done in a studio too. Way after the cake is served.
 
DLD said:
Do you still retain the auto focus with the external lens?

BTW, the new iPhone has a 24mm-62mm optical zoom equivalent. Huawei/OPPO/Xiaomi/Samsung all have Samsung's 24mm-120mm. I once predicted here that the first smartphone with an externally mounted AF lens would win the "professional" race. The periscope zooms have probably rendered that moot.

Which is why I said, "An ever decreasing share". More Instagram, less Abe.

And the posted photos can be done in a studio too. Way after the cake is served.
Click to expand...

I'm confused because it doesn't seem like the iphone has a zoom lens. Just that you can "zoom" between different primes.

It doesn't really matter to me if they have more and more crowdsource clips as long as they still hire a shooter.

Photographers sometimes take flowers and invitations shots in their studio now. Are you saying they'll take these posed shots and green screen or composite them into a nice background? I dont think that would fly. Aside from the fact that the bride has hundreds of dollars of HMU done on the day, part of what people want is shots from the time and place of the day itself. And usually there are landscapes and numerous place-specific shots.

I do not think that you or NorBro think like a young bride...
 
ahalpert said:
I'm confused because it doesn't seem like the iphone has a zoom lens. Just that you can "zoom" between different primes.
Click to expand...

https://www.cnet.com/news/pro-photo...zoom-bigger-image-sensor-improved-night-mode/


ahalpert said:
It doesn't really matter to me if they have more and more crowdsource clips as long as they still hire a shooter...

I do not think that you or NorBro think like a young bride...
Click to expand...

The parents are still likely to hire a pro wedding specialist. But not pay for his three assistants. Or pay less. Or split the fees between a seasoned pro and some guy/gal who just picked up his first Canon EOS RP. Especially, if the said guy/gal also happen to be a nephew/niece John/Jean. Plus, there's uncle/aunt Frank/Francine, who has an old Nikon D700. Plus, 30 smartphones have been cordially invited to attend the blessed event. And all of them accept their gratuities in the form of a cake.
 
DLD said:
https://www.cnet.com/news/pro-photo...zoom-bigger-image-sensor-improved-night-mode/




The parents are still likely to hire a pro wedding specialist. But not pay for his three assistants. Or pay less. Or split the fees between a seasoned pro and some guy/gal who just picked up his first Canon EOS RP. Especially, if the said guy/gal also happen to be a nephew/niece John/Jean. Plus, there's uncle/aunt Frank/Francine, who has an old Nikon D700. Plus, 30 smartphones have been cordially invited to attend the blessed event. And all of them accept their gratuities in the form of a cake.
Click to expand...

That's not a zoom, dude. That's a longer telephoto. I understand the way it's used to "zoom" but it's not a zoom.

The last wedding I shot had only one photographer and one videographer. Although more common is 2 of each. If it wasn't a stripped-down covid wedding I'm sure there would have been two of each.

Anyway it's a lost cause arguing about the needs of the work with people who dont do the work. Obviously, I'm motivated to see things from this perspective. But I shoot a lot of talking heads as well and it doesn't prevent me from predicting doom there.

Just a last point- shooting a wedding is labor. Lots of labor. You're never going to get the labor or the results from people doing it for fun who aren't running around with a dedicated eye. You can get things crowdsourcing iPhone shots, but you cant get the same things. Amateurs with iPhones won't replace pros. The customer would have to change their expectations to ditch the pros. Which, sure, could happen
 
ahalpert said:
The last wedding I shot had only one photographer and one videographer. Although more common is 2 of each. If it wasn't a stripped-down covid wedding I'm sure there would have been two of each.

Anyway it's a lost cause arguing about the needs of the work with people who dont do the work. Obviously, I'm motivated to see things from this perspective. But I shoot a lot of talking heads as well and it doesn't prevent me from predicting doom there.
Click to expand...

I am not preaching doom for everyone everywhere. You're working in an affluent upscale market at a high enough level that requires a substantial resume. Granted, I don't know the wedding video market too well but I suspect that the geographic NYC area has the ultra high end - the Onassis/Rothschild nuptials, where anything lower than ARRI Alexa65 is frowned upon - the mere high end of the Wall Street/Madison Avenue executives and so on. Those are not the tiers that are being damaged by smartphones. Those are the tiers that are being damaged by C300 MKIII, C500 MKII, FX-9 and so on. As you go down, you see the equipment quality and the equipment prices go down as well. To A7SIII, S1 and GH-5. Then you get to the 4K camcorders. Then you get to the 2K camcorders that Steve Yedlin shoots his next Stars Wars episode on. Then you get smartphones. As the technology improves, everything moves. Who needs C300's and FS-7's, when you have a new R5/R6/A7SIII. And so on and so forth. The Freddy Young's and the Robert Surtees's of the wedding cinematography will probably be safe for another decade or two. Then they'll have nothing else to do but to get busy on the set of "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Ben Hur" because their weekend gigs will be gone.
 
I don't think this deserves a new thread, so I'll just post it here: I just saw the dxomark review of the Huawei Mate 40 pro, and it's seriously impressive. It's their top-scoring phone to date. In particular, aspects that are not usually great in phones, like dynamic range and low-light abilities, are fairly good on this one. And well, of course it had to be great: it's a 1/1.28" sensor with a 23mm f/1.9 lens, which means it's really, really close to my RX100IV, but with all the AI processing that current phones have.

https://www.dxomark.com/huawei-mate-40-pro-camera-review-dynamic-range-monster/
https://www.gsmarena.com/huawei_mate_40_pro-10528.php
 
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