iPhone 11 Pro

[DLD]

... We can all agree that point-and-shoot cameras are on their way out. In fact, I don't know why a single copy of a point-and-shoot camera has been sold in the past decade.

You don't need a $50/mo 2-year contract for a P&S.

Of course, you'd have to shout pretty loudly if you speak into one.

On a serious note, P&S was a huge opportunity loss for the Japanese manufacturers. Even the high end of P&S such as Sony RX 100 series is terribly overpriced without offering much reason to be so. But 1/2", 2/3" and 1" sensors with a long slide out zoom and a top notch AF could have offered a strong competition to smartphones. They would have been a true Pocket Cams (pants, not shirts).

 

[Guest]

First you'd have to explain what the "Soderbergh Fix" is?

Director Steven Soderbergh said the iPhone kept auto exposure even in the filmic app. He had to color correct out the shofts in exposure. He requested apple allow for manual exposure.

 

[Tamerlin]

This is pretty incredible especially when we consider that all this is happening from multiple sensors at 4K resolution on a device that costs $1,000. It's a shame Apple isn't partnering with one of the major camera vendors to bring some of this processing power to a truly pro camera.

Apple probably thinks that it IS a truly professional camera...

 

[Guest]

Apple probably thinks that it IS a truly professional camera...

It is the best iPhone ever. Haha.

 

[TheDingo]

iPhone 11 is the Shizzle !!!

iPhone 11 is the Shizzle !!!

 

[filmguy123]

The technology for still photography is getting pretty crazy with things like Deep Fusion. Multiple exposures in rapid fire, auto compiled in a CPU with a trillion+ ops per second to recombine for optimal noise, light, sharpness, etc. As things continue to progress the "scary" thing (or "cool", depending on your POV) is that it will begin to get difficult for higher level cameras to outperform things any smart camera system can do. Not withstanding lens/sensor size, the computational and multi lens tricks may start to literally do a better job than more traditional tools, faster and quicker.

On the video side of things, probably the weakest link by far is the shutter speed issue. But I think it will be only a few years until sensor pixel dimming is implemented, which allows photosites to absorb less light via electronic control. So with no ND filter to speak of, the sensor could adjust its light gathering electronically to lock shutter at 180 degrees at maintain proper exposure, no accessories needed.

It's still kind of cute when people make fun of "cell phone cameras". It's kind of like when people used to diss "DSLR cameras" as some sort of lower end inferior solution to shooting on "real gear", which has slowly died off as people realized cameras like a GH5/S1 can put out incredibly compelling work. We aren't quite there yet - but we should be taking seriously the trajectory of the mobile computational photography space. I suspect it will only be a few years until we see pros genuinely using these tools on both photo and video shoots mixed with larger cameras to put out professional deliverables. And only a little bit longer that all the sorts of tools we here are using will HAVE to start focusing on computational based photo/video features.

 

[puredrifting]

Eh, call me old fashioned, but I will never want a phone to shoot something for art or money. For candid snapshots to share with my friends, sure. We can all agree that point-and-shoot cameras are on their way out. In fact, I don't know why a single copy of a point-and-shoot camera has been sold in the past decade.

My favorite experience with a camera was for college photography 101, when the professor insisted we get a camera with manual shutter speed, aperture, and focus. My dad gave me his metal SLR, from the 1970s or '80s. Until then I had only used electronic snapshot cameras and prosumer videocameras.

Two things appealed to me:

(1) Clarity of the process, with a decluttering of all the fiddly buttons for automatic and semiautomatic adjustments. It was not until then that it crystallized in my head that there really are only three adjustments: focus, aperture, and shutter speed.

(2) The visceral experience of a good metal camera body and decent sized knobs, the feeling of turning the focus ring on a professional, well-dampened manual-focus lens.

Are there some of you who approach cameras only as tools for your day job? If so, I can understand how you would be pleased by a brain-controlled hovering smartphone that took a 360-degree angle of a scene, and you could fiddle with the framing and depth of field (like those Lytro cameras) to your heart's content in post or better yet let the artificially intelligent editing program select all that for you, some time in the year 2070.

But that process has no appeal to me, and I would still be looking for a simple, Leica-esque videocamera, with manual everything and preferably auto-nothing.

And global shutter. Still waiting...

You sound as if you would really like the Fujifilm XT-3. Manual knobs and buttons and using it "kind of" feels like what shooting my old school Nikon film bodies was like when I was a kid.
Of course there are lots of menus and options but if you just want to use the camera manually, the build and feel reminds me of shooting a 35mm SLR quite a bit, It's neat trick to pull off
in 2019.

 

[puredrifting]

Director Steven Soderbergh said the iPhone kept auto exposure even in the filmic app. He had to color correct out the shofts in exposure. He requested apple allow for manual exposure.

Got it, thank you for clarifying. I think I know what he means, I can manually adjust exposure with Filmic Pro but if things change, I have to do it all over, even with exposure lock.

 

[puredrifting]

Apple probably thinks that it IS a truly professional camera...

If the definition of professional is "makes money doing work for clients", it is professional. Or at least it will be for Soderbergh and I am sure a growing number of higher end phone shooters.

 

[Tamerlin]

If the definition of professional is "makes money doing work for clients", it is professional. Or at least it will be for Soderbergh and I am sure a growing number of higher end phone shooters.

Generally I'd consider it a professional camera if it has full controls for exposure, focus, etc. Someone using consumer cameras well doesn't make the camera professional grade, even though it speaks well for the skill of the person using it.

I say that because cameras don't do work any more than paint brushes do.

 

[Eric Coughlin]

The biggest issue I have with these new offerings is that frankly they are all too big for my taste. The old iphone SE was the right size to fit in a pocket. 4.8" is max for me. I don't want a mini ipad, I want a telephone. But give me an integrated lens for tight shots and another for medium-wide and I would be happy.

I'm with you. iPhone SE is the phone I currently have and use, 4S before that. Whenever I'm hanging out with friends, they've always got their phones out on the table or wherever because it's too big to comfortably keep in their pockets when sitting down, while mine stays comfortably in my pocket. Aside from a decreased chance of loss, theft, or unwanted snooping due to not leaving my phone out in social situations, I also don't have to worry about having a pass-code on my phone because it's always in my pocket (or hand if in use).

 

[puredrifting]

...I suspect it will only be a few years until we see pros genuinely using these tools on both photo and video shoots mixed with larger cameras to put out professional deliverables.

Based upon what I've seen, we are already there. Not widespread, but a director like Soderbergh using it to shoot a multimillion dollar budget TV movie with a crew of 60 for an OTT sends a clear message, just like Sean Baker shooting Tangerine on the iPhone 5S and getting a deal with Magnolia Pictures and entre' into Sundance. We're already there, but most people in our business are still fixated on shooting with the very "best quality" gear they can afford, beg, borrow or steal for every project, all of the time. All anyone has to do is trace the gear lineage since the digital revolution and it's obvious that medium and low priced cameras will give way to advanced phone or mobile phone type tiny, light and cheap devices, fairly soon. I think the line in the sand for the foreseeable future will be crewed production, a mobile phone isn't going to work other than in certain cases like the two filmmakers I mentioned, but I don't see these devices becoming the norm for higher end production.

Personally, while I appreciate and somewhat fixate on the "best quality" gear because I write about it, test it, review it and occasionally rent it for client projects, I've alway been more fascinated by people in our industry that do the very most with the very least equipment, that's why I sold my last Betacam and bought a VX1000 and a TRV-900 years before most of my friends, I was intrigued by how far I could push the consumer cheap stuff and still have clients love the footage. My old Betacam definitely had a much better picture but it also cost over $100k with the lens. The two DV cameras together cost about $6K and with good production values, clients were very happy with the footage and it looked good. Of course, we lost day rentals on the Betacam but that was beginning to taper off at the end of the analog era. We ended up in a compromise with the DSR-500WS, a lot more expensive than the VX and TRV but a heck of a lot cheaper than a Betacam and overall, it looked 95% as good, was digital, easier to shoot and to transport (we were flying all over the country shooting a video news magazine so living on planes). Lugging Betacams into overheads was a PITA.

 

[DLD]

IMO, C500 MKII might be one of those seminal cameras that producers won't feel ashamed to use as an A-cam on major - TV. cable, streaming - projects. Now, they may need to hire more operators or use robotic arms/jibs and whatnot with those cams but this could be the trend that says, "I love Alexa but don't want to pay their rentals as part of the projects".

As streaming gets bigger and bigger and beyond Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, the corporate heads of these streamers will have to find a way to lower the productions costs, which might mean a multi-camera daytime soap style. A soaps can do 100 script pages a day.

 

[combatentropy]

You sound as if you would really like the Fujifilm XT-3.

Thanks! I know you have one and enjoy it. If it had global shutter, I might have bought it by now, or any of the dozen or so other cameras. Call it a mental block, obsessive-compulsive, whatever, I won't buy a camera with a rolling shutter, period. (Luckily making videos is not my job anymore.) I think rolling shutter is not just less, like 2K compared to 4K, or 12 stops compared to 14. To me it is incorrect. I'm sorry, I feel like I am trolling. I really try hard not to mention global shutter in every post I make. I'll set an appointment for 90 days...

 

[puredrifting]

Thanks! I know you have one and enjoy it. If it had global shutter, I might have bought it by now, or any of the dozen or so other cameras. Call it a mental block, obsessive-compulsive, whatever, I won't buy a camera with a rolling shutter, period. (Luckily making videos is not my job anymore.) I think rolling shutter is not just less, like 2K compared to 4K, or 12 stops compared to 14. To me it is incorrect. I'm sorry, I feel like I am trolling. I really try hard not to mention global shutter in every post I make. I'll set an appointment for 90 days...

I know how you feel, I spent a large portion of my years shooting film and CCD cameras where there was no such thing as rolling shutter. FWIW, the RS on the XT-3 is exceedingly low. I used to shoot a lot for LA Metro so I was constantly photographing trains and riding on trains shooting out the windows and there, I also transitioned from CCD cameras like the HPX170 and HPX300 to shooting with the 5D MKII and that ridiculous rolling shutter was horrible, I never saw another straight vertical line with any motion. With the XT-3 and the C200, I rarely, if ever even notice it anymore. Pretty much only around strobes or flashes, plane propellers or helicopter blades or with whip pans. In normal shooting, it's not even a factor for me anymore. YMMV, of course.

 

[Thomas Smet]

I'm not making fun of the phone camera at all. I think it is a great advancement and use of the technology. I'm making fun of the hype around the multicam editing in Filmic Pro like it is some sort of ground breaker. It isn't.

It isn't even really multicam. All three cameras are stuck in the same position. It is more of a zoom lens which is exactly what Apple designed it to be. They couldn't do a zoom lens on a phone so they did the next best thing and added multiple cameras with different focal lengths. Now the camera has three zoom levels. My iPhone X has two. My iPhone X has the 26mm and 52mm cameras and missing the new ultra wide 13mm camera. The Apple camera app could always switch to the different cameras on the fly while recording. On the iPhone Pro it can switch between all three. All the Filmic app is doing is adding a preview to see each camera before switching to that camera. Since the three cameras are always pointing at the same thing it isn't really a mystery what will be seen.

I think it is amazing what people can do with a phone camera but I also can't pretend its just as good as other solutions. We need to be realistic and call it what it is. A great tool to put in the hands of those that may not have access to film making tools but we shouldn't pretend it is as good as using a better camera. That doesn't mean I don't use it when I need to but that I know there are better choices. Sometimes the best choice is the phone.

 

[mico]

From Indiewire: "Like other filmmakers, “High Flying Bird” was shot using the Filmic Pro App, which bypasses the consumer auto controls of the iPhone’s camera app, allowing cinematographers to control and lock into a specific shutter speed and ISO. But it can’t override – and the app developers have tried to work with Apple on this – the way the camera’s sensor adjusts, mid-shot, to changes in light.

“If somebody walks past a window, or you pan through a light, it, even though it’s supposed to be frozen, [the sensor] responds. What makes it even worse is it’s not the entire frame that responds, it’s pieces of the frame,” said Soderbergh. “I spoke to Apple about it, and explained to them they have to address it if they’re really serious about people using these things to make movies going forward.”

 

[laverdir]

I'm not making fun of the phone camera at all. I think it is a great advancement and use of the technology. I'm making fun of the hype around the multicam editing in Filmic Pro like it is some sort of ground breaker. It isn't.

It isn't even really multicam. All three cameras are stuck in the same position. It is more of a zoom lens which is exactly what Apple designed it to be. They couldn't do a zoom lens on a phone so they did the next best thing and added multiple cameras with different focal lengths. Now the camera has three zoom levels. My iPhone X has two. My iPhone X has the 26mm and 52mm cameras and missing the new ultra wide 13mm camera. The Apple camera app could always switch to the different cameras on the fly while recording. On the iPhone Pro it can switch between all three. All the Filmic app is doing is adding a preview to see each camera before switching to that camera. Since the three cameras are always pointing at the same thing it isn't really a mystery what will be seen.

It's not just preview and switch, it's "able to capture footage from multiple iPhone lenses simultaneously".

 

[DLD]

When three cameras ain't enough.

Plus, it has a 3X zoom and a 48 MPX Samsung sensor. And a $450 price.

Edit - some say it's a Sony IMX586 sensor.

 

[Run&Gun]

Eh, call me old fashioned, but I will never want a phone to shoot something for art or money. For candid snapshots to share with my friends, sure. We can all agree that point-and-shoot cameras are on their way out. In fact, I don't know why a single copy of a point-and-shoot camera has been sold in the past decade.

My favorite experience with a camera was for college photography 101, when the professor insisted we get a camera with manual shutter speed, aperture, and focus. My dad gave me his metal SLR, from the 1970s or '80s. Until then I had only used electronic snapshot cameras and prosumer videocameras.

Two things appealed to me:

(1) Clarity of the process, with a decluttering of all the fiddly buttons for automatic and semiautomatic adjustments. It was not until then that it crystallized in my head that there really are only three adjustments: focus, aperture, and shutter speed.

(2) The visceral experience of a good metal camera body and decent sized knobs, the feeling of turning the focus ring on a professional, well-dampened manual-focus lens.

Are there some of you who approach cameras only as tools for your day job? If so, I can understand how you would be pleased by a brain-controlled hovering smartphone that took a 360-degree angle of a scene, and you could fiddle with the framing and depth of field (like those Lytro cameras) to your heart's content in post or better yet let the artificially intelligent editing program select all that for you, some time in the year 2070.

But that process has no appeal to me, and I would still be looking for a simple, Leica-esque videocamera, with manual everything and preferably auto-nothing.

And global shutter. Still waiting...

That's a big reason I like shooting with a real ENG camera & lens. Focus, Iris, Zoom, and ND, since we really don't mess with shutter speeds.