The iPhone 13 includes an impressive “Cinematic Mode” for filming movies. It includes a new camera feature called “cinematic mode” that’s designed to assist professional and amateur filmmakers in making quality movies from the convenience of their phones. It makes shooting every day events look like pro work without spending money on pro equipment. The outward design is similar to the last iPhone, but the inner workings got an upgrade.
With its Dolby Vision HDR mode, the new camera’s predictive focusing can track where the subject in the video is looking and automatically adjust its focus, but users will also be able to manually edit the depth of field and bokeh levels in their videos. In other words, users can change their focus points after they are done recording.
Via TechRadar.com:
The first area is to do with predicting where the focus needs to head to next. In its demo (below), Apple showed the camera focusing back and forth between people as one looks away from the camera. In another scene someone enters the frame from the left, and the camera quickly transitions focus to their face, almost seeming to start the transition before they were fully visible. This suggests that Cinematic mode’s focus behavior may be influenced by the ultra-wide camera, which in this scenario is not actually used to capture footage. The ultra-wide becomes a sort of director of photography, if one whose production notes are written a fraction of a second before they’re enacted. This should give your videos a better sense of deliberation, even if it is automated.
Focus pixels are essential here too. For autofocus to look natural and deliberate, it has to avoid the ‘seeking’ effect seen in contrast-detection AF. This is where the autofocus motor overshoots the point of focus and pulls back, with the focus appearing to wobble before it hits its mark. All the iPhone 13 phones have dual-pixel AF, a phase-detection autofocus method that allows for seek-free focus even with limited lighting – although in Apple’s own demos some of the focus changes don’t land with the confidence of a pro focusing manually.
Like the current phones, this new version is also offered in a few versions: regular, mini, pro and pro max.
The iPhone 13 Pros come with an extra lens and an additional ProRes option that takes video captures to the next level; this version is recommended for users who plan to use their recordings in a professional setting. They also come with new “photographic styles” that sort of work like Adobe Lightroom — users will be able to apply multiple adjustments to multiple scenes using an option that allows you to store settings for future use. The new phone also boasts a new LiDAR tool TechRadar.com describes as “light wavelengths outside of human vision [that analyze] the light that’s bounced off objects and reflected back to the sensor to create a 3D map of a space.”
“That’s really bringing it up to the professional film cameras,” Emmy award-winning filmmaker Greig Fraser, said about the release during Apple’s reveal event this month. “We’re going to very, very soon see filmmakers make films in a different way.”
If you’re wondering how realistic it is to actually shoot a movie on a phone, think back to Sean Baker’s indie debut, Tangerine. The movie, which was released at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, was shot on a couple of iPhone 5s.
Sources say Tangerine was the most successful and high profile of its nature due to the quality and unique production. It won two Gotham Awards and an Indie Spirit Award. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences even later put one of the iPhone 5s Baker used to create the film on permanent display in the Academy Museum.
With the iPhone 13’s new features, the extent of possibilities for phone-recorded movies are endless…
The “cinematic mode” is said to replicate the rack focus effect found in feature films. By capturing recordings at 30 frames per second, the iPhone 13 is able to determine the distance between the camera and its subjects in the frame which produces a premiere capture. To aid in the quality, the iPhone 13 phone also comes equip with Apple’s Neural Engine part of the A15 Bionic SoC that can handle bigger workloads than past processing hardware.
While 4K is the new wave and available on Apple phones, the iPhone 13’s Cinematic mode is limited to 1080p quality at 30fps. Techies predict the iPhone 14 may upgrade to a feature of that level, but right now, it’s a no-go.
In addition to the above mentioned of what it actually does feature, the iPhone 13 carries the following upgrades:
- Longer batter life: Up to 2.5 hours more
- New color options: Pink, blue, midnight, starlight, red
- Ceramic shield glass
- Super Retina XDR display: Bright, colorful, sharp
- Water resistant
- Ultra wide camera that captures 47% more light
- Night mode selfies
- 2x the storage, starting at 128GB
- A15 Bionic Chip beats competition:
- Up to 50% faster CPU
- Up to 30% faster graphics
- 5G band
- Built in privacy
Camera Specs:
- Dual 12MP camera system: Wide and Ultra Wide cameras
- Wide: ƒ/1.6 aperture
- Ultra Wide: ƒ/2.4 aperture and 120° field of view
- 2x optical zoom out
- Digital zoom up to 5x
- Portrait mode with advanced bokeh and Depth Control
- Portrait Lighting with six effects (Natural, Studio, Contour, Stage, Stage Mono, High‑Key Mono)
- Sensor‑shift optical image stabilization (Wide)
- Seven‑element lens (Wide); five‑element lens (Ultra Wide)
- True Tone flash with Slow Sync
- Panorama (up to 63MP)
- Sapphire crystal lens cover
- 100% Focus Pixels (Wide)
- Night mode
- Deep Fusion
- Smart HDR 4
- Photographic Styles
- Wide color capture for photos and Live Photos
- Lens correction (Ultra Wide)
- Advanced red‑eye correction
- Auto image stabilization
- Burst mode
- Photo geotagging
- Image formats captured: HEIF and JPEG
Video Recording Specs:
- Cinematic mode for recording videos with shallow depth of field (1080p at 30 fps)
- HDR video recording with Dolby Vision up to 4K at 60 fps
- 4K video recording at 24 fps, 25 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps
- 1080p HD video recording at 25 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps
- 720p HD video recording at 30 fps
- Sensor-shift optical image stabilization for video (Wide)
- 2x optical zoom out
- Digital zoom up to 3x
- Audio zoom
- True Tone flash
- QuickTake video
- Slo‑mo video support for 1080p at 120 fps or 240 fps
- Time‑lapse video with stabilization
- Night mode Time-lapse
- Cinematic video stabilization (4K, 1080p, and 720p)
- Continuous autofocus video
- Take 8MP still photos while recording 4K video
- Playback zoom
- Video formats recorded: HEVC and H.264
- Stereo recording
TrueDepth Camera:
- 12MP camera
- ƒ/2.2 aperture
- Portrait mode with advanced bokeh and Depth Control
- Portrait Lighting with six effects (Natural, Studio, Contour, Stage, Stage Mono, High‑Key Mono)
- Animoji and Memoji
- Night mode
- Deep Fusion
- Smart HDR 4
- Photographic Styles
- Cinematic mode for recording videos with shallow depth of field (1080p at 30 fps)
- HDR video recording with Dolby Vision up to 4K at 60 fps
- 4K video recording at 24 fps, 25 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps
- 1080p HD video recording at 25 fps, 30 fps, or 60 fps
- Slo-mo video support for 1080p at 120 fps
- Time‑lapse video with stabilization
- Night mode Time-lapse
- Cinematic video stabilization (4K, 1080p, and 720p)
- QuickTake video
- Wide color capture for photos and Live Photos
- Lens correction
- Retina Flash
- Auto image stabilization
- Burst mode