this is the iPhone 16 Pro, and ever since
this phone was announced, I've seen a decent amount of negativity
from people, which, if I was to sum
up, would be a lack of excitement about what Apple has changed
and updated with their phones this year. But in my opinion, as a filmmaker, if
we're talking about the video capabilities of the iPhone 16 Pro in particular,
this phone is a really great upgrade and has easily the best video quality
that you can get from a cell phone and arguably some of the best
audio quality as well. So in this video, I'm
going to be reviewing the iPhone 16 Pro from the perspective of a filmmaker
and telling you if it's worth purchasing, especially if you're upgrading
from a phone that is several years old, Like an iPhone 14,
13, 12, Android phone, etc.. Also, for the sake of ethics,
I want you to know this video is not paid or sponsored by Apple. I bought this phone with my own money
getting right into it. Then if you are not coming from an iPhone
15 Pro but from an earlier iPhone, I've heard from many people
that still have an iPhone 12 and they're wondering
if it's time to upgrade.
And let me just say, if you are someone
that records videos with your phone, I cannot overstate what a massive upgrade the iPhone 15 Pro was from a video quality
standpoint. The 15 Pro added Apple Log,
which boosted the phone's dynamic range, making it much more competitive
with even mirrorless cameras from the likes of Sony and Panasonic,
while also significantly dying back. The oversharpening effect that
typically plagues most cell phone videos. Pair that with the ability to record
a very high bitrate ProRes video file that could hold up
very well to heavy color grading, and Apple has essentially given you
an incredible filmmaking camera that works way better than anything we've had
in this size and form factor before.
The iPhone 15 Pro was good enough
that I filmed a wedding with it last year, and the footage looked great. Likewise, news recently broke
that the director of the movie 28 Days Later Sequel to the much loved 28 Days
Later and 28 weeks later, he actually filmed the new 28 Years Later
movie with the iPhone 15 Pro. It's pretty wild stuff. And any time that I've posted
about filmmaking with the iPhone 15 Pro or 16 Pro,
I've received multiple comments from people telling me that nobody's
filming anything professional on a phone. But that's simply not true. While you are busy typing an angry comment
about how useless an iPhone is for filmmaking,
there are professionals out there that are creating movies that you're going
to watch in a theater with this device, so I'm sorry to say,
but you're factually incorrect.
Sort of some of my feelings about whether
you should upgrade to the 16 Pro or not. If you are coming from any iPhone
earlier than the 15 Pro, I would at the very least recommend upgrading to a 15 Pro
for these video quality improvements. And heck, you can probably find one for a good
discount now that the 16 Pro is out. But like I said
at the start of this video, in my experience,
the 16 Pro does offer some really nice upgrades over the 15 Pro
in the realm of video creation. And if you are someone that only upgrade
your phone every 3 to 5 years, it may be worth it for you to pony up
more for the 16 Pro to be better future proofed
and have the phone last longer. Regardless,
let's now turn our attention to the 16 Pro now and talk about all of its upgrades
and new features. Because for me, coming from the 15 Pro,
there were definitely upgrades that I wanted to see,
some of which Apple gave us and some of which are still missing,
and that I'm still hoping and waiting for.
Up. First, let's talk
frame rates for six years now. Yes, ever since the iPhone X back in 2017. Wow, that's a long time ago. Apple has been stuck with a maximum frame
rate and resolution of 4K at 60 frames per second on the iPhone. To be clear, this has been very usable
and I filmed most of a wedding last year with this resolution
and frame rate on iPhone 15 Pro, but this is also a time whenever other
cell phones and a lot of other professional cameras out there are capable of recording
in higher resolutions like six K and eight K, which I don't really care
about that high of a resolution as much. these cameras have also been able
to record at 120 frames per second, which is far more interesting
to most filmmakers. I think personally,
I'm more of a 60 FPS guy. That is my go to for filming slow motion,
because I think that footage at 120 fps looks a bit too slow at times. And in addition, once you start filming
at higher frame rates like 120 fps, you start to run into more issues
with LED lights flickering due
to wonky refresh rates, etc.
So like I said, I usually stick to 60 fps, but I just said the word usually meaning that there are definitely situations
where I feel like 120 fps is warranted. So I was so thrilled and I'm happy
to tell you that the iPhone 16 Pro is now capable of recording video in 4K
at 120 frames per second. This is some of you
may be really excited about. If you're someone that films at 120 fps,
and which I know there are plenty of you out there that do so you can make yourself
known in the comments. Or alternatively,
you may be indifferent to this frame rate, but to that I say hey,
just because you do not need this feature now doesn't mean that you're not going
to be filming something in the future where you wish that you had just a bit
more slow motion, while still having a high resolution video,
and that is where you're going to love having the option
to film in 4K at 120 fps.
Now, that said, about how great 4K at 120 fps says, I do have one big caveat that I discovered after purchasing
the phone that you need to be aware of. And that caveat is that while, yes,
the iPhone 16 Pro can absolutely film in 4K at 120 fps,
it can only do this with the main camera. It is incapable of filming 4K 120 with the ultra wide or five zoom cameras, and I've really not seen many people
talking about this. I don't think that it's a dealbreaker
that only the main camera can film in this frame rate and resolution,
but it's definitely a surprise considering that all of the previous
iPhones were able to film in all frame rates and resolutions
with all of their cameras, so Apple is clearly pushing the tech
pretty hard to be able to film in 4K 120, and I suppose we'll have to wait
for the iPhone 17 Pro to see if this high of a frame rate and resolution is supported
with the other cameras as well.
Just another thing
to ask Apple for in the future. Speaking more about frame rates now, we need to talk about another upgrade
that Apple added to the iPhone 16 Pro, but I want you to know this is just
a software upgrade for iOS 18, and it's also available on all
previous iPhones as long as they upgrade. And regardless, it's great to see because it's filmmaking related
and we need to talk about it.
This upgrade is that Apple allows you
to adjust the frame rate of video after you filmed it. Apple realized that this is something
that filmmakers are going to want to use relatively often, especially if you're
creating content for social media. So they added the ability for you
to simply go into the photos app, tap the stopwatch button,
and then slow down the frame rate. Now, this is done in the typical Apple way of giving you some control
but not complete control. So as a professional, I would really prefer the ability
to adjust the video frame rate by an exact number. For example,
slowing 60 FPS footage down to exactly 23.976 frames per second. But unfortunately,
you're still going to have to use a professional video
editing software for that, and you're going to be more limited
in your choices for slow motion
frame rates in the photos app.
But hey, it's better than nothing. Next, for upgrades that I really wanted
to see from the iPhone 15 Pro, I was really hoping for better low
light performance and image quality
with the zoom and ultrawide cameras. If you've used an iPhone before,
it's pretty much always been this way. Apple prioritizes video
quality of the main camera above all else, and while the phone has two other cameras,
an ultra wide and a zoom, those feel kind of like afterthoughts. So I was really hoping
that Apple would improve the image quality with these other cameras.
On the iPhone 16 Pro, and I'm happy
to tell you that while it isn't perfect, Apple has answered
at least part of my requests. Yes, the iPhone 16 Pro's ultrawide
camera has been significant improved with the addition of a new 48
megapixel sensor, which records video that is noticeably sharper and
more detailed than the previous version. On the 15 Pro, and this is especially
obvious toward the edge of the frame. And any footage that you've recorded. In my testing,
it doesn't look like there's a big jump in low light performance
with the ultrawide camera, but as long as you have enough light, I still think that
this is a good improvement. And if you're someone that likes the ultra wide look,
which I especially do for establishing shots, etc.,
I think you're going to find yourself using the ultrawide camera
even more often.
Unfortunately, though, I cannot say the same for the five zoom
camera on the iPhone 16 Pro. To my eye, the footage from this camera looks very similar to footage
from the iPhone 15 Pro, which means that if you have enough light, let's say you're
filming outdoors on a partly cloudy day, or you're filming in a studio
with a lot of light sources, you're going to be perfectly fine. And I think you'll be really happy with the quality of footage
that you get from the zoom camera. But once the sun goes down,
you're going to want to either stop using the five zoom entirely
or invest in a good set of lights Because if the iPhone has to increase
the ISO levels for this camera, good luck.
It gets noisy quickly, and overall
the image looks basically identical to the iPhone
15 Pro Max. Here's hoping to. The iPhone
17 Pro completes this upgrade process. Now come on Apple. If you've upgraded the ultrawide this year, you can definitely upgrade
the zoom next year. Moving on to the next upgrade
that I wanted to see from the iPhone 16 Pro was also something
that was unfortunately not included, but I'm hopeful that Apple could add it in
a software update whenever they want to.
Here's the deal
if you want to film in Apple log using the native iPhone camera app,
which if you remember, we talked about it earlier, Apple is going to give you
the best possible video quality from the camera with much less
oversharpening and better dynamic range. The image is gorgeous, trust me. You want to film in Apple log? Well, the issue is that it's only possible
to film an Apple log if you also film in the ProRes
video codec, which is a fantastic codec. Don't get me wrong, it's
very easy to edit. And it's also supported on
pretty much all video editing software. It's great. The only con is that
ProRes is a very large file size codec. And in addition, if you want to film
in higher frame rates with the iPhone 16 Pro, like 4K at 60 fps or 120,
you have to connect an external SSD to the USB Type-C port on the bottom of the phone
to save the files, because presumably Apple doesn't
want you completely filling up the iPhone's storage space too fast.
Because remember, ProRes creates
use files. Thankfully,
here's the big workaround for you if you choose to use the Black Magic
Camera app instead of the native iPhone camera app,
that app gives you two huge benefits. Namely, you can film in higher
frame rates and resolutions directly to the phone's storage frame rates,
like even 4K at 120 fps, which to be clear,
the iPhone 16 Pro is capable of recording 4K 120 and ProRes
with Epilog to the Blackmagic Camera app. But I'm also going to warn you
please do not try to do this immediately after you set up your phone like I did, because the Blackmagic Camera app
is going to start flashing an exclamation mark at you,
indicating that it's dropping frames.
But this is not due to the phone
being incapable of recording in 4K 120. It's because the phone is still setting up a lot of things
and running a lot of background processes, and this can result in the processor
and storage not being able to keep up
with the high demands of 4K at 120 fps. So give your phone a few hours or a day
after you've set it up. And then I'm happy to tell you
that the iPhone 16 Pro is capable of recording these frame rates
and resolutions internally using the Black Magic Camera app.
In addition,
and this is really the big upgrade and my favorite reason
for using the Black Magic Camera app. You can also choose to film an Apple Log
using the H264 five video codec instead of ProRes, which keep in mind
H2 65 is going to give you dramatically smaller file sizes while still keeping
a very comparable image quality to ProRes. So can you see why I love the Black Magic
Camera app? It essentially removes
a lot of the limitations of the native iPhone camera app for Apple Log, and gives
you a smaller file size in the process.
I love it, but that said,
there is still something so great about the native iPhone camera app
and how user friendly and simple it is. Plus, a quick is to open and get filming. So my hope for the iPhone
16 would have been that Apple recognized, hey, Blackmagic is already proving that
we do not need this artificial limitation on frame rates, only being able to record
higher than 4K 60 to an external SSD. And look, they're using a more compressed
codec as well. So please, Apple,
give us a software update that enables us as filmmakers to record the iPhone's
internal storage without an SSD, and give us a toggle to be able to film
in Apple log in H2 65 as well. We would love that. Please. Those are really the only things
keeping me from loving the iPhone native camera app. Thankfully, Blackmagic does have our backs
as filmmakers of the alternative, so it's not like it's
the end of the world. And I want you to know,
I have a tutorial showing you how to use the Blackmagic Camera
app for the iPhone 15 Pro, which I will link to down below,
and you can let me know if you want me to make an updated version
of that video for the iPhone 16 Pro.
In addition, if you want some color
presets for Apple Log that look fantastic, I'm happy to tell you
that I've created a set of presets that work beautifully with log footage
from any camera, including Apple Log, and I will link to those presets down
below. Talking more about the 16 Pro's upgrades. Now, this is not an upgrade that I knew that I wanted,
but one that I'm happy to see included. And that is the addition of Apple's
new camera control button.
Yes, I remember reading rumors for me
about a year or so ago, saying that Apple is planning on eventually getting rid of all the buttons
and ports on their phones, making it just a touchscreen
that charges wirelessly. Thankfully, that did not end up happening,
and as a filmmaker that has multiple cameras
that have a lot of buttons on them, I'm a big fan of buttons, and I think that they definitely
have a place over a touchscreen. There's a reason
that Sony has not made their cameras just a giant touch screen
with no buttons on them. Humans like buttons talking about this
camera control button in particular, in typical Apple fashion,
they wanted to cram a ton of capabilities and versatility into it
so you can press it like a normal button. You can have press it
for different things.
You can swipe your finger
across it to adjust settings. There's a ton of versatility here,
but it's also very overwhelming. Whenever you first use the phone. It definitely took me a while to get it
dialed in and working. How I wanted it to. First though, I need to address
the elephant in the room though, and that is that I am left handed,
so I'm normally holding my phone in this hand here, and I was really worried about this
because I hold my phone in my left hand, which means that my finger is pretty
much always going to be touching the new camera control button, and that I may be
triggering it accidentally. Thankfully,
once I had the phone in my hands, I discovered that I was wrong about that
theory because the camera control button is very flush
against the side of the phone.
Even if you pick it up with a decently
firm grip, it's hard to accidentally trigger camera control,
which is a big relief. Of course, if you're concerned about this,
I'm happy to tell you that you can go into the phone's camera settings,
and there's an option for you to toggle that will require the camera control
button to be double tapped to activate it, which will remove a lot of the stress
of accidental activation. So if you are dealing with your fingers
accidentally activating camera control, by all means activate
this setting as well.
Anyways, in regards to camera control,
Apple showed off a ton of different features in their keynotes
where they were pressing this new button, including ways to change
and adjust the settings, as well as the ability
to have pressed the button to lock exposure and focus before fully
pressing it to start recording a video. Unfortunately, that half press
feature is not available yet, but Apple says it's coming in a future
firmware update. But the ability to heavily
customize the camera control button and change settings with
it is already available. Personally, after using the camera control
for a little while, I settled on two settings
that I really prefer using with it. The first is a setting that allows you
to change your exposure by swiping. Changing exposure in the native camera app
without camera control is kind of a pain, because you have to tap
on the screen and drag up and down, and if you already have the camera
focused on something, it's going to refocus
whenever you tap on the screen.
It's just a bit cumbersome to adjust,
especially if you consider that iPhones are not always the most accurate
when it comes to exposure, and you sometimes need to bring the exposure down
to keep it from Overexposing camera control makes that much easier,
and I really appreciated. Secondly,
I'm a fan of using camera control to swap between the ultra wide, wide,
and zoom lenses. No taps on the screen required to change cameras,
just swipe to change your focal length. I'm a big fan. Please note you can also set Tamra control
to zoom in and out, but considering how much video quality you lose
whenever you digitally zoom in on a video instead of just changing the cameras, I pretty much always just recommend
changing the lens. Not using the zoom feature. Also want to point out with camera control one thing you may not have thought about,
but I think this is really great, is that you now have a dedicated
hardware button that's dedicated to launching the camera
whenever you press it. Sometimes I'll be with my family
or at an event, etc. where I really need
to record something right away.
But if I'm already using my phone, that means I had to go back to the home
screen to select the camera, or swipe down and go to the control center. Then tap on the camera or lock the phone
and then tap on the camera. It's just a few extra steps,
But now with camera control, I think it's really awesome that no matter
what you're doing with your phone, the instant
you press the camera control button, the camera app is going to open
and be ready for you to start filming or taking photos.
Speaking of other
hidden upgrades for the iPhone 16 Pro now, you should also know that Apple says
that the 16 Pro has a new graphite and aluminum heat dissipation system
built into the chassis of the phone that should help
prevent it from overheating, which I think is really important
considering that this phone now films in 4K at 120 fps,
which can generate a lot of heat very quickly due
to the massive amount of data it requires.
Of course, because I'm also based in Texas
and the iPhone 16 Pro was released at the tail end of summer, so the temperatures
are still hitting in the 90s every day. I was very interested to see how the phone
would handle recording at these higher temperatures. I'm happy to tell you that in my testing,
filming a variety of clips outdoor on a hot day with a variety of frame rates
and resolutions constantly, all in ProRes, the phone did get plenty warm
and dimmed the screen a bit.
It never overheated, though, or stopped me
from using it, so I call that a win. Next, I want to talk about one of the biggest upgrades to the iPhone
16 Pro from really any previous iPhone. And you should know that
I was really skeptical of this upgrade whenever Apple mentioned it,
but I've been very pleasantly surprised This upgrade is in the area of audio,
which if you are a film maker, you know how important audio is for
any video. Your audience will forgive shaky footage
that's blurry and low resolution, but the instant you start assaulting
their ears with crappy sounding audio, they're going to click away
and want to watch something else. So when Apple mentioned that
the iPhone 16 Pro now includes four studio quality
microphones, there were it's not mine, as well as some very powerful software customization tools
for processing this audio. I was very intrigued. Speaking about the hardware first, though,
the iPhone 15 Pro only had three microphones,
so the 16 Pro is getting one more, and these microphones
are placed all around the phone so it can record truly 360 degree audio. It's almost like Apple makes a VR headset.
You can wear that recording with these microphones, and 360
would be really useful for in addition, with these four microphones on the 16
Pro, Apple says that they have a lower noise floor, meaning that the audio
should sound cleaner and be less noisy. If you have to bring up the audio levels. So of course, I tested this
recording some audio using the Voice Memos feature on my iPhone
15 Pro, then doing the same on my 16 Pro. of these audio
samples are recorded in my sound Treated studio here and are just room tone,
meaning that I'm not making any sounds, we're just listening for how much noise the iPhone
microphones are generating on their own. I've also boosted the gain on both of these examples,
so you can really hear the difference in noise floor
between these two microphones. Here's a few seconds of the iPhone 15 Pro. And here's a few seconds of the iPhone 16 Pro. As you can hear, the iPhone 16 Pro's
microphones are generating less noise, meaning they have a lower noise floor
and they're going to sound even better.
In addition,
these mics just sound really good. If you're speaking into them two. Media speaking into the iphone
sechste In Mikrofon Nas ario from this Mikes Holding Der Ort, an dem Mikrofon
Sounds Predigt und Guide. Sophia like me in Gefangenschaft
Making of Social Media Videos Videos. Sie sind ein Bild, ein Mikrofon,
einige Frauen, das gebe ich upgra ed Birgit Wesen für geht die iPhone 16 pro. We are not
done yet because we now need to talk about another software update
that Apple has added to the iPhone. And this is one that's best used if you can hear the audio
that the phones are recording. So welcome to this new picture
in picture view for the iPhone. And the first thing you need to know is
that this new setting is called Audio Mix. And by default,
the iPhone is going to record a 360 audio mix from around the phone.
But with this audio mix tool,
you can choose to use certain microphones while canceling the audio of others,
giving you directional audio without. You need to put a giant shotgun microphone
on the front of your phone. Now, the main thing that I want you to keep in mind
is that this audio mix setting is tunable, and you can adjust the intensity
of the mix to make it weaker or stronger. For example, in this test,
I'm about to show you, I have the intensity set to 50
and it sounded great on my iPhone. Playing it back,
it didn't sound as good on my computer, so just be aware that you may need to tweak this intensity setting
whenever you're editing your sound. With this audio mix feature. The in frame option is going to be great
if you're recording multiple people speaking, and you only want the mic
to pick up people that are in the frame.
Unfortunately, just me. But imagine that I was once over here
and so the camera's going to pick up audio that's in the frame. Next you have the studio setting,
which is going to tune the microphones to sound like you're
recording a podcast in a studio. So, for example,
I currently have some sound effects that make it sound like I'm
in a very loud coffee shop, but because I'm here in the frame
and the iPhone is doing some mixing to make it sound like I'm in a studio,
it's going to be deadening those sounds. So, for example, if I turn that off,
here's how it sounds pretty darn loud. Loud coffee pouring things like that,
but turns to you back on Lastly, you have the cinematic audio setting,
which essentially uses all of the iPhone's microphones to record
all of the audio around the phone, but then it mixes
all the audio in real time, so it sounds like it's coming from
the front, where the camera is recording.
And Apple says this is the same way
that surround sound will be formatted for movies, so feel free
to play around with this if you want. But like I said, the first two
are the ones that I think you're probably
going to be using the most. So as you can see, well,
I've seen a decent amount of people being negative about the iPhone
16 Pro saying that they aren't as excited about it
as they were about the 15 Pro. I don't think that that sentiment
really applies for us as filmmakers or anyone who records video
with their phone, because as you can see in this video,
Apple has packed a ton of useful features
for filmmakers into the 16 Pro. And by the way, we
didn't even really touch on battery life. But the battery life is stellar as well.
Even if you're filming a ton of video
clips, it should keep going all day,
which is great. So here's my take if you are considering
upgrading to the 16 Pro from an Android phone, which, to be clear, I do not want to start a big war in
the comments, but Samsung and Pixel etc. do not have a high quality
pro level video codec like ProRes or a high dynamic range log profile
like Apple Log. So there's really no comparison here. Apple solidly beats the vast majority
of Android phones in video quality. Or if you are considering
upgrading to the 16 Pro from any iPhone prior to the 15 Pro,
like the 14, 13, 12, 11, etc., you should know that the 16 Pro
is going to be a mass upgrade for you in terms of video quality,
and I think that you're going to absolutely love the videos
that you're able to create with it. And side note, by the way, because I know
people are going to ask, I've seen a lot of people having the sentiment
that you should upgrade to the regular 16 instead of the 16 Pro this year,
but keep in mind that for filmmaking, Apple is only enabling ProRes and Apple
log support on their pro phone models.
And considering
just how good Apple log footage looks, trust me, you want to go with the pro. Thanks so much for watching. If you've been considering
getting into wedding filmmaking, which remember,
I did film a wedding with the iPhone 15 Pro, I would highly recommend checking out
my free workshop that I put together. It's going to show you how to book
your next wedding in 30 days or less. This workshop is going to put you
on the fast track to starting a filmmaking business, and making potentially
thousands of dollars on the weekend. I will link to this free workshop
down in the video description. Please like this video
if you enjoyed it. Subscribe. If you want to see more videos about filmmaking
with the iPhone or filmmaking in general, and let me know what other videos
you want to see from me.
Thanks so much for watching
and have a great day! I. Love. The light. We aren't done yet now, because we need to talk more
about the software upgrades that Apple has packed into the iPhone
16 Pro, as well. A new setting in your videos has appeared
called Audio Mix, and by default, the iPhone is going to record
a 360 audio mix from around the phone. with this audio mix tool,
you can have the phone choose to use certain microphones while canceling the audio from others,
giving you directional audio without you needing to put a giant shotgun
mic attached to the top of your phone. The in frame option for audio
mix is going to be great if you're recording
multiple people speaking, and you only want the mic
to pick up people in the frame, Then you have the studio setting,
which is going to tune the microphones to sound like you're
recording a podcast in a studio.
So that way you don't have to spend money
on sound treatment to kill the echo. Like I did here in this room. Personally, this studio setting
is the setting that I would plan on using the most when recording videos
for social media, etc. lastly, you have the cinematic
audio setting, which essentially uses all of the iPhone's microphones
to record all of the audio around them. But then it mixes all the audio
in real time, so it sounds like it's coming from the front
where the camera is recording. And Apple says this is the same way
that surround sound would be formatted for Hollywood movies. So feel free to play around with this
if you want. But like I said,
the first two are the ones I think you're probably
going to be using the most. In the past, if you wanted to make a high frame
rate video slow motion, you would either need to use a third party app on your phone
or copy the video clip to your computer.
Then use a more full featured video editing software
to adjust the frame rate and slow it down. Thankfully,.
