Blackmagic releases free pro-level app for shooting video on iPhone

By Trevor Mogg Published September 15, 2023

Blackmagic Design's new Camera app. — Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design has just released a free and feature-packed app for shooting video on the iPhone.

With the company’s background in building high-end digital movie cameras and popular video editing software such as DaVinci Resolve, the new Camera app will be worth a look for those who want more creative control when shooting footage on Apple’s iPhone.

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Tantalizingly, Blackmagic Design says its new iPhone app offers the same intuitive and user-friendly interface as its award-winning cameras.

As you’d expect, Blackmagic Design’s Camera app lets you take full control of various settings, including frame rate, shutter speed, white balance, and ISO. The display shows the status and record parameters, histogram, focus peaking, levels, frame guides, and more, but all of the data can be cleared away in a single swipe if it gets in the way.

The app lets you shoot in 16:9 or vertical aspect ratios, and, here’s a neat trick: you can also shoot 16:9 while holding the phone vertically if, say, you want to shoot unobtrusively.

The settings tab offers speedy access to advanced settings such as monitoring, audio, camera setup, recording, and so on, while the record tab gives you control over video resolution and recording format including industry-standard Apple ProRes or space-efficient H.264 and H.265. Professional audio options are also built-in, and you can add external microphones, too.

Once your footage is in the can, you can browse or scrub clips for quick review, search, and sort.

The Camera app also offers support for Blackmagic Cloud, allowing creators to collaborate and share media with video editors anywhere in the world, and of course, it also integrates seamlessly with DaVinci Resolve.

Despite its complexity, the app takes up a mere 37MB of iPhone storage, leaving more space for all of your footage.

While Blackmagic’s latest offering has way too many features for hobbyists, serious videographers will be tempted to take it for a spin.

Grant Petty, CEO of Blackmagic Design, describes the new Camera app as “a truly revolutionary workflow for creating feature film quality content using an iPhone.”

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

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