Blackmagic Design has launched an app that I believe will have professional and amateur creators using the iPhone for news and content gathering like we’ve never seen before.
Blackmagic Camera is now available from the Apple App Store for free and its potential is enormous, especially for a team of video shooters. The app requires iOS 16.0 or later and a device with the A12 Bionic chip or later. That means you’re covered from the Xs onwards.
Blackmagic Camera unleashes the video capabilities of the iPhone by adding digital film camera controls so users experience an interface just like a real Blackmagic Design camera. This allows for easy adjustment of frame rate, shutter angle, white balance, ISO, lenses and much more.
Blackmagic Camera Features
- Shoot in 16:9 or vertical aspect ratios.
- Stealth mode for shooting 16:9 while holding phone vertically – seen here.
- Capture in Apple ProRes, HEVC and H.264 with auto proxy generation.
- Frame rate, shutter speed, exposure, white balance, tint and colour space camera controls.
- Focus assist, zebra, frame guides, histogram, 3D LUT monitoring.
- Time of day or run time, timecode recording.
- PCM, IEEE Float or AAC audio recording, 44.1 or 48 kHz sample rate.
- VU or PPM audio meters.
- Thumbnail view of all recorded clips in media tab.
- Preview clips with scrubber, duration, timecode and file name display.
- Fully integrated with Blackmagic Cloud and DaVinci Resolve.
- Record to iPhone, select recorded clips to share via Blackmagic Cloud or sync automatically.
As I explained In Sunday’s segment on Sky News Australia (Weekend Edition with Tim Gilbert) users can immediately upload video proxies and their originals to a ‘live’ edit session in DaVinci Resolve.
“Blackmagic Camera is a truly revolutionary workflow for creating feature film quality content using an iPhone ,” said Grant Petty, Blackmagic Design CEO.
“Plus, the Blackmagic Cloud workflow lets customers record to Blackmagic Cloud Storage and automatically sync with DaVinci Resolve.
“Now they can get their footage to the newsroom or post production studio in minutes.
“I think it will be really exciting to find out how Blackmagic Camera will change traditional news and post production workflows.”
Creators can save their media to the files folder on the phone, send it to Blackmagic Cloud Storage via Blackmagic Cloud or manually choose which clips to upload to a project library. It’s from here where users sync media from Blackmagic Camera directly into a DaVinci Resolve project so users are ready to edit and colour grade.
Blackmagic Camera features a built in chat workspace so Blackmagic Cloud project members can talk about shots and quickly share creative ideas, all without leaving the app. Users can quickly message editors, assistants, colourists or VFX artists to talk about shot selection or to receive an update on the project. Everyone on that project can see their message and reply instantly. All this means customers can keep in touch with other project members without leaving the app.
Creating their Blackmagic ID allows customers to have access to Blackmagic Cloud. It’s easy and there’s no charge. Simply tap on Blackmagic Cloud in the media tab to go to the Blackmagic Cloud website to register. Once users have created their Blackmagic ID they can log in and set up their project library. This is where projects to upload to Cloud Storage are created. With a project library set up, select for Blackmagic Camera to sync directly to Cloud Storage from the app. Invite others using their Blackmagic ID to share the project and instantly collaborate with editors and colourists globally, working on the same project.
The image above shows how well the iPhone can be tuned to professional standards. At this stage, the app is only available for iPhone. If you’re a Filmic Pro user, like me, paying a subscription fee, Blackmagic is a compelling alternative.