Olivia Rodrigo video shows it’s now a genuinely ‚pro‘ video camera
Apple has repeated its traditional ‘shot on iPhone’ trick by using the iPhone 15 Pro to shoot the whole of Olivia Rodrigo’s new music video (below). And the three big upgrades behind that video’s professional sheen show that Apple’s flagship phones are becoming genuinely ‚Pro‘ video cameras – if you know how to use them.
Beyond the headline arrival of a 5x optical zoom, the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s main camera upgrades were aimed at advanced video shooters. One of those is the ability to shoot video in Apple’s new ‘Log’ (short for logarithmic) color profile – as shown by Olivia Rodrigo’s new video, which was shot in a new Pro Res 4K Log format.
Like the best video cameras, Log lets you shoot ‘flat’ footage – a bit like film negatives – which preserves a wide dynamic range and gives you much more color-grading flexibility in post-production apps like Final Cut Pro.
The idea of shooting in a Log profile on iPhones isn’t brand new – it’s been (kind of) possible using apps like Filmic Pro. But these apps haven’t offered true Log profiles, as they’ve effectively desaturated an image that’s already been compressed by your iPhone. Apple’s new Log profile for the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max promises to instead draw all of that information directly from the sensor.
This helps explain the professional look of Olivia Rodrigo’s new ‘get him back!’ music video, which lacks the noticeable hallmarks of a typical iPhone video. While Apple’s video processing is pretty good for a phone, it often looks crunchy or oversharpened – compared to dedicated video cameras at least.
