Everyone has grown up watching movies and cinematic classics, which draws your eyes to move on to another subject on the screen and wondered how they were able to pull off such a shot. Achieving the results you see in your favorite movies and television shows requires not only specialized equipment but also years of focus-grabbing experience.
But today, thanks to companies like Apple, you can limit such capability to a smaller device like a smartphone. The iPhone’s Cinematic Mode, previously available on the iPhone 13 series, enables you to shoot movies with shallow depth of field and shift focus from one subject to another to give your work a more “cinematic” aesthetic. .
Supported iPhones
Before I explain how to use Cinematic Mode properly, make sure your device is supported. Currently, only this year’s iPhone 13 series and the recently launched iPhone 14 series are supported.
- iphone 14 pro
- iphone 14 pro max
- iphone 14
- iphone 14 plus
- iphone 13 pro
- iphone 13 pro max
- iphone 13
- iphone 13 mini
First and foremost, everything is good in moderation. Likewise, background blur, or bokeh, that you can achieve with Cinematic Mode, should be used sparingly. Overdoing it can make your footage look unnatural (more on that later).
To record in Cinematic Mode, go to your iPhone Camera app and swipe up on Cinematic Mode.
Just like you would with a “real” DSLR or mirrorless camera, you can turn the f-stop in Cinematic Mode to change the depth. While not hardware-based, the software’s ability to give you such fine-grained control over the footage you receive is nothing short of remarkable.
Depending on the creative direction and needs of your shot, choose the f-stop. Now, as I said earlier in this article, don’t overdo the blur/bokeh. At the end of the day, it’s all software trying to mimic a hardware solution, make sure your depth of field isn’t too shallow, making your footage look unnatural.
Depending on the iPhone model you own, you can choose between a 1X normal and 3X telephoto lens for filming your videos. The 3X lens on Pro iPhones lets you film beautiful videos with the cinema-like background compression that comes with lenses 50mm and above.
You can also adjust the exposure by tapping the Exposure button and adjusting the slider to make your image darker or brighter.
How to adjust focus? Well, you can tap in the viewfinder to draw focus on your subject. If you have more than one subject in the frame, you can alternate between the two according to your shooting needs. In addition, you can set focus to automatic by double-tapping the subject, and touch and hold the screen to lock focus at a distance.
Editing Your Cinematic Mode Footage
If you make an error while filming, don’t fret because you can adjust depth of field and focus areas even after taking video, something you can’t do on professional-grade cameras.
Here’s how you can edit a video in Cinematic Mode:
- Open the Photos app > Tap on the video you want to edit.
- tap edit
- Using the depth control buttons, adjust the depth of field to your liking. After you are finished with editing, tap on Done.
- Now, if you want to change the focus, in the video timeline, you will see yellow dots. These dots indicate the moments in your video in which the focus is changing between subjects.
- When you navigate to such a point, the subject in focus will have a yellow square, and subjects that are not in focus will have a white square.
- If you want the focus to change from one to the other, tap the white square to change the focus. And you can do anything from locking focus to setting autofocus.
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As good as the editing features are, it’s a good idea to make it a habit to do as much work as you can while shooting. It’s not ideal to leave everything for post-production.
Cinematic Mode is ideal for content creators who want to upgrade their production quality. Not only does this create a more professional look and feel to your footage but it also ensures that you are pushing yourself creatively. Have fun, let your creative juices flow!
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