The Art and Limitations of Filming with an iPhone

In today's era of smartphone revolution, many creators are turning to their iPhones as a primary camera for filming projects. While this can be a convenient and cost-effective option, it also comes with its own set of challenges and limitations. This article will delve into the world of filming with an iPhone, exploring the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Setting Up a Teleprompter Section

One of the biggest hurdles when filming with an iPhone is setting up a teleprompter section. As seen in this two-camera setup that you're looking at right now, all filmed on an iPhone, this part was a nightmare to set up. The first challenge was fitting it into the teleprompter, which nearly proved impossible. The camera and sensors are off-axis due to AIS (Automatic Image Stabilization), resulting in everything being slightly off to the side. This also meant that the camera caught corners of the teleprompter, making it difficult to get a clean shot. Zooming out will reveal these corners, serving as a reminder of the challenges faced during setup.

Monitoring Framing and Adjustments

Another issue when filming with an iPhone is monitoring framing as you're setting up. When done by oneself, this can be quite difficult unless you have a separate monitor plugged into the iPhone or are mirroring your phone onto a Mac. Using the Apple watch to control and see framing proved to be unreliable, with the device not working at all in our tests. As a result, we relied on the Final Cut camera app that was synced with our iPad, which made things slightly easier until the connection dropped. We lost connection, and unfortunately, it couldn't reestablish itself. It's as if the connection is broken forever.

Finalizing Framing and Switching to The Kino App

Once framing was nailed down, we switched back to The Kino app, which may seem counterintuitive but proved to be a better option in retrospect. We finally got our framing right, and now we're at 800 ISO, with the 24mm lens, which isn't typically used when filming talking heads. This section is like our third attempt at filming this part; the first was a test run, while the second was the actual stand-up. We liked it but were disappointed by the file size, which clocked in at over an hour and seventeen GB. Transferring the file from one device to another proved challenging as well, with attempts via AirDrop, iCloud, and Wired Transfer all failing due to corrupted files.

Advantages of Using an iPhone for Filming

Despite its limitations, using an iPhone for filming has its advantages. One can perform pretty good stuff with this phone, especially when it comes to video recording. The numerous apps available for the iPhone also make it a versatile tool in the world of filmmaking. Additionally, the accessory ecosystem is growing steadily, providing users with more options and possibilities.

Rigging Up for Filming

To build out a rig without breaking the bank, one can do so using affordable options. Our setup cost around $100, which included almost everything we needed except the hard drive mount. This highlights the importance of planning ahead and investing in necessary equipment to achieve professional-grade results.

Using ND Filters for Bright Sunny Days

When shooting in bright sunny conditions, ND filters become an essential tool to capture smooth footage without the camera shaking or showing excessive lens flare. Using a combination of styles and settings within each style can help produce the desired look. A popular choice among photographers is using gold tones, which work well but may not be suitable for every project.

Conclusion

A smartphone like the iPhone is just that – a tool designed to help you achieve your vision. While it has its limitations, such as non-swappable batteries and fixed screens issues with large files, it also offers many advantages, including depth sensing capabilities, adjustable bokeh, 4-axis stabilization, and advanced audio processing tools. When considering using an iPhone for filming, ask yourself if you can adapt to its unique features and whether they will enhance your projects.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe iPhone 16 Pro might just be one of the best iPhones for photographers and videographers ever look this iPhone isn't finished it's still missing a bunch of a features even the camera control button isn't fully functional yet but if you're in it just for photos and videos there is a lot to love here the iPhone does this by giving you more choices than ever before and yes a lot of the stuff was already available in the older iPhones but the 16 Pro offers an unprecedented level of customization ation from that new button to new file formats and the ability to change the look of your photos for good it's the kind of stuff you can nerd out on and dial into your own perfect precise settings but also it's the kind of stuff that you can get lost in after falling down rabbit hole and it is a lot so after a few weeks of testing the camera and putting myself in many different situations I want to help you and myself make sense of these choices and show you what works for me you might expect me to start with photos and we'll get there pretty soon but I really want to start with videos specifically slow motion 4K 120 frames per second it is the new Big feature this year and it is a lot of fun to use coincidentally there was a skate event nearby and it felt like the perfect place to see how this camera performs in a fast-paced environment where I want to switch between modes quickly capture a variety of photos videos and of course it is the perfect place to capture a bunch of slow stuff for this type of an event I knew I needed some extra stability and support so I brought out this iPhone rig with side handles and a top handle I went with a small rigan which clamps onto your phone versus using something with Max safe I tend to trust Max safe but this felt like a safer option in case someone runs into me or I run into them I've also turned on enhanced stabilization in the camera settings for even more stable footage again I wanted to film everything in Apple lock color profile it is a flat unprocessed color codex to give me more room for manually post-processing and color grading this also means I needed an external storage for anything filmed in 4k 60 and 4K 120 within the native camera app and those file sizes are absolutely massive like this isn't worth it type of massive unless you download some other camera apps more on that very soon so I got the hard drive mount on top add of this 4 TB SSD and was ready to go the event was great I knew I walked away with something fantastic Clips I could not wait to edit swapping between three lenses really helps to get a variety of Clips quickly but I do wish 4K 120 was available on all lenses I was forced to make choices when to shoot 60 or 120 based on lenses that felt limiting there are also some minor user interface inconsistencies in the native camera app so if you go to the slow motion tab prores option isn't available there but it's available in the main video tab in the same tab you can switch between frame rates by tapping through them on this tiny little icon in the top right corner but if you miss your desired frame rate setting you have to cycle through them all over again and if you're not using a hard drive you're constantly met with warning messages when cycling through your option it also felt like I had to triple check each time that I haven't accidentally changed any other settings too third party apps like black magic and Kino and moment have better interfaces that are more streamlined for my type of work unfortunately at the time of this event not all of those apps had 4K 120 frames per second support so for now I just used the native app and burn through my storage pretty quickly and I know what you're thinking like dude I'm not building out this rig that's not how people use phones you're right let's ditch the rig for now and just use the phone while walking around San Francisco and New York City and see how to get the best possible videos out of this phone since ditching that rig I'd strongly recommend investing in some of those third party apps those apps will enable you to film an Apple log but in smaller formats like prores LT or HC using those formats means we don't have to film straight to an SSD drive but directly to the iPhone so these are lower quality but I promise you you will not notice a massive difference the point here is that we want to get rid of Apple processing and make these videos feel a bit more of your own there a bunch of apps out there right now but Kino was my favorite since it has some nice Luts or color grades to choose from that you can apply directly in the app I find Apple's default processing just bit too crunchy oversharpened contrasty and too saturated especially when filming in HDR which I wasn't this whole video is just SDR one other thing you miss out on when filming in prores Apple log is Apple's noise reduction which although aggressive is sometimes necessary so for example some low light clips look much cleaner straight out of the camera even if they lack some clarity in detail without the noise reduction the grain is very noticeable especially with the ultrawide and the telephoto lenses I did bring the rig one more time for our visit to the California Academy of Sciences it allowed me to bound two phones together side by side so you can see the differences more clearly here between standard and Apple log also this place is amazing so here's some footage of butterflies in slow motion some cool fish and a cool looking albino alligator and actually filming and log here helped me to adjust colors more accurately let's talk photography and I want to focus on two things photographic Styles and the camera control button photographic styles are Apple's new way to apply different looks to your photos you can swap between them in camera or select them after the fact for perceptually lossless edits you can also pick your default in the settings app too after testing out several looks there is one photographic style that became my new favorite and my new default it's called gold and I love the subtle changes it makes to the yellows and the Reds in the photo I also set the tone setting anywhere between like -40 and - 80 depending on the scene the tone settings affects the tonality and mostly Shadows of your image which means you can finally let Shadows be shadows and override Apple's aggressive HDR look finally I also tend to prefer an underexposed look mainly so I don't blow out highlights which honestly isn't a problem with an iPhone so I usually set my exposure anywhere between a third or 2/3 of a stop down again this is not a hard rule it really depends on you SC but for me it is a great starting point okay so for my more creative and stylistic look I've been using the quiet photographic style I love the washed out gold look with bunch of colors stripped out it helps me turn some more boring photos into something more visual really interesting for nighttime and low light photos I found myself gravitating towards the dramatic Style with its green and blue look as my favorite but I think actually a lot of these Styles really pop in low light so give them a try more importantly I noticed how the inclusion of these new photographic styles were influencing my process in a way that I wasn't expecting it I found myself thinking more about how each photo would look with each style based on what I was about to take a picture of it reminds me of how you pick different different film stocks for different situations if you were shooting analog I haven't used an iPhone in that way before and I really enjoy this cognitive shift that's happening these tiles are a much bigger deal than I initially thought the other new feature with photos is that the 48 megapix mode is now available on the ultra wide but don't forget to turn it on it's not on by default the photos do look sharper but don't expect a massive jump in quality it is a good upgrade for your photos and the more I use it the more I'm noticing the that you're getting out of it that same Ultra wide lens is used for macr photos and those look awesome I found myself using it a lot more than I thought that I would the 5x telephoto Remains the Same as before it is a sharp lens with lots of reach and a quite bit of compression at times it feels a little bit just too flat but if you tap to focus it will save depth data which can later be used to add some artificial boka cutouts aren't always perfect but I like having that option when I want it between the three lenses the main Fusion lens Remains the best one but all three are capable of great results in good light and now it can be perceptually losslessly edited for even better looking photos I only wish we could also control a few other things mainly sharpness I often find that all iPhone photos just are a bit oversharpened for those who want to avoid that look you can always shoot in raw which now supports a much smaller and lossless jpeg XEL file format I know a lot of people are excited about that that but using raw also means that you're missing out on photographic style so that choice is up to you do you want to lay your iPhone edit your own photos or do you want to edit them yourself personally I'll use Heath about 99% of the time and I prefer to use my real camera to take Raw photos smaller file sizes and built-in options are more than enough for what I want out of a phone but the option is nice to have for the rare occasion when I decided to take Raw photos W my phone instead and if you want a fully unprocessed file you can always get halight and then shoot process zero which strips out just everything you may have noticed I haven't really spent a lot of time talking about the camera control button so I guess we should talk about that so I've been using the iPhone 16 Pro for a number of weeks now and I swear I kept trying to use this button more and more but I just can't every time I attempt to use it I just end up feeling like I'm getting very little use out of it the placement of the button when taking horizontal photos is fine even though it's not how I hold my phone I hold it one hand pinky underneath for support and just tap away I also found it more difficult to use when taking vertical photos especially on the bigger Pro Max I also found that the shutter is way too stiff and changing settings on it is just comers some it takes forever if there is a setting that you like you can keep it on there and that'll be okay but most most adjustment controls I want to access are just easier to control on the touchcreen for me anyway and I'm not entirely sure if the announced half press Focus tracking that's coming later will make up for it I truly believe that this button will be a lot more useful as an AI scanner as of right now I don't think this is ready yet that said I did find myself using it to launch the camera and that's about it but even then you'd need to wake up your phone first and then click the button to launch the camera there were many times when I would just pull out my phone out of my pocket pressed the button and expect it to be in camera mode and it just wasn't if anything the camera button now frees up your action button to be assigned to something else like a dedicated video camera app I think that's pretty cool as soon as I started making this video I knew I wanted to do two things set myself out on a mission to see how to utilize this phone for the type of professional work I do all the time and I also knew I wanted to film everything in this video on an iPhone which I did not as single frame in this video came from a different camera even this verie product Boll and this two camera section that you're looking at right now all filmed on an iPhone but this part it was a nightmare to set up so first it was nearly impossible to fit it into teleprompter second the camera and sensors are off AIS so everything is just slightly off to the side this also meant that it caught corners of the telepromter in this shot so if I zoom out you will see some Corners here third monitoring your framing as you're setting up is just impossible if you're doing this by yourself unless you have like a separate monitor plugged into the iPhone or you're mirroring your phone onto a Mac tried using the Apple watch to control and see my framing but that thing just never ever ever Works lastly I just used the Final Cut camera app that was synced with my iPad which made things a little bit easier until I lost connection at that point I could not get the connection to reestablish itself ever again I think it's broken forever finally once I got my framing nailed I switched back to The Kino app and in retrospect it was probably more hassle than it was worth I think this looks okay we're we're at 800 ISO by the way and the 24mm lens isn't something that I typically use when filming a talking head also this is like my third time trying to film this to camera section first time is a test run second time was the actual standup and I really liked it but the file was about an hour and 17 GB big which isn't terrible I tried airdropping it I tried uploading it to iCloud and tried transferring it over with a wied transfer none of it worked I finally got it to transfer just to find out that the file was corrupted like the phone was doing so well up until this point I even brought it out with me to some recent big shoots and I was satisfied with the results that I got especially with video but I can't sit here and tell you that I've always enjoyed the process even when it excels at some task it's still a phone and that form factor will come with some limitations non swapable batteries one USBC Port fixed screen issues with large files and so on but it also has some advantages it is your phone and it can perform pretty good stuff it has a plethora of apps available for it and the accessory ecosystem is growing pretty strong on we're kind of of course here so let's just recap some of the settings here so for video I strongly recommend some thirdparty apps with some built-in looks film an Apple log in HC or prores LT to save space slap a l on it if you don't want to make your own and this will drastically elevate your videos If you're looking to build out a rig you can do that without spending too much money the rig I used was around 100 bucks and had almost everything I needed except the hard drive Mount one thing I was missing from my setup are ND filters which you'll need on a bright sunny day you probably notice that some clips look a little bit choppy as far as photos go just go ahead play around with each style and with settings within each style and see what works for you gold works for me but whichever one you use don't forget to lower the tone setting and you'll get a lot more contrast out of your photos but at the end of the day your camera is a tool tool a tool that helps you achieve whatever Vision you set up for yourself and sometimes you want that tool to make you feel a certain way for example I don't love to use Sony cameras I'm sorry they just feel a bit soulless to me but I absolutely love the images that come out of an fx3 or the dynamic range of Sony's photo cameras it is just another tool I will use based on certain situations and not more than ever it feels like the iPhone can adapt to many different situations and it is a new useful tool I will go to utilize more going forward you'll probably see a lot of iPhone Clips in Verge videos will it replace my camera I don't like that question cuz I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon but during this review process I started to appreciate how much modern smartphones can actually do the depth sensor that you can adjust your bokeh after the photo was taken the three lenses you can just quickly swap between the 4axis stabilization is pretty good and then there's the action with stabilization that's kind of mindblowing and there's 120 frames in 4k in pror and we haven't even talked about all the new audio processing tools all of those features make the iPhone unlike any other DSLR mirorless camera ion could you see yourself using this to replace your camera are you already using iPhone for mostly everything secondly let me know about your settings I'm curious about your photographic Styles and what works for you talk soonthe iPhone 16 Pro might just be one of the best iPhones for photographers and videographers ever look this iPhone isn't finished it's still missing a bunch of a features even the camera control button isn't fully functional yet but if you're in it just for photos and videos there is a lot to love here the iPhone does this by giving you more choices than ever before and yes a lot of the stuff was already available in the older iPhones but the 16 Pro offers an unprecedented level of customization ation from that new button to new file formats and the ability to change the look of your photos for good it's the kind of stuff you can nerd out on and dial into your own perfect precise settings but also it's the kind of stuff that you can get lost in after falling down rabbit hole and it is a lot so after a few weeks of testing the camera and putting myself in many different situations I want to help you and myself make sense of these choices and show you what works for me you might expect me to start with photos and we'll get there pretty soon but I really want to start with videos specifically slow motion 4K 120 frames per second it is the new Big feature this year and it is a lot of fun to use coincidentally there was a skate event nearby and it felt like the perfect place to see how this camera performs in a fast-paced environment where I want to switch between modes quickly capture a variety of photos videos and of course it is the perfect place to capture a bunch of slow stuff for this type of an event I knew I needed some extra stability and support so I brought out this iPhone rig with side handles and a top handle I went with a small rigan which clamps onto your phone versus using something with Max safe I tend to trust Max safe but this felt like a safer option in case someone runs into me or I run into them I've also turned on enhanced stabilization in the camera settings for even more stable footage again I wanted to film everything in Apple lock color profile it is a flat unprocessed color codex to give me more room for manually post-processing and color grading this also means I needed an external storage for anything filmed in 4k 60 and 4K 120 within the native camera app and those file sizes are absolutely massive like this isn't worth it type of massive unless you download some other camera apps more on that very soon so I got the hard drive mount on top add of this 4 TB SSD and was ready to go the event was great I knew I walked away with something fantastic Clips I could not wait to edit swapping between three lenses really helps to get a variety of Clips quickly but I do wish 4K 120 was available on all lenses I was forced to make choices when to shoot 60 or 120 based on lenses that felt limiting there are also some minor user interface inconsistencies in the native camera app so if you go to the slow motion tab prores option isn't available there but it's available in the main video tab in the same tab you can switch between frame rates by tapping through them on this tiny little icon in the top right corner but if you miss your desired frame rate setting you have to cycle through them all over again and if you're not using a hard drive you're constantly met with warning messages when cycling through your option it also felt like I had to triple check each time that I haven't accidentally changed any other settings too third party apps like black magic and Kino and moment have better interfaces that are more streamlined for my type of work unfortunately at the time of this event not all of those apps had 4K 120 frames per second support so for now I just used the native app and burn through my storage pretty quickly and I know what you're thinking like dude I'm not building out this rig that's not how people use phones you're right let's ditch the rig for now and just use the phone while walking around San Francisco and New York City and see how to get the best possible videos out of this phone since ditching that rig I'd strongly recommend investing in some of those third party apps those apps will enable you to film an Apple log but in smaller formats like prores LT or HC using those formats means we don't have to film straight to an SSD drive but directly to the iPhone so these are lower quality but I promise you you will not notice a massive difference the point here is that we want to get rid of Apple processing and make these videos feel a bit more of your own there a bunch of apps out there right now but Kino was my favorite since it has some nice Luts or color grades to choose from that you can apply directly in the app I find Apple's default processing just bit too crunchy oversharpened contrasty and too saturated especially when filming in HDR which I wasn't this whole video is just SDR one other thing you miss out on when filming in prores Apple log is Apple's noise reduction which although aggressive is sometimes necessary so for example some low light clips look much cleaner straight out of the camera even if they lack some clarity in detail without the noise reduction the grain is very noticeable especially with the ultrawide and the telephoto lenses I did bring the rig one more time for our visit to the California Academy of Sciences it allowed me to bound two phones together side by side so you can see the differences more clearly here between standard and Apple log also this place is amazing so here's some footage of butterflies in slow motion some cool fish and a cool looking albino alligator and actually filming and log here helped me to adjust colors more accurately let's talk photography and I want to focus on two things photographic Styles and the camera control button photographic styles are Apple's new way to apply different looks to your photos you can swap between them in camera or select them after the fact for perceptually lossless edits you can also pick your default in the settings app too after testing out several looks there is one photographic style that became my new favorite and my new default it's called gold and I love the subtle changes it makes to the yellows and the Reds in the photo I also set the tone setting anywhere between like -40 and - 80 depending on the scene the tone settings affects the tonality and mostly Shadows of your image which means you can finally let Shadows be shadows and override Apple's aggressive HDR look finally I also tend to prefer an underexposed look mainly so I don't blow out highlights which honestly isn't a problem with an iPhone so I usually set my exposure anywhere between a third or 2/3 of a stop down again this is not a hard rule it really depends on you SC but for me it is a great starting point okay so for my more creative and stylistic look I've been using the quiet photographic style I love the washed out gold look with bunch of colors stripped out it helps me turn some more boring photos into something more visual really interesting for nighttime and low light photos I found myself gravitating towards the dramatic Style with its green and blue look as my favorite but I think actually a lot of these Styles really pop in low light so give them a try more importantly I noticed how the inclusion of these new photographic styles were influencing my process in a way that I wasn't expecting it I found myself thinking more about how each photo would look with each style based on what I was about to take a picture of it reminds me of how you pick different different film stocks for different situations if you were shooting analog I haven't used an iPhone in that way before and I really enjoy this cognitive shift that's happening these tiles are a much bigger deal than I initially thought the other new feature with photos is that the 48 megapix mode is now available on the ultra wide but don't forget to turn it on it's not on by default the photos do look sharper but don't expect a massive jump in quality it is a good upgrade for your photos and the more I use it the more I'm noticing the that you're getting out of it that same Ultra wide lens is used for macr photos and those look awesome I found myself using it a lot more than I thought that I would the 5x telephoto Remains the Same as before it is a sharp lens with lots of reach and a quite bit of compression at times it feels a little bit just too flat but if you tap to focus it will save depth data which can later be used to add some artificial boka cutouts aren't always perfect but I like having that option when I want it between the three lenses the main Fusion lens Remains the best one but all three are capable of great results in good light and now it can be perceptually losslessly edited for even better looking photos I only wish we could also control a few other things mainly sharpness I often find that all iPhone photos just are a bit oversharpened for those who want to avoid that look you can always shoot in raw which now supports a much smaller and lossless jpeg XEL file format I know a lot of people are excited about that that but using raw also means that you're missing out on photographic style so that choice is up to you do you want to lay your iPhone edit your own photos or do you want to edit them yourself personally I'll use Heath about 99% of the time and I prefer to use my real camera to take Raw photos smaller file sizes and built-in options are more than enough for what I want out of a phone but the option is nice to have for the rare occasion when I decided to take Raw photos W my phone instead and if you want a fully unprocessed file you can always get halight and then shoot process zero which strips out just everything you may have noticed I haven't really spent a lot of time talking about the camera control button so I guess we should talk about that so I've been using the iPhone 16 Pro for a number of weeks now and I swear I kept trying to use this button more and more but I just can't every time I attempt to use it I just end up feeling like I'm getting very little use out of it the placement of the button when taking horizontal photos is fine even though it's not how I hold my phone I hold it one hand pinky underneath for support and just tap away I also found it more difficult to use when taking vertical photos especially on the bigger Pro Max I also found that the shutter is way too stiff and changing settings on it is just comers some it takes forever if there is a setting that you like you can keep it on there and that'll be okay but most most adjustment controls I want to access are just easier to control on the touchcreen for me anyway and I'm not entirely sure if the announced half press Focus tracking that's coming later will make up for it I truly believe that this button will be a lot more useful as an AI scanner as of right now I don't think this is ready yet that said I did find myself using it to launch the camera and that's about it but even then you'd need to wake up your phone first and then click the button to launch the camera there were many times when I would just pull out my phone out of my pocket pressed the button and expect it to be in camera mode and it just wasn't if anything the camera button now frees up your action button to be assigned to something else like a dedicated video camera app I think that's pretty cool as soon as I started making this video I knew I wanted to do two things set myself out on a mission to see how to utilize this phone for the type of professional work I do all the time and I also knew I wanted to film everything in this video on an iPhone which I did not as single frame in this video came from a different camera even this verie product Boll and this two camera section that you're looking at right now all filmed on an iPhone but this part it was a nightmare to set up so first it was nearly impossible to fit it into teleprompter second the camera and sensors are off AIS so everything is just slightly off to the side this also meant that it caught corners of the telepromter in this shot so if I zoom out you will see some Corners here third monitoring your framing as you're setting up is just impossible if you're doing this by yourself unless you have like a separate monitor plugged into the iPhone or you're mirroring your phone onto a Mac tried using the Apple watch to control and see my framing but that thing just never ever ever Works lastly I just used the Final Cut camera app that was synced with my iPad which made things a little bit easier until I lost connection at that point I could not get the connection to reestablish itself ever again I think it's broken forever finally once I got my framing nailed I switched back to The Kino app and in retrospect it was probably more hassle than it was worth I think this looks okay we're we're at 800 ISO by the way and the 24mm lens isn't something that I typically use when filming a talking head also this is like my third time trying to film this to camera section first time is a test run second time was the actual standup and I really liked it but the file was about an hour and 17 GB big which isn't terrible I tried airdropping it I tried uploading it to iCloud and tried transferring it over with a wied transfer none of it worked I finally got it to transfer just to find out that the file was corrupted like the phone was doing so well up until this point I even brought it out with me to some recent big shoots and I was satisfied with the results that I got especially with video but I can't sit here and tell you that I've always enjoyed the process even when it excels at some task it's still a phone and that form factor will come with some limitations non swapable batteries one USBC Port fixed screen issues with large files and so on but it also has some advantages it is your phone and it can perform pretty good stuff it has a plethora of apps available for it and the accessory ecosystem is growing pretty strong on we're kind of of course here so let's just recap some of the settings here so for video I strongly recommend some thirdparty apps with some built-in looks film an Apple log in HC or prores LT to save space slap a l on it if you don't want to make your own and this will drastically elevate your videos If you're looking to build out a rig you can do that without spending too much money the rig I used was around 100 bucks and had almost everything I needed except the hard drive Mount one thing I was missing from my setup are ND filters which you'll need on a bright sunny day you probably notice that some clips look a little bit choppy as far as photos go just go ahead play around with each style and with settings within each style and see what works for you gold works for me but whichever one you use don't forget to lower the tone setting and you'll get a lot more contrast out of your photos but at the end of the day your camera is a tool tool a tool that helps you achieve whatever Vision you set up for yourself and sometimes you want that tool to make you feel a certain way for example I don't love to use Sony cameras I'm sorry they just feel a bit soulless to me but I absolutely love the images that come out of an fx3 or the dynamic range of Sony's photo cameras it is just another tool I will use based on certain situations and not more than ever it feels like the iPhone can adapt to many different situations and it is a new useful tool I will go to utilize more going forward you'll probably see a lot of iPhone Clips in Verge videos will it replace my camera I don't like that question cuz I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon but during this review process I started to appreciate how much modern smartphones can actually do the depth sensor that you can adjust your bokeh after the photo was taken the three lenses you can just quickly swap between the 4axis stabilization is pretty good and then there's the action with stabilization that's kind of mindblowing and there's 120 frames in 4k in pror and we haven't even talked about all the new audio processing tools all of those features make the iPhone unlike any other DSLR mirorless camera ion could you see yourself using this to replace your camera are you already using iPhone for mostly everything secondly let me know about your settings I'm curious about your photographic Styles and what works for you talk soon\n"