This post contains a full guide for the Blackmagic Design iPhone app. It's not perfect and comes with a number of things which could be improved. But considering it's free (currently iOS only) and fairly new, we can't really complain.
Speed or Angle?
Before you record video with the Blackmagic app, the first thing you need to do is decide whether you want your shutter speed displayed as fractions of a second, or as degrees. Proponents of the 180° shutter will probably want to see the latter.
In the bottom left corner we have the good old settings cog. Tap that then choose Camera in the left menu. About halfway down, we have the Shutter Measurement setting. By default, it’s set to speed so if you want to see degrees, then change this to angle.
Why is it called angle?
Well, because this comes from movie cameras that use a rotating shutter. The only way you can set shutter speed in a traditional movie camera (to be clear, I’m talking about cameras that shoot film) is to change the angle of the rotating shutter.
If we select Angle and then tap Camera to return to the main screen, we will now see our shutter speed is displayed in degrees - the little circle here is the degree symbol.
Tap the shutter speed at the top and bring up the shutter speed controller. If you want to use the 180° rule, move this to 180°. And to close this controller, tap the shutter speed again.
And that’s a good thing to remember when it comes to the Blackmagic iPhone app UI. Tap to open and then tap again to close.
What you don’t want to do is tap to open, set your shutter speed and then tap the middle of the screen. Yes this does close the controller, but it also sets your exposure to match whatever you tapped on. In other words, it totally ruins the settings you just spent time getting right.
For this post, I’m going to use the normal shutter speed display. Just because it’s what most people are used to and what I prefer to use.
Clear UI
Quick tip: swipe up on the screen to get a clear preview without all the settings and meters. Swipe down again to bring it back.
Now that we’ve adjusted shutter speed, exposure is being set manually. Shutter speed and ISO will not change unless we do it ourselves, either by using the controller or tapping on the screen. So how do we go back to Auto Exposure if we want to?
Auto Exposure
On the right, you will find a plus-minus button. Tap this to open the Exposure Value controller. Tap Auto at the top so it goes blue.
Auto Exposure is switched back on. You can tell because there’s a letter A beside Shutter and ISO.
So we can keep it in auto and adjust the EV value up or down. If you want to use Auto Exposure, but find it too dark or too bright, use the controller to adjust EV up or down.
Again, don’t tap on the screen to close the EV control because it will switch the exposure to manual and set shutter and ISO. Tap the EV button again to close it.
Now let’s look at Focus.
Focus
Second button down on the right is the Focus control. Tap it to open the focus slider.
Really this is the weakest part of the app, in my opinion. Firstly, it’s not too good for recording focus pulls. Secondly, since the early November update they’ve added what they call “haptic feedback” to all the sliders.
So haptic feedback means the controls are sticky and not smooth. Like when you are setting controls on a regular camera and it clicks into place. If you move the camera around with Focus in auto, you can actually feel it clicking in your hand.
The problem is, this also makes it harder to shoot focus pulls because really you want this to slide easily. Dear Blackmagic Design, please remove this feature. Let the focus slide like every other camera app. Thing is, no camera (pro or otherwise) has a sticky focus control, so why make this one sticky? At least give us a switch to toggle off the haptic feedback.
But I have developed a way of doing it. Later I’ll show you how to shoot a focus pull with the Blackmagic Camera App.
Focus Peaking
You can add a focus peaking overlay to help make sure your focus is accurate.
If we tap the button above the focus button, we open up another menu. This menu allows you to add a series of overlays which help you set your controls. And one of these is for Focus.
How do we know it’s for Focus? Because it looks similar to the focus button, except it has a subject inside the box. Tap it and now you get a slider control and an on-off button at the top.
Now you might get confused and think this is the focus slider, but it’s not. If you slide it up and down, nothing seems to change. This actually controls the intensity (or strength) of the focus peaking overlay.
Let’s leave that control for now. Enable the focus peaking at the top and close the control by tapping the button again. You can see there’s now a little white dot below the button, which tells us Focus Peaking is switched on.
When we open the focus control again. We now get this red overlay. Everything red is in focus.
If we move focus, you can see the red moves as the focus moves.
We can also change the way focus assist works. Go into settings and then go to Monitor. You can choose whether to use lines or peaking. You can also change the colour.
User Interface
I think that already gives you a good insight into how this app works. Now let’s look closer at how the heads up display is laid out. Did you know HUD stands for Heads Up Display? I only just found that out. Apparently it comes from a pilot being able to view information with the head positioned up and looking forward.
Whenever you want to see the main camera preview, just tap the Camera button in the top right corner.
Camera Picker
In the top corner here we have the camera picker. Here you can see the currently selected camera. At the moment I have the main camera of my iPhone 15 Pro selected, which is the 24mm equivalent.
Tap it to bring up a menu containing all your available cameras.
Switch Cameras While Recording
You can switch cameras while recording. But I noticed one little bug, because if you switch to the front camera while recording, what you get is upside down. I don’t know if this affects all iPhones or just some.
Frame Rate
Next along, we can see the app is currently set to shoot 30fps. Tap that to open up the frame rate controller. You might notice that the Blackmagic app has these weird settings like 29.97fps.
What madness is this? you might be asking yourself. If you’ve used pro cameras, or worked for TV, you’ve probably already come across this 29.97fps setting. To cut a very long story short, it all comes down to how TV was invented in the 1940s. Yes, it’s yet another hangover from the distant past that is still stuck with us.
Basically, unless you have a specific reason for shooting at 29.97fps, then you can forget this setting. Like, you’re working for an American or Canadian TV channel and they’ve requested it. Or you’re working with 29.97 footage from another camera and they need to match. The same goes for 23.98 and 59.94 fps.
If you choose 1080p Resolution, then you can now shoot up to 120fps.
Aside from that, setting frame rate is straightforward.
Shutter Speed
Tap the current shutter speed to bring up the shutter speed controller. By the way, if you want to get a deeper understanding of the six key camera settings, I’ve created a whole course for Video Creator Pro members. CLICK HERE to access that course.
Iris
Next we have our aperture or Iris setting, which is greyed out because iPhones cameras have fixed apertures. However, this number does actually change depending on the selected camera.
At the moment, it’s f1.8 because that’s the main camera aperture. If I switch to the ultrawide, it now changes to f2.2. The telephoto is f2.8.
So it’s not a totally redundant feature.
Timecode
In the middle we have the timecode. As soon as you tap the Record button, the time will start ticking over. If we go into settings, we can change this to Time of Day. Now it’s basically a clock and you can see the seconds ticking along, before I’m even recording.
Personally, I just keep it to the regular timecode.
ISO
Tap to open ISO settings. A general rule is to keep ISO as low as possible to keep the digital noise as low as possible.
White Balance
Tap white balance to set it manually. Use the slider or one of the presets on the right of the slider.
White balance is made up of colour temperature and tint. They can both be set manually by tapping on them.
A great option is to leave white balance in auto, go into settings and toggle on Lock White Balance on Record. That way you don’t need to spend time setting it, but it will not adjust during the shot.
If you’re not sure about these things, the settings course will set you straight.
Histogram
In the left bottom corner we have a histogram which shows you the red, green, blue and luminosity levels from shadows to highlights.
Audio Meter
Bottom right is the audio meter. Tap it to get audio levels in the middle of the screen. You will see this gain slider, which doesn’t seem to work.
Well, in fact it does, but only when you have an external mic connected and selected in the Audio settings. If you’re using the iPhone’s inbuilt mics, this gain slider is disabled.
Remaining Storage
In the middle we have remaining storage space for the current video settings, displayed as a %, time and GB.
Custom UI Options
You can remove the histogram, audio meter and remaining storage space displays. Settings, Monitor and toggle them on or off as you prefer. Here you can also add a battery level meter and it will appear next to the Tint setting.
Let’s look at other key settings.
Settings
When we want to control the quality of the video, things like resolution, codecs, LUTs and colour spaces, we need to go to settings. Tap the settings cog at the bottom.
We now have a menu with headings on the left. The one we want is the Record settings. Tap that and on the right we now have headings for codecs, resolution and so on.
Resolution
iPhones have 3 resolutions available. 4K being the highest, HD which is 1080p, and 720p the lowest. Personally, I always try to shoot everything in 4K if possible.
In the top right corner of the preview screen you will find the current resolution setting. Unfortunately you can’t just tap it to change it like you can other settings.
Codec
H.264 is the older codec, which on the downside creates bigger files but on the plus side is more compatible and slightly easier for editing with. This is because more processing power is required to play h.265 files.
I generally shoot in h.265 and export my videos in h.264, because YouTube sometimes seems to have issues with h.265.
If you have a ProRes supporting iPhone, you will also get this list of ProRes codecs.
Apple ProRes 422 HQ is the highest quality but also creates the biggest files. Then there’s regular ProRes 422 and 422 Light, which is more compressed, creates smaller files but carries less image information.
Apple ProRes 422 Proxy is an even more highly compressed codec than Apple ProRes 422 LT, intended for use in offline workflows that require low data rates but full-resolution video. But it still contains more image information than h.264 and h.265.
Editing systems should also have an easier time working with Apple ProRes files compared to h.264 and h.265 files.
Color Space
What you have available in color space will depend on your model of iPhone. The regular format is rec.709. This is what you normally see when you’re streaming TV shows, movies and so on.
If you have an iPhone 12 or later, you should have the rec.2020 HDR option - which is basically the same as the Dolby Vision setting in your iPhone.
Since iOS 10 iPhones have been able to capture video in the P3 D65 colour space. Simply put, if you’ve never heard of P3 D65 then you probably don’t need it.
Finally, we have the Apple Log setting which is only available for iPhone 15 Pro and later models. Apple Log is the only setting on an iPhone which allows you to have full manual control. Of course, it also allows you to shoot in this ACES Log format which is good if you want to spend time colour grading your video.
I’ve made a whole post about using Apple Log already, so check that out HERE if you want to know more.
Using LUTs
In case you don’t know, LUT stands for Look Up Table. Again, there’s a long history behind LUTs but I won’t go into that here.
In settings, open the LUT tab. Here we can set the Blackmagic camera app to use a LUT just for display, or we can set it to burn the LUT into the recorded video. We can also select LUTs and import LUTs.
Display LUT
Toggle on Display LUT if you want a LUT to be applied to your preview monitor. For example, we might have it set to Apple Log and what we then get is the grey, washed out image.
With a display LUT applied, the monitor will show how the video will look once we have applied a LUT to it. Or we can simply use it to give us an idea of what it will look like after grading.
You can also switch this display LUT on or off back in the camera preview. Open the monitor control menu, and at the bottom tap the LUT button. You can enable or disable it with the on-off button, so that saves you from having to go into settings.
Record LUT to Clip
If you want video clips that look exactly as you see them in the preview with the LUT applied, toggle on Record LUT to Clip. Why would we want to do that? Isn’t the whole point of shooting in Log so we can colour grade it later?
Well, here’s a reason you might want to burn it in. Recording in Apple Log is the only way to switch off dynamic tone mapping in an iPhone. And if this is your only reason for using this format, so you're not going to spend hours grading, then baking in a LUT will save you time.
Import a LUT
The Blackmagic app now comes with the Apple Log to Rec.709 LUT preinstalled. It’s a basic LUT which does nothing but make your Log footage look “normal”. You can use it for preview or burn it on.
To import your own LUT, tap LUT Selection. Then Import LUT. Now find the LUT you want to import on your iPhone, wherever you have stored it.
I have imported a LUT created by OneLUT and it turns your ACES Apple Log into something resembling the look of an Arri Alexa. It's not free but you can purchase the LUT from OneLUT HERE.
Stabilisation
Below the record button we have a button to open stabilisation settings. We can set it to off, standard, cinematic and extreme.
Using stabilisation crops into the frame a little bit. So if we switch off stabilisation, we will get more screen space.
Standard is usually good enough for most situations. But I recommend you try the other settings to see what you get. With the Cinematic and Extreme settings, it seems to apply the stabilisation after you stop recording. So you might not notice any difference until you watch the recorded video.
UPDATE: while I was making this video, I discovered that when I have the preview LUT switched ON, it applies the stabilisation when you start recording. With the preview LUT off, it applies stabilisation after recording. One of those odd quirks about this app, which may or may not apply to your iPhone.
Zoom Control
Below the stabilisation button is the zoom button. This is a digital zoom so the further you go the less pixels you will have available and then you get lower quality video.
Zoom gives you up to x8 magnification using presets, or you can manually adjust the zoom by scrolling the scale up to 15x.
Grids & Guides
The Blackmagic app allows you to apply a variety of grids and guides to assist you when framing, focusing and setting exposure.
Zebra
The Zebra display will draw diagonal lines over areas of your image that have excessive exposure level. Essentially, we’re talking about blown out highlights. The slider allows you to adjust the way it looks so that it fits the exposure level you want to achieve.
Grids
Tap the Rule of Thirds grid button to open a new menu. We now have 4 options. If you want you can enable them all at the same time, or choose the best combination that suits you.
Top is the old Rule of Thirds grid.
Next down opens up a vertical or horizontal crosshair. When the crosses go blue, you know your iPhone is perfectly horizontal or vertical.
Then there’s a simple cross and simple dot to indicate the exact centre of the frame.
Frame Guides
The next button applies frame guides. This will not appear on your final video. They’re to guide you if you intend to crop your video during editing.
The top one simply adds top and bottom or side screen guides which you can set to standard ratios. For example, 2.39:1 is a commonly used aspect ratio in cinema.
Safe Area Guides
Next up is the Safe area guide button. You can use this to ensure important image content does not get too close to the edge of the screen. For example, it might otherwise be cut off when viewed on consumer grade televisions.
This can be adjusted with the slider.
False Color
Next button allows us to enable a false colour overlay. This uses different colours to represent different exposure values. Pink represents optimum exposure for lighter skin tones, while green is good for darker skin tones. Meanwhile, red is overexposed.
Entering Metadata
Metadata makes sorting and processing footage in post production easier. The slate lets you add additional details such as shot type or project name. Swipe left or right to change the pages.
Media Gallery
Below the Camera button we have the Media button. And this is your gallery, where you will find all your recorded media. You won’t find your media in the regular iPhone Photos app, unless you tell the app to place it there.
Back in Settings, Media, tap Save Clips to and choose In-App & Photo Library.
If you use DaVinci Resolve, and you have a Blackmagic subscription which includes cloud storage, you can sign in here and have your media uploaded automatically to a project which you have created in Resolve. That way, you can open the Resolve project and your files will already be there ready to edit.
Tap on a file to view it. Now, if you tap the i button, you will see all the information regarding the video clip. Swipe to scroll down and you will find some of the data you created using the Slate (see above).
Tap the heart button to favourite a clip, which might save you time later when you want to find the best takes.
Tap the share button to send your file as you would with the regular iPhone Photos app.
How to Create a Focus Pull
A focus pull is where you move the focus while the camera is recording. Basically you want to record the focus changing. This leads the viewer's eyes from one subject to another subject.
First, get an idea of the 2 points. Start recording and then flick the focus control so it moves on its own. Then tap and hold on the control when you want it to stop.
Takes a bit of practice but unless Blackmagic makes Focus easier to work with, we need some kind of workaround.
How to Records to External Drive
If you have an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max, and you’re recording big ProRes files, then you will probably want to consider recording directly to an external drive. This is how.
Connect the drive, open the Blackmagic app, go to Settings, then Media and Save Clips to.
Choose Files and then navigate to your external drive. Find a folder you want to save the files to and then tap Open.
You should now have a check mark beside Files and the folder name to the right. Now when you hit record, any files will be saved directly to this folder on the external drive.
You should be able to edit directly from this drive, if it’s fast enough. This means you don’t have to worry about transferring files. Just unplug from the iPhone, plug into your computer, import files directly from the external drive folder into your editing software.
More Settings
There’s a few more settings under the camera menu that are worth looking at.
At the top we can enable vertical video. If this is off, the Blackmagic app will shoot horizontal video even when you hold the phone vertically. But if you try to record 4K video this way, you won’t get it. You will get a reduced resolution.
If you’re filming artificial lights and you’re getting strobing or flickering, you can try using the anti-flicker shutter speed setting. This will force your shutter speed to use multiples of 50 or 60, depending on what you set here. So 50hz for Europe and 60hz for USA and you’ll have to look up your electricity supply frequency if you’re filming elsewhere.
Lens correction is the same as the equivalent in your iPhone camera settings. This will straighten out any lens distortion you get, so you can avoid those bendy lines. This is purely a creative decision. There’s no rule which says lines mustn’t bend.
We also have the anamorphic de-squeeze setting. If you’re using an anamorphic conversion lens, you can use this setting to see the frame de-squeezed in the preview. This setting will also bake in the de-squeeze, so you will get video which fits the 1.33x or 1.55x aspect ratio.
The flip image for SLR lens is to be used when you are adding a DoF adapter, such as the one made by Beastgrip.
Audio Settings
There’s a number of settings to do with audio. For example, if you want to record your audio via an external mic connected to your iPhone, you can set that here.
Tap Audio Source and if you have a connected mic it should show up here. Then you can select it.
The iPhone Microphone setting allows you to choose between the different mics built into your iPhone. In my case, I can choose between the back, bottom and front mics.
Below that you can choose the audio format. I just keep this as AAC.
Record Audio As allows you to record audio in different ways. Mono means you will just get the same audio across both the left and right channels. Stereo creates a standard stereo recording.
Dual mono means you have 2 tracks of audio which can be different, but not a stereo recording. Rather this would be used to record separate microphones on separate tracks. Usually, when we are recording 2 people talking and we want to keep each person’s audio separate for easier treatment when editing.
There’s also an option for 4 channel recording here, presumably for use with a 4 mic setup. Although I haven’t tried this myself.
Sample rate you will most likely want to keep on auto or 48 kHz.
Recording a Timelapse
The way the Blackmagic app allows you to record a timelapse is a bit different to other systems. Go to Settings, Record and toggle on Timelapse Recording. Now you can set how often you want a frame to be captured in a big, long list.
First, you can choose between 2 and 10 frames. My guess is that if you choose one of these settings, it will record 1 frame of video for every 2 to 10 normal frames. It’s like a times setting. So every 2 frames would be 2x speed, every 3 frames 3 times speed, and so on up to 10 times.
Apart from that, you have settings in seconds and minutes. You can record a frame of video every 1 second up to every 10 minutes. A frame captured every second, played back at 30fps, would equal 30x faster than normal speed.
A frame captured every 10 minutes would be 600 times faster than every 1 second. So doing the maths, 30 times 600 equals 18000 times faster than normal speed. That’s the equivalent of 144 frames per day, which would be roughly 5 seconds of video. This speed would be useful for something like a timelapse of a building being built where you want it to stretch over weeks or even months.
Well, that's it for this post. Happy filming!
Simon
