Along with the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro, Apple has landed a new video system: Cinematic Mode. Available only in the latest generation of its flagship terminal, this new functionality exploits the possibilities of the iPhone hardware. As a result, we have a new storytelling tool that will inspire a generation of creators.
What is iPhone 13 Cinematic Mode
As its name suggests, the Cinematic Mode of the iPhone 13, also known simply as cinema mode, is inherited from this industry. It is a narrative resource that serves to help the viewer to focus on what requires their attention in the story. By focusing and blurring specific subjects, objects, or parts of a scene, the viewer can be guided from one side to the other.
That bokeh effect is the one that debuted on the iPhone 7 Plus five years ago. Thanks to him, we blur what’s behind a subject, focusing all attention on him. Regardless of what is going on around you or if you are in a crowded place, all of that disappears.
This video mode has a major limitation: it shoots at 1080p and 30fps. However, it is recorded in Dolby Vision HDR
Now and with Cinematographic Mode, Apple transfers this effect to video, with an important twist. The user is in control at all times of the subject to focus or blur, and can even modify it afterwards.
How the iPhone 13’s Cinematic Mode works
Having any iPhone 13 model in hand, since they all have the A15 Bionic chip, just open the camera and swipe left until you find the word “Cinematographic”. It is right after normal video mode, leaving slow motion and time-lapse mode for later.
With this mode activated, we will be able to register multiple points of focus between which to exchange the effect. This is done by the iPhone automatically, indicating us with a yellow frame which is the one that is active at that moment. The rest will appear in a gray frame.
By using the ultra-wide angle lens, iPhone can anticipate those people or objects that are going to enter the scene. AND prepare the rest of the system to anticipate it, being able to change the focus to the new protagonist if necessary. At the same time, Apple ensures that the cameras record the depth information of the scene in real time.
The A15 Bionic chip is the real responsible for the Cinematic Mode not reaching the previous iPhones
Thanks to this, we can edit the video once we have it recorded. Letting us modify the focus to the character or object that we want and in a simple way. That is, we should not re-record the scene if we do not like the automatic or manual blurring that we have done with the Cinematic Mode. We can do it later if we wish.
A new way of expressing themselves for a new generation of creators
Those of us who have been using technology such as the iPhone or iPad for a long time are inevitably anchored to ways of working with them. Nevertheless, there is a whole generation of children and youth who have not known anything else. And because of that, they are able to squeeze these devices in ways never seen before for us.
Creators always seek to tell stories. And the Cinematic Mode is a new tool that allows to count them differently to which we were used until now. Apple has put an extremely advanced functionality in a device that starts at 809 euros. And in just one year, it will be in the hands of tens of millions of people around the world.
What Apple has achieved with the Cinematic Mode is to make available to millions of people a very complex technology that is also easy to use
Over the years, the succession of models and the inevitable improvements that will accompany them, will be as standard as portrait mode how much we use and what has changed the way of taking photography on the iPhone. Right now it has imperfections and limitations, such as 1080p resolution. But in its current state it is already a great storytelling tool.
You don’t have to want to do a short film competition level. Our day-to-day memories that we now record in normal mode will be enriched with the Cinematic Mode. They will coexist with normal videos, creating precious Memories in Photos of our families, friends, vacations and pets.