You possibly can’t mount a cinema digicam on a System One race automobile. These nimble automobiles are constructed to specific specs, and capturing racing footage from the motive force’s viewpoint isn’t so simple as slapping a GoPro on and calling it a day. That’s the problem Apple confronted after Joseph Kosinski and Claudio Miranda, the director and cinematographer of the upcoming F1 Apple Unique, needed to make use of actual POV racing footage within the movie.
If you happen to’ve watched a System One race recently, you have most likely seen clips that present an angle from simply behind the cockpit, with the highest or facet of the motive force’s helmet within the body. Captured by onboard cameras embedded within the automobile, the ensuing footage is designed for broadcast, utilizing particular coloration areas and codecs. Changing it to match the look of the remainder of the F1 movie can be too difficult to be possible. As a substitute, Apple’s engineering crew changed the printed module with a digicam composed of iPhone elements.
Customized Digicam
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{Photograph}: Julian Chokkattu
{Photograph}: Julian Chokkattu
The module seems nothing like an iPhone. It deliberately resembles the printed digicam module, and Apple even needed to match the burden in order that its model would not alter a automobile’s specs. The within, nonetheless, is totally totally different. (Apple gave us a peek throughout WWDC final week alongside an F1 automobile.)
On the coronary heart is an iPhone digicam sensor powered by an A-series chip. Apple did not specify the precise sensor or chipset, however these have been used for just a few vehicles in actual F1 races all through the 2023 and 2024 seasons, so there’s an opportunity it was the identical A17 Professional and 48-megapixel main digicam within the iPhone 15 Professional. It additionally contained an iPhone battery and a impartial density filter over the digicam to scale back the sunshine coming into the lens, giving movie editors extra management over publicity.
Nobody expects an iPhone digicam to carry out flawlessly at unimaginable speeds or excessive circumstances, so the engineering crew needed to take into account this issue. They examined the digicam module to make sure it might endure excessive shock, vibrations, and warmth—it supposedly surpassed the specs supplied by System One.
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Julian Chokkattu
The module ran iOS however had a customized firmware for the digicam. The movies have been captured in log format with Apple’s ProRes lossless video codec, delivering footage that appears flat however offers the editors rather more granular management to paint grade and match the visuals with the remainder of the movie. This tradition firmware inevitably led to 2 new options within the iPhone 15 Professional: log encoding and assist for the Academy Colour Encoding System (ACES) coloration workflow.
Since there are not any radios within the module, a customized iPad app was the one manner the filmmakers might make on-the-fly adjustments to the digicam. As soon as related by way of USB-C, they may alter issues like body charge, publicity acquire, shutter angle, and white steadiness. That is additionally the place they’d hit document to start out or cease recording. The footage captured with the module is sprinkled all through the F1 movie.
