Blackmagic brings genlock to the iPhone 17 Pro, while Apple’s first ProRes RAW goes straight to your pocket...

[Emanuel]

+7 focal length options:

13mm

24mm

28mm

35mm

48mm

100mm

200mm

(+ macro)

 

+many other goodies...

 

Among them, genlock... via the new Blackmagic Camera ProDock (Hello 3D! Not only though... for sure) for US$295 (next time, it will come as giveaway, very likely, what else? ; )

Simply WOW

etc.

 

https://www.apple.com/iphone-17-pro/

https://www.apple.com/iphone-17-pro/specs/

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/apple-unveils-iphone-17-pro-and-iphone-17-pro-max/

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/09/apple-announces-final-cut-camera-2-0/

 

Nobody is talking about TBH if this isn't a game changer, I have no idea what this means anymore... : ) Where's that Coppola's little fat girl in Ohio?

 

[kye]

Anyone getting an iPhone 17 Pro / Pro Max?

[MurtlandPhoto]

28 minutes ago, kye said:

Anyone getting an iPhone 17 Pro / Pro Max?

I am; should be delivered tomorrow. Main reason is it's my normal upgrade cycle time. But, even if it was a year early for me I'd still be compelled to buy it. I've been using my phone for critical pick up shots for a while now and the addition of ProRes RAW makes it even more useful for me this way. The 200mm equivalent telephoto also will be great for casual concert and event photography so I'm pretty happy all around. 

[kye]

1 hour ago, MurtlandPhoto said:

I am; should be delivered tomorrow. Main reason is it's my normal upgrade cycle time. But, even if it was a year early for me I'd still be compelled to buy it. I've been using my phone for critical pick up shots for a while now and the addition of ProRes RAW makes it even more useful for me this way. The 200mm equivalent telephoto also will be great for casual concert and event photography so I'm pretty happy all around. 

Nice.  I'm getting the Pro one to replace my 12 Mini, so it should be quite the upgrade.

When I'm on trips I use the big camera for shooting the surroundings and environment and my phone for quickly shooting the people I know as we're out and about doing things.  Ironically that means that it's my most important camera and the other stuff is my secondary setup.

I'll be curious to see what the lower-bitrate files are like, as shooting at full res gives very little recording time.

[Emanuel]

Me too here, very likely. For the first time. Windows and Android user, so far.

There's external SSD recording, and they're pretty on the nano side these days, so the 256GB version is enough.

[MurtlandPhoto]

45 minutes ago, kye said:

I'll be curious to see what the lower-bitrate files are like, as shooting at full res gives very little recording time.

BM camera app will allow you to shoot Apple log in h.265 with very good quality. Saves soooo much space and looks great.

[KnightsFan]

I'm not going to get an iphone, so unfortunately this isn't something I can use. I do, however, use a phone mounted on top of a camera for 3D motion tracking, when tracking the main footage isn't possible. For example, if the actual shot is a tight handheld shot of something with no tracking positions, I mount a phone on the camera rig, and use the wide angle for tracking. In an extreme case, I add tracking markers outside the main camera's field of view.

Since I can't sync them, I shoot the phone at double frame rate, then choose whether to drop the even or odd frames, whichever gets closer to the exact timing of the main camera. So then my maximum timing offset is sub-frame.

Genlock would make this all so much easier! Although--to be fair, at $1300 for an iphone + dock, I can probably just get another camera to dedicate to tracking.

[Emanuel]

4 minutes ago, MurtlandPhoto said:

BM camera app will allow you to shoot Apple log in h.265 with very good quality. Saves soooo much space and looks great.

Right : ) Apples to oranges anyway. I wouldn't mind to ignore a premium to pay for any of those 512GB, 1TB and 2TB, though.

[kye]

12 hours ago, Emanuel said:

Me too here, very likely. For the first time. Windows and Android user, so far.

There's external SSD recording, and they're pretty on the nano side these days, so the 256GB version is enough.

Just be sure that the apps you will use will all still fit on the internal drive.  Apps are getting more and more "featured" and are more and more bloated with things, or they do things like cache data and store it locally for enhanced performance.

You might also benefit from some wiggle room, depending on how you're going to use it and how long you'll keep it.  My iPhone 12 Mini from 2020 is still going strong and if I didn't use the cameras so much I wouldn't feel the need to upgrade, so you might end up keeping it for quite some time.

12 hours ago, MurtlandPhoto said:

BM camera app will allow you to shoot Apple log in h.265 with very good quality. Saves soooo much space and looks great.

Yeah, I've seen tests of this configuration and they looked pretty good.  I suspect I'll end up just using the default camera app for speed of use, and I don't think it allows this combination (Log and h265) so I'll have to see what it allows me to do.

Ideally I'd go for 4K and Prores 422, which is around 500Mbps, so large but still manageable.  

8 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

I'm not going to get an iphone, so unfortunately this isn't something I can use. I do, however, use a phone mounted on top of a camera for 3D motion tracking, when tracking the main footage isn't possible. For example, if the actual shot is a tight handheld shot of something with no tracking positions, I mount a phone on the camera rig, and use the wide angle for tracking. In an extreme case, I add tracking markers outside the main camera's field of view.

Since I can't sync them, I shoot the phone at double frame rate, then choose whether to drop the even or odd frames, whichever gets closer to the exact timing of the main camera. So then my maximum timing offset is sub-frame.

Genlock would make this all so much easier! Although--to be fair, at $1300 for an iphone + dock, I can probably just get another camera to dedicate to tracking.

I think there are a few very specific situation where you'd want to get the dock and use a phone rather than just use a proper camera with a (much) larger sensor, but not that many.

I am in chats with a lot of professional cinematographers who shoot a variety of client projects and the consensus seems to be that when the client wants something to look like it's been shot on a phone it's far far easier to just shoot it on a phone rather than try and get that specific look in post, but of course while shooting this "look" on a professional set you'd still want all the functionality like remote directors monitors and timecode sync for audio etc etc, so it's a very niche product but if you're doing that then it can save an incredible amount of hassle. 

Besides, now you can get your phone, add the external box, get a proper battery setup, and add a HUGE monitor..  no more being forced to shoot video on your iPad!!

[Django]

My daily driver is an iPhone 13 mini and that won’t change (lowkey wish they’d reintroduce the mini line, everyone I know that has one loves them). But my secondary iPhone will be getting a substantial upgrade to the 17 Pro. It’s the first pro model that resonates with me. Love the rugged unibody design, previous pro models still had that fragile precious feel I despise. 

And of course the specs. One that few seem to mention is that open gate will be supported through Final Cut Camera 2.0. And the front camera sensor is square which allows multi aspect ratios, a cool direction.

I do more and more vertical work for social and a lot of times they want the “iPhone” look not a heavy graded shallow DoF look so main benefit for that will be the cameras but I have seen impressive videos shot on iPhone Pros. 28 years later included. So who knows to what capacity all these codecs, log, open gate etc will be used.

 

[kye]

1 hour ago, Django said:

My daily driver is an iPhone 13 mini and that won’t change (lowkey wish they’d reintroduce the mini line, everyone I know that has one loves them). But my secondary iPhone will be getting a substantial upgrade to the 17 Pro. It’s the first pro model that resonates with me. Love the rugged unibody design, previous pro models still had that fragile precious feel I despise. 

And of course the specs. One that few seem to mention is that open gate will be supported through Final Cut Camera 2.0. And the front camera sensor is square which allows multi aspect ratios, a cool direction.

I do more and more vertical work for social and a lot of times they want the “iPhone” look not a heavy graded shallow DoF look so main benefit for that will be the cameras but I have seen impressive videos shot on iPhone Pros. 28 years later included. So who knows to what capacity all these codecs, log, open gate etc will be used.

I also really like the Mini size and form factor, and TBH it frustrates me quite significantly that they don't put the good cameras in the smaller models.  It's like forcing you to buy a truck just to get power-steering.

I also agree that the square selfie-camera is a cool addition.  I'll be curious to see how wide it is, my recollection of previous versions was that they were a bit long of a focal length for what I wanted to shoot (me in a cool location) so I'd normally just use the wide-angle camera and turn it around and shoot blind.. hardly ideal.

The holy grail for these cameras is to look the same as a nice camera with a stopped down aperture.  I'd suggest that those iPhone 15 Apple Log vs Alexa videos showed that it was getting pretty close, although now with RAW it will be interesting to see how close it really is.  When the first Android RAW samples came out there was something about the footage that still looked like a phone but at the time I couldn't work out what it was.
There will be other things that might give the game away, but these will probably be how the camera is used rather than some innate property of the image itself.

I'll be putting mine through its paces once I get back from my trip and upgrade to Resolve 20.2 to get the RAW support.  I might have to do some side-by-side comparisons too.

[maxJ4380]

2 hours ago, kye said:

I also really like the Mini size and form factor, and TBH it frustrates me quite significantly that they don't put the good cameras in the smaller models.  It's like forcing you to buy a truck just to get power-steering.

 

 

 

Just like camera manufactures i guess. You can get option A & B but not option A & B and C, or option C & B but not A  Mini size factor may have less of a profit margin as well and perhaps even overheating, mostly i suspect its more about marketing segments and better profit margins. however i think you know this already 🙂

 

[Django]

Sadly the mini was a flop, it didn’t sell well. People want big phones apparently which I find annoying as one hand gesture operation is impossible, not to mention pocket ability and discretion while shooting. Those are the reasons why I still use my 13 mini as my daily driver despite having a « better » regular size iPhone.

[kye]

1 hour ago, maxJ4380 said:

Just like camera manufactures i guess. You can get option A & B but not option A & B and C, or option C & B but not A  Mini size factor may have less of a profit margin as well and perhaps even overheating, mostly i suspect its more about marketing segments and better profit margins. however i think you know this already 🙂

100%..  definitely what's happening.

1 hour ago, Django said:

Sadly the mini was a flop, it didn’t sell well. People want big phones apparently which I find annoying as one hand gesture operation is impossible, not to mention pocket ability and discretion while shooting. Those are the reasons why I still use my 13 mini as my daily driver despite having a « better » regular size iPhone.

I heard it was a flop.  One reason I didn't mind having a smaller phone is that I don't really do a lot of stuff on it, as I prefer using my laptop.  If I used my phone as my main device I'd be wanting the largest thing I could practically carry around.

I'll be curious to see how it goes.  On my last trip I bought a Pop Socket, which I found to work really well actually.  This is what it looks like if you're not familiar, and means you can hold it really securely, and it folds almost flat.

I put it towards the bottom and on one side so I could open it, pull the phone out of my pocket, open the camera app from the Home Screen, take some video, lock the phone and put it back in my pocket again, all with one hand.  The flaw was that because the socket wasn't in the middle of the phone so when walking the weight of the phone would rotate the phone.  

I got another one for the 17 and I'll put it in the centre of mass of the phone so when I walk with it there's no rotation induced from unbalanced motion.  I don't know what that means for how usable it will be one handed.  I guess sacrifices have to be made to go from h265 HDR to Prores with Apple Log.