You possibly can’t mount a cinema digicam on a Components One race automotive. These nimble autos are constructed to express specs, and capturing racing footage from the motive force’s perspective 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, wished to make use of actual POV racing footage within the movie.
Should you’ve watched a Components One race these days, you’ve got most likely seen clips that present an angle from simply behind the cockpit, with the highest or aspect of the motive force’s helmet within the body. Captured by onboard cameras embedded within the automotive, 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 could 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 to be 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 automotive’s specs. The within, nonetheless, is totally completely different. (Apple gave us a peek during WWDC last week alongside an F1 automotive.)
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 had been used for a couple of 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 major digicam within the iPhone 15 Pro. It additionally contained an iPhone battery and a impartial density filter over the digicam to cut back the sunshine getting 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 think about this issue. They examined the digicam module to make sure it may endure excessive shock, vibrations, and warmth—it supposedly surpassed the specs offered by Components One.
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Julian Chokkattu
The module ran iOS however had a customized firmware for the digicam. The movies had been captured in log format with Apple’s ProRes lossless video codec, delivering footage that appears flat however offers the editors far more granular management to paint grade and match the visuals with the remainder of the movie. This practice firmware inevitably led to 2 new options within the iPhone 15 Pro: log encoding and assist for the Academy Colour Encoding System (ACES) coloration workflow.
Since there aren’t any radios within the module, a customized iPad app was the one approach the filmmakers may make on-the-fly modifications to the digicam. As soon as related through USB-C, they may modify issues like body fee, publicity acquire, shutter angle, and white steadiness. That is additionally the place they’d hit report to begin or cease recording. The footage captured with the module is sprinkled throughout the F1 film.
