In an interesting move to ultimately promote their AI-cloud platform for content creators Strada, the Cioni brothers (Michael Cioni, formerly of Frame.io and Adobe, and Peter Cioni, formerly of Netflix) have shared their latest filmmaking experiment testing the capabilities of the iPhone 15 Pro.

While the debate about iPhone filmmaking versus traditional digital cinema camera filmmaking will continue to rage on for some time, it’s cool to see someone actually putting Apple’s technology to a fair test. And while Strada might be an AI-powered cloud platform, it’s also about helping content creators work better and more efficiently—so we can see the connection of ideas here.

Let’s take a look at how an iPhone 15 Pro performs with anamorphic lenses, plus see how you could rig out your smartphone to turn it into an 8K anamorphic cinema camera too.

How We Got iPhone 15 to Look Like an 8K Cinema Camera

Before we dive into the latest video from the Strada team, we do need to take a step back and look at a previous video featuring Michael Cioni that explores how they were able to get an iPhone 15 to look like an 8K cinema camera.

In the video, Cioni and his crew show how they were able to shoot a scene with the iPhone 15 Pro and how they used AI tools to help reduce the depth of field. They tried different lenses and were ultimately trying to take inspiration from The Creator, which was able to do so much with a Sony FX3.

You can watch this first video (and video number 18 out of Strada’s YouTube marketing series for content creators) to view their entire process and see what insights you can get from their final reports.

Shooting on an iPhone 15 with Anamorphic Lenses

In this follow-up video, Cioni was testing to see if the iPhone could perform as a cinema camera, or if it was going to be limited so much that it isn’t quite a serious high-end option at this point. And while you’ll need to watch their full video yourself to see if you agree, some of the early results in the video certainly do look quite amazing and… dare we say… cinematic.

However, there are of course some big differences between shooting video with high-end lenses like the Altas Mercury primes they used in this experiment, versus the built-in lenses you’ll find in your iPhone right out of the box.

The anamorphic lenses will offer a much more controllable depth of field, as well as all of the usual hallmarks of cinematic composition. But the real question simply is, how much does this rigged-out iPhone 15 Pro lose compared to a regular cinema camera?

The iPhone’s Cinematic Future

While we’ll let you decide how you feel about shooting 8K anamorphic footage on an iPhone versus a more traditional cinema camera, the results are indeed at least interesting enough to force the conversation now more than ever.

The latest iPhone is Apple’s greatest video smartphone yet, however, it’s also very likely to be improved upon again and again over the years. The iPhone will undoubtedly get better with its dynamic range, intraframe encoding, color gamut, and everything else.

While we might not recommend rending anamorphic primes and rigging out your iPhone for all of your shoots immediately, it’s still interesting enough to keep tabs on and explore using it more in the future.

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