Apple Used A Special Module For Its F1 Film, Featuring An iPhone Camera Sensor And An A-Series SoC To Perform All The Heavy Lifting, While Recording In The ProRes Lossless Format
The iPhone has always been marketed as the benchmark for smartphone photography and videography, with Apple leveraging the newer sensors, sensor-shift optical image stabilization hardware, its A-series of chipsets, and more to deliver top-notch quality content, while also giving creative professionals more editing freedom with its ProRes lossless codec. All of these elements were combined in a specialized module, which was used to film parts of the Apple original movie F1. Here, we look at how all of this was achieved.
No specification details were provided on which iPhone sensor or A-series chipset was used for the F1 filming, with the special module running iOS
Filming parts of F1 would have been challenging for a regular iPhone, given the blistering pace at which these cars move at. Now, Wired has provided us with a glimpse into how Apple completed this feat, but the device in question looks nothing like an iPhone, but features parts from the technology giant’s handset family. The report states that the company’s engineers replaced the onboard cameras embedded in the car with a camera composed of iPhone parts.
Unfortunately, Apple did not provide the specifications of the hardware employed, so there is no way of knowing if the company and its engineers used the latest and greatest iPhone 16 Pro or iPhone 16 Pro Max featuring the A18 Pro to manage all the data inflow. However, the customizations did not stop here, because the device also contained an iPhone battery and a neutral density filter placed over the camera to reduce the light entering the lens, giving film editors more control over exposure.
At exceptionally high speeds paired with the car’s incessant vibrations, any smartphone camera, including the iPhone, will fail to produce any adequate footage, so the team had to be clever with the special module. It was tested to ensure it could withstand shock, vibration, and heat. Fortunately, the specifications surpassed Formula One’s expectations. The device was also running iOS, but the camera was running a custom firmware, and could record Apple’s ProRes lossless video codec, giving editors more freedom when color grading the footage.
There was another challenge that Apple had to overcome; the module did not feature any radios, so a custom iPad app was the only method where filmmakers could make adjustments in real time, such as framerate, shutter angle, exposure gain, while balance, and more. The module was connected to the iPad through a USB-C cable and could hit record or pause at any time. It just show that with the right tools and engineering prowess, an iPhone can become the weapon of choice for ambitious filmmakers.
