While every iThing comes with Apple’s own camera app, you should take a moment and explore the incredible, feature-rich alternatives waiting for you in the App Store. At last count, there were over one trillion of them. Sure, I just fabricated that statistic because I didn’t feel like doing research, but my point is this: There are a LOT of video camera apps. So which should you buy first? Well, that’s easy!
FiLMiC Pro ($4.99) is hands down the most powerful video camera app you can add to your arsenal. It starts by giving you manual, independent control over white balance (to keep colors accurate), focus (to keep your image sharp) and exposure (to ensure your subject doesn’t get lost in shadows or highlights).
Want sexy? How about this: You can save multiple focal lengths (zoom distances) and smoothly transition between them at any speed you choose. That means you can zoom from a wide to a close-up and back without any fuss or fumbling. Sexy! In addition, you can switch your aspect ratio, monitor your audio levels, experiment with chroma keying, and crank up your bit rate (up to 50mbps) for higher quality recordings with fewer compression artifacts.
When you’re ready to get crazy, you can customize the frame rate for both shooting and playback — very useful for altering your audience’s perception of time. For example, you could shoot your actors (or kids) fighting with swords (or Nerf swords) at 22fps, and then play it back at 24fps, giving everything a natural, but amped-up feeling — a common trick employed in many action movies.
All that and we’re just scratching the emulsion. FiLMiC Pro boasts way too many options to cover here, so I’ll end this post by simply suggesting you grab the app, explore its vast feature set, and let your inner Spielberg loose.
2 Responses
Taz, it sounds like you’re a paid spokesperson for FiLMiC Pro (LOL!), which is indeed a powerful app for budding smartphone filmmakers, but it is NOT the “most” powerful video camera app. Yes, it can do all the things you mentioned (Focus, Exposure, White Balance, Various frame rates, etc…) but so can a bunch of other “powerful” video camera apps such as Movie Pro, ProCam, Almost DSLR, and CinePro. You also failed to mention FiLMic Pro has been very buggy since it was introduced when it comes to recording, crashing, FPS, compression, jumpy footage, no sound, etc… Just search their iTunes review section and you’ll notice that they have just as many negative reviews as positive ones and only a 3 out 5 star rating. Not exactly news to brag about. Aside from that, keep up the good work, Taz!
I am surprised by the comment from the above viewer. I am die hard fan of Fimic pro like others from iphone filmographers community. Also Taz who wrote this article is a well known author of Hand Held Hollywood film making book. There were so many short films, feeature films made using the filmic pro app including the award winning mess film makers movies. Filmic pro has been upgrading often their new features.