How Apple Created a Customized iPhone Digital camera for ‘F1’

You possibly can’t mount a cinema digicam on a Formulation One race automobile. These nimble automobiles are constructed to specific specs, and capturing racing footage from the driving force’s standpoint 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 Formulation One race currently, you have in all probability seen clips that present an angle from simply behind the cockpit, with the highest or facet of the driving force’s helmet within the body. Captured by onboard cameras embedded within the automobile, 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 can be too difficult to be possible. As a substitute, Apple’s engineering workforce changed the published module with a digicam composed of iPhone components.

Customized Digital camera

{Photograph}: Julian Chokkattu

{Photograph}: Julian Chokkattu

The module appears to be like nothing like an iPhone. It deliberately resembles the published digicam module, and Apple even needed to match the load in order that its model would not alter a automobile’s specs. The within, nevertheless, is totally completely different. (Apple gave us a peek throughout WWDC final week alongside an F1 automobile.)

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 automobiles 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 Professional. It additionally contained an iPhone battery and a impartial density filter over the digicam to scale back the sunshine coming into the lens, giving movie editors extra management over publicity.

Nobody expects an iPhone digicam to carry out flawlessly at unbelievable speeds or excessive situations, so the engineering workforce needed to take into account 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 Formulation One.

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 help 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 means the filmmakers may make on-the-fly modifications to the digicam. As soon as linked through USB-C, they might modify issues like body charge, publicity achieve, shutter angle, and white stability. That is additionally the place they’d hit document to begin or cease recording. The footage captured with the module is sprinkled throughout the F1 film.