BlazingB Studios

The iPhone 4 and the Future of Visual Arts

With today’s announcement of iPhone 4 (see video and details here) we are seeing the continuing evolution of our industry (still and motion images). Some quick details related to photography and video around the iPhone 4 and iOS (what iPhone OS is now called) related to video.

1. Front and rear facing cameras
2. Rear facing camera is 5MP, 5x digital zoom and has an LED flash
3. iPhone 4 can now shoot 720p at around 30fps (it looks like it is variable frame rate depending on lighting, more in a bit.)
4. Video chat and calls over WiFi
5. iMovie for the iPhone (maybe iPad?) allows some fairly sophisticated editing on the fly right on the phone.

So in the still department you have a pretty decent point and shoot camera that will cover a vast majority of the situations a typical user will get into. Combine that with really cool post processing apps, and you are seeing the continuation of the death of the compact point and shoot market. I sold my G10 about a year ago and never looked back. I really like shooting with my iPhone and get images that are really fun and pleasing. Even with the limitations on the iPhone 3GS camera my wife rarely touches her Canon S10. When she upgrades to the iPhone 4 I am sure she will put it away for good. During the announcement Steve Jobs compared the iPhone 4 to a Leica camera, ironic in that this device (and other phone based cameras) are going to take a lion’s share of the market that Leica fills.

Now onto video. iPhone 3GS could do video but it was really bad VGA video. iPhone 4 now does 720p video and according to the specs “up to 30 frames per second” What that means is most liekly in low light it is going to reduce the frame rate and most likely you will have no control of it doing so. This is pretty much a killer for any pro video person, but really are you going to shoot production video on an iPhone? I hope not, at least not a whole movie. It will be good for B roll especially if you want to give your video that CloverField type vibe.

Now the video chatting over WiFi could be used for things like podcast of interviews or really interesting dialog driven dramas *if* these can be recorded.  iPhone video could easily be a Flip or Zi* killer although the Zi8 does does 1080. Again the target market is really not that interested is great quality, the vast majority are going to be excited about 720 and have a hard time spending an extra $200 on a separate video device. This assumes the iPhone 4 video is at least comparable in quality. Also lets not forgot the iPhone also has a built in LED light. The LED flash you use for stills also doubles as an LED continuous light for video. This could be great for those dark club and street scenes where the lack of light made using a point and shoot video camera useless.

The other interesting announcement was iMovie for the iPhone. The demo looked great but this is not going to replace iMovie or Final Cut anytime soon. It seems aim squarely at processing a single video clip and jazzing it up a bit with titles, stills and music. Really amazing for that use case and you could do a lot of cool stuff with it if you have all the footage on your iPhone already. It would be great if this worked on the iPad and I could use it to do quick edits on location to show customers. We will have to wait and see there. Bottom line the production level of youtubers just took a big step up, if people use the features.

Great changes are taking place in our fields. As a geek I get really excited when new technology comes out. Just remember it is not the tech that matters, it s the final product.

Related posts:

1. Plastic Bullet Review
2. My iPhone Toy Camera Quiver
3. iPhone Photo – Vortex
4. iPhone Photo – Storm
5. iPhone Photo – The Hideout

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 1:11 pm. It is filed under Articles, iPhone and tagged with iOS, iOS4, iphone, iphone4, iphoneography, photo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.