In order to get the best-possible shot for F1: The Movie, Apple made a custom camera for it using parts from an iPhone.
Apple Made a Custom Camera Made Using iPhone Parts to Shoot High-Speed Scenes for F1: The Movie
You can’t just bolt a cinema camera onto an F1 car and start recording. Sure, Apple could have just used the F1 car’s broadcasting camera and called it a day, but it wouldn’t be Apple if it did that, right?
According to Wired, Apple decided to replace the onboard broadcasting camera with one that was completely custom-built using iPhone parts. Basically, it had the lens of an iPhone 15 Pro, powered by the A17 Pro chip, and custom software that recorded everything in lossless, log format.
Why was this important for the movie? Because, the built-in broadcasting camera offers a far lower resolution image which is meant for TV audiences only, not for movies. Apple wanted to record racing scenes in high quality and fitting a cinema camera was not possible.
In fact, Apple replaced the built-in broadcasting camera with the custom iPhone camera, and made it look like the broadcasting camera, ensuring it followed the specs set by F1 itself. This meant Apple had to match the weight of the original camera too, and it did that.
What I find absolutely stunning here is how Apple believes so much in its own hardware that it decided to use that instead. It could have reached out to any other camera company for an entirely custom camera for recording these scenes, but it did not do that at all.
Another interesting thing about this custom camera is the software it runs. It is controlled using an iPad over a wired connection. Once everything is set, the camera starts to record, and when the shot is done, the iPad connects to the iPhone once again using a cable, and the footage is then downloaded to the tablet.
Make sure you check out the Taptic trailer for F1: The Movie on your iPhone. It’s absolutely bonkers.
