Blackmagic Announces iOS App For Full Digital Film Camera Control

While the big headlines from Blackmagic Design’s announcement at IBC 2023 are going to be focused on their return to full-frame with a new 6K cinema camera, we don’t want it to get lost that Blackmagic has also unveiled their own Blackmagic Camera app which is available now and free.

What is this Blackmagic Camera app though? Great question — let’s explore.

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Introducing the Blackmagic Camera app

So, along with a pretty wide-range of releases and updates unveiled at IBC 2023, Blackmagic has introduced us all to their new app which they are calling simply the “Blackmagic Camera” app. This Blackmagic Camera is set to give digital film camera controls for shooting cinematic, feature film quality footage anywhere on their iPhone.

Based on the same operating system as the brand’s digital film cameras, the Blackmagic Camera app is set to give iPhone content creators the same tools used for their own film or video content projects, along with support for the BLackmagic Cloud to collaborate and share with their teams around the world.

Unlock the Cinematographic Power of Your iPhone

While this initially looks to just be an iOS device designed for the latest iPhones (like the new iPhone 15 Pro Max), users of this free app will be able to recreate the same “cinematic look” as seen in Hollywood feature films by allowing for the adjusting of settings such as frame rate, shutter angle, white balance and ISO in the app and with a simple-to-use tap system.

You’ll also be able to record directly to the Blackmagic Cloud in industry standard 10-bit Apple ProRes files up to 4K, as well as of course use the Cloud Storage for all your collaborative needs through DaVinci Resolve projects.

There also appears to be other advanced settings which the app will unlock in your iPhone for monitoring, audio, camera setup and recording controls that will even allow users to set anamorphic desqueeze and lens correction settings. On top of that professional audio options like VU or PPM audio meters and AAC, IEEE FLoat and PCM formats will be available too.

Quick Setup and Easy to Use

As you might expect for an iPhone app, a big selling point for this Blackmagic Camera is going to be its simplicity and ease-of-use as BMD touts it as a quick setup for creators looking to start shooting as quickly as possible.

Everything in the app is designed to be interactive, so you’ll be able to tap in any settings or make instant changes to the display or HUD to customize elements like record parameters, histogram, focus peaking, levels, frame guides and more.

This heads-up-display HUD in particular looks quite intriguing as it will be able to control things as lens selection, frame rate, shutter angle, timecode, ISO, white balance, tint, histogram and audio levels all with an easy tap of the screen.

Price and Availability

Now, we’ll undoubtedly have much more to say about the Blackmagic Camera app once we’ve tried it ourselves — plus I’m sure countless other YouTubers and content creators will test every function of it over the next days and weeks.

But in short, this looks to be a major innovation for BMD and a step towards the inevitable combining of smartphone and digital camera technologies which we’ve all known is coming. So, if you are interested, here’s a full list of specs and features as well as a link to download below.

• Shoot in 16:9 or vertical aspect ratios.
• Stealth mode for shooting 16:9 while holding phone vertically.
• Capture in Apple ProRes, HEVC and H.264 with auto proxy generation.
• Frame rate, shutter speed, exposure, white balance, tint and color space camera controls.
• Focus assist, zebra, frame guides, histogram, 3D LUT monitoring.
• Time of day or run time, timecode recording.
• PCM, IEEE Float or AAC audio recording, 44.1 or 48 kHz sample rate.
• VU or PPM audio meters.
• Thumbnail view of all recorded clips in media tab.
• Preview clips with scrubber, duration, timecode and file name display.
• Fully integrated with Blackmagic Cloud and DaVinci Resolve.
• Record to iPhone, select recorded clips to share via Blackmagic Cloud or sync automatically.

And, as mentioned above, the Blackmagic Camera app is available now and free to download from the Apple Store here.