Apple Shows How iPhone's Action Mode Helps People With Parkinson's
All of this would be absolutely wonderful... if it were true, if the examples provided by Apple weren't entirely faked to promote their product.
I myself suffer from Parkinson's disease. I remember with nostalgia (and regret) the time when I used to shoot perfectly stable 120mm handheld shots in 16mm (about 240mm in photo equivalent).
Today I shake, much less than the person shown in Apple's demonstration, and filming handheld has become torture. I just finished shooting a documentary and I have to switch all the handheld shots to software stabilization.
While the "action" mode reduces the shaking, while it reduces it, it doesn't eliminate it as the promotional film is supposed to demonstrate. And this at the cost of a very significant loss of quality. In fact, the result is of better quality (as for the definition of the image) by using the iPhone in ordinary mode, in 4K with simply the stabilization activated, then by adding a second layer of stabilization, software this time, by asking the software NOT to crop, then by cropping yourself by editing in 2K (by adjusting the scale to exclude the black margins generated by the stabilization (not cropped). But forget the 4K if you shake (unless you film in 6K or 8K but then with something other than an iPhone).
And in any case, in the end, there remains a problem that neither the iPhone nor the stabilization software can overcome: when you shake, at least with Parkinson's disease, you do not only shake on the vertical and horizontal planes (it is on these that the stabilization is most effective) you also shake in depth (the distance between the camera and the subject varies constantly). If you take wide shots it goes unnoticed (the variation in distance related to the movement is small compared to the distance of the subject) but on close-ups (where the variation in distance related to the movement is large compared to the distance of the subject) it is obvious (because of the variations in perspective and therefore changes in the visible parts of the background) and nothing, neither the iPhone nor any stabilization software can overcome it (for the moment, because to do this it would be necessary to recreate the background of the main subject frame by frame).
So thank you to Apple for the quality of its iPhone, but thank you to Apple for not taking us for fools by trying to make us swallow fake promotional videos for authentic results.
All of this would be absolutely wonderful... if it were true, if the examples provided by Apple weren't entirely faked to promote their product.
I myself suffer from Parkinson's disease. I remember with nostalgia (and regret) the time when I used to shoot perfectly stable 120mm handheld shots in 16mm (about 240mm in photo equivalent).
Today I shake, much less than the person shown in Apple's demonstration, and filming handheld has become torture. I just finished shooting a documentary and I have to switch all the handheld shots to software stabilization.
While the "action" mode reduces the shaking, while it reduces it, it doesn't eliminate it as the promotional film is supposed to demonstrate. And this at the cost of a very significant loss of quality. In fact, the result is of better quality (as for the definition of the image) by using the iPhone in ordinary mode, in 4K with simply the stabilization activated, then by adding a second layer of stabilization, software this time, by asking the software NOT to crop, then by cropping yourself by editing in 2K (by adjusting the scale to exclude the black margins generated by the stabilization (not cropped). But forget the 4K if you shake (unless you film in 6K or 8K but then with something other than an iPhone).
And in any case, in the end, there remains a problem that neither the iPhone nor the stabilization software can overcome: when you shake, at least with Parkinson's disease, you do not only shake on the vertical and horizontal planes (it is on these that the stabilization is most effective) you also shake in depth (the distance between the camera and the subject varies constantly). If you take wide shots it goes unnoticed (the variation in distance related to the movement is small compared to the distance of the subject) but on close-ups (where the variation in distance related to the movement is large compared to the distance of the subject) it is obvious (because of the variations in perspective and therefore changes in the visible parts of the background) and nothing, neither the iPhone nor any stabilization software can overcome it (for the moment, because to do this it would be necessary to recreate the background of the main subject frame by frame).
So thank you to Apple for the quality of its iPhone, but thank you to Apple for not taking us for fools by trying to make us swallow fake promotional videos for authentic results.
