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It’s one of those gimmicky features people will use once then probably forget about completely
like slo mo! I was looking through old videos and I saw the few I took of the water fountain when I first had slo mo.... I used it a couple of times filming hummingbirds... but it's been a couple of years since I eve thought about it!

now night mode or whatever that's called.... I love that!
 
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The images lose quality pretty quickly once you start zooming in though. I have a Nikon D300 from 2008 that I can confidently say produces a better quality photograph than my iPhone 12. The phone is good though because you can instantly edit and upload to the web where this aspect isn’t as important.
Right! Any pic I've zoomed in on all the way on my 11 PM are pretty grainy..... I get great pics from my older Nikon
 
Cinematic mode. Totally stupid and useless for 99.99% of us. You saw the ones who will actually care about this feature in the Apple propaganda clips during the launch event.

On second thought, not even they will care about it. They'll go back to using their real cameras and lenses.
 
Cinematic mode. Totally stupid and useless for 99.99% of us. You saw the ones who will actually care about this feature in the Apple propaganda clips during the launch event.

On second thought, not even they will care about it. They'll go back to using their real cameras and lenses.
someone on macrumors who's even testier and more opinionated than I am! (I kinda agree though! just like the slo mo no one uses!)
 
Cinema mode is better than what we had before, just another creative tool.
Don’t like it don’t use it.
 
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It’s a game changing feature which many will add in the coming years and will only Get better
 
I was a little surprised they ran with that video. The focus was bouncy. It had to snap back each time. As I watched I was thinking it didn’t seem very Apple.
 
I was a little surprised they ran with that video. The focus was bouncy. It had to snap back each time. As I watched I was thinking it didn’t seem very Apple.

BTW, the sensors are stated to be using Focus Pixels - still, in the demo videos do exhibit the usual "overfocusing" you also mentioned. This shows traditional contrast-based focusing was used and not phase-based.

EDIT: typo (constrast vs contrast )
 
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I doubt many professional videographers are going to dump their gear for an iPhone to shoot video footage.

I'm not a videographer, but I am a photographer and my cameras can shoot video; I also have a sizable selection of lenses from which to choose. However, if I'm just out with my family, I can easily pull out my phone to shoot something on the fly, and if using one of the cinema modes dresses up the video, then great! Most people don't have access to high end video cameras or the kind of photo gear I have. Most people don't even care to have or learn that kind of gear.

Plus, my kids (who aren't getting a 13, but some of their friends will, and over time these features drift to lower end phones) often have to do videos for classwork, and I know this will get used by high school and college age kids.

Just because it's a feature doesn't mean you have to use it. We all know it's just a marketing term anyway.
 
BTW, the sensors are stated to be using Focus Pixels - still, in the demo videos do exhibit the usual "overfocusing" you also mentioned. This shows traditional constrast-based focusing was used and not phase-based.
Dang that’s way over my head.
 
It's just a cool feature.
It can never compete with even the cheapest DSLR lens
Never is bit a strong word, isnt it? This is the first iteration of the feature, Apple keeps working on perfecting the blurring and someday will succeed. Look how far the quality of computational photography came in just the past 5 years, absolutely phenomenal progress for such small sensor and lenses.
 
No pro will shoot in 1080p I use my canon 5d mark iv and would never shoot in 1080
Almost everything I shoot for broadcast tv is 1080. If shoot drama or commercials I use my Red and shoot 8K. I for one is looking forward to the 13 pro. Great to be able to throw in my phone for an extra angle if needed
 
With or without great innovation, I upgraded my iPhone at least once every 2 years because of the expiration of apple care. This year I'm super excited about sierra blue which is a color I'm been waiting for years.
 
Never is bit a strong word, isnt it? This is the first iteration of the feature, Apple keeps working on perfecting the blurring and someday will succeed. Look how far the quality of computational photography came in just the past 5 years, absolutely phenomenal progress for such small sensor and lenses.
Well, if you take into account that Portrait mode debuted in 2016 and still it exhibits the same major problems (see the frame grab in the original post) as five years ago, I wouldn't keep my breath :( Some problems like reliably identifying and, then, (de)focusing a stale hair (the annotated problems in the original post) just can't be done in software.
 
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Dang that’s way over my head.
Even Apple's footage exhibits the "overreacting" focusing, which is the property of contrast-detect focusing, and just can't happen with
1, purely(!) phase-detect focusing (with no additional contrast-detect focusing after the "coarse" phase-detect focusing) and
2, manual focus racking.

Phase-detect and contrast-detect focusing are the two main ways of autofocus.
 
Well, if you take into account that Portrait mode debuted in 2016 and still it exhibits the same major problems (see the frame grab in the original post) as five years ago, I wouldn't keep my breath :( Some problems like reliably identifying and, then, (de)focusing a stale hair (the annotated problems in the original post) just can't be done in software.
Technically it can be done in software, we are just not there yet. But who says it has to be done in software only? Lidar or a similar technology might soon be ready to give accurate and pixel by pixel correct distance information.
 
Technically it can be done in software, we are just not there yet. But who says it has to be done in software only? Lidar or a similar technology might soon be ready to give accurate and pixel by pixel correct distance information.
Well, seeing is believing. Apple still hasn't fixed these problems for 5 years with the standard Portrait mode...
 
Any guesses why the cinematic mode is limited to 1080p?
Seems like it will be a hard to choice between 4K and 1080p cinematic.
 
I will definitely not use cinematic mode.

However, I and others in my circle, frequently use Live Photo, Slo-Mo and night mode on our 11s and 12s.

Hopefully the nicer lenses in the 13 Pros make these even better!

I agree with several other posters though, cinematic mode demos looks just fine to me. It’s a new feature that wasn’t there before which will give a few people who are interested a brand new tool in their pockets that produces respectable quality and fun/entertainment.
 
Well, seeing is believing. Apple still hasn't fixed these problems for 5 years with the standard Portrait mode...

I’m still waiting to see what you’ve done with your “Hollywood rig”.

I’ve already seen a couple YouTube videos from professional cinematographers talking about how excited they are about Cinematic Video and Pro Res. (No hands-on videos yet, though. Apple apparently didn’t seed photographers with review units beforehand this year, as they usually do.)

In my experience, most of the whining about tools comes from the peanut gallery. The same way all of whining about commercial space travelers not being “real astronauts” comes from the peanut gallery. I‘ve never heard a real NASA astronauts saying that.

But maybe I’m wrong. So, once again, show your work so we can scrutinize that for imperfections. Put up or shut up.
 
Would you expect the cinematic mode to create significantly larger files?
To me it seems that it records normal video and with it saves a depth map of the scene. I would not expect the depth map to be huge.

Also a good question for cinematic mode: will it work with prores?
 
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