Professional gear is better for a professional, no arguing that....HOWEVER....
Filmography, photography, etc is an art. The artist is what makes it, not the tools they used.
Sorry if I seem rash, this subject has always blown my mind. I just don't get it.
Film is an art form, if I post a picture that is bad its not because of the camera, the lighting, the film, the subject, etc etc is bad its because I didn't have the vision or my skills and talents lacked in allowing me to produce my vision.
The iPhone (and other smartphones) have been just another tool in professional filmmakers arsenals for years. Recently its really started to pick up, there are plenty of situation where an iPhone is perfectly adequate because with native handling of professional formats that can graded in post to be indistinguishable from cameras used in other scenes. Obviously this is for very select scenes but that shouldn't detract from their use.
There are several movies on Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu right now that were shot EXCLUSIVELY with iPhones, I'm talking like iPhone 7 iPhones, literally iPhones with worse cameras than the iPhone my employer provides me. Quick Google
https://www.indiewire.com/2018/03/movies-shot-on-iphones-unsane-tangerine-shorts-1201941565/
Indie directors aren't the only ones using their phones to make movies.
www.pcmag.com
Its not unheard of for a smartphone to be used for an entire scene for TV shows and even big budget productions. And its to the point of being common for them to be used very briefly in a wide range of Hollywood productions. There is a documentary about a couple filmmakers that carry iPhones as a must have backup tool.
Now do we tell the actual professional filmmakers that have used an objectively worse iPhones that they don't know what they are doing? Because that doesn't make sense to me.
You know what makes sense to me? That we admit that we aren't even capable of utilizing the cameras we've had in our pockets for years to their fullest capabilities.
