Complete Blackmagic Camera App Tutorial for iPhone Filming 2024

this is a complete Blackmagic camera app tutorial for beginners we're going to cover everything you need to know to

level up your iPhone filming plus you'll see why we think this is the best camera app for iPhone in 2024 so this is what

you'll see when you first open up the app you can see up in the top left hand corner we can see what lens we're using

we can see our frames per second our shutter speed we've also got our time code our ISO white balance tint and we

can quickly and easily see our recording format here as well now while these are great visual indicat is a lot of these

you can actually tap on and you can change directly from this as well so you don't need to dive into menus to change

your lens to change your frames per second or shutter speed likewise with some of these other settings here as

well you can just tap on them here and set them directly from this menu down the bottom here we've got our audio bars

where we can monitor our audio if you tap on this we're able to get a much larger version of it and we can also

control our volume and things from here too next one across here is our storage so we can see how much space we have

left on our device but we also see the amount of record time we've got left as well and then down the bottom here is

where we get a preview of some of our Scopes now over on the side here is where we can dial things in even more so

this first one up here will let us customize up our viewport so we can turn on things like our zebra lines to help

us gauge our exposure we've also got our focus peaking here as well so we can easily see what's in Focus we've also

got grids and guides that we can turn on here as well so there's your rule of thirds and with the guides we can choose

different frames that we can overlay here on our videos to help us with the framing of our shot so I love that

there's not only like traditional guides here but there's also portrait ones as well so if you're someone who's going to

be shooting for both landscape and portrait content then you can make sure you're nailing your framing here in a

portrait environment as well so anything to do with the visual stuff then that's all in here and we've even got the

ability to preview our shot here with a l applied from this section too the next one down here this is our Focus control

so we can either manually adjust our Focus here using this slider or we've got autofocus up here as well or we can

just tap on the screen wherever we want to focus this next one's an obvious one this is our record button to start and

stop recording we've also got the ability down below that here to turn on or off video stabilization so the

default setting here is standard but we've got cinematic as well which will take out more shake and extreme which is

the highest level of video stabilization or we have the ability to turn it off below that we we can control our camera

zoom here either by selecting one of these default or preset settings here or we can actually use the slider here to

zoom in and out and then the one on the bottom here this is our built-in slate I think it's awesome that this is built-in

if you want to log your Clips as you go want to take note of everything then it's cool that we don't need to go and

have a separate app to be able to take note of all of this stuff and then the last menu over on the side here this is

where we can switch between the camera which is obviously what we're on right now we can view our Media or any clips

that we've created we can access chat if we're integrating with say remote team or people that are collaborating with us

on our black magic projects here and then below that is where we can access our app settings so this is the first

place I'd recommend that you are visiting when you're first getting set up let's make sure that all your

settings are the way that you want them before we start creating so there is a lot in this section so I'd recommend

that you're tapping through here at some point just to see first off what you've got access to cuz there is a lot in here

and you might find that a lot of it might not apply to what you're doing but it's good to know what you've got access

to in here so that as you grow and as you learn more with this that you can Implement and use some of these more

advanced features in here too but what you want to start off with is this first one at the top here record this is where

you will want to lock down your recording codec so you can see the default here for me is HC so h265 but

you do also have the ability to pick h264 so if you're looking for something that probably has greater compatibility

with different computers especially older ones then you might want to set this here to h264 but you've also got

your prores codex in here as well for those of you looking for the highest quality or even a proxy workflow but say

for most people you're going to be using one of these two I'm going to leave this as default next is your resolution you

can see we're currently set to 4K but you have the options here to drop it to 1080p which is HD or 720p here as well

next we can choose our color space again the default here is probably where a lot of people are going to leave this Rec

709 but you do have the ability here to set this to log HDR and also a Rec 2020 HDR as well now you can see here there's

also a time-lapse recording mode as well which you can enable or disable and you can customize up here how many frames

that's going to capture but this last feature down here I love that we got control over this so if your phone is

struggling and is dropping frames you get to choose what happens here so the default is to get an alert on screen but

you could also set it to stop recording at that point so it's good that you've got the choice here but I'm going to

leave it here as just alert me just let me know so as your main recording settings you'll want to lock down let's

jump across to camera now you will need to enable this setting here if you are going to be recording vertical videos

with this app by default this is set to record landscape only but if you want to be able to tilt your phone from portrait

to landscape same as you would the built-in camera app in your phone then you can enable that here personally I

leave this one enabled use the volume button to trigger record I think it's handy that you can use a physical button

on your phone for this I also like that you can turn this setting on or off lock your white balance when you're recording

again this is another one that I leave on it's also cool in here with our shutter measurement we can choose if we

want to see shutter speed or shutter angle so this is something that a lot of the other camera apps don't give you the

ability to adjust your shutter with an angle measurement or an angle amount versus just the shutter speed you will

want to make sure that you've got this setting here set for you and for your region so for me it knows that I'm in

Australia so it set the flicker free frequency here to 50 HZ so that's already set there for me but let's say

if you're in the states or Canada you want to set this here to 60 HZ to help you remove any flickering from lights

and things in your scene and scrolling down here you can see at the bottom uh if you are going to be recording using

your front-facing camera on your device then you can set here whether you want that to be mirrored or not so that you

don't have any text say that's backwards next one over here is audio this is where we get to pick our audio source so

the default here if you've got nothing connected like I am now is just the iPhone microphone but obviously the

moment you plug in and external microphone you can select that in here too but we also have the ability in here

to adjust our audio recording format you can see the default here is AAC but you can see you can also customize this up

here too likewise with recording stereo or mono and adjusting your sample rate again for probably most people you

better leave this here as default this next one down here monitor is how we can customize up our interface and the

display and everything that we're seeing here in Greater detail as well so we can customize up what we're seeing for the

focus assist we can change the color of it we can customize up the guides like the rule of thirds guides and things

that we can bring up on screen we can customize those up too and if we're going to be connecting our device to an

external monitor or a TV or something then we can customize up what our HDMI output is actually pushing through

whether it's just mirroring what it is on your device screen or whether we're just sending the video feed through so

it's pretty cool to have this built in as well and then if you want to customize up that main interface even

further we can actually turn off the audio meter is the histogram all of that stuff here we can turn on or off from

this so I'm probably going to turn this one here on battery indicator so when we go back then we're now seeing that up

here as well again I love that you can customize this up to how you want to work now for those of you that do want

to work with lots and preview what your shots will look like with different lookup tables applied or different

grades and effects and things applied then this is where we can set all of that up so if we come down here to lot

selection and there's already our built-in one here Apple log lot but we can also import a lot in here as well so

if you've got a specific look that you want to have in here to apply to preview or even to record and bake into your

final recording then you can import that here because if we go back we've also got the option here to record L to our

clip so the finished video that we're recording can actually already have that light applied if that's something that

we're into now down here under presets this is where we can create different presets for maybe different shooting

scenarios so we can come in here we can create a new preset based on the settings that we've applied here and

maybe we call this JB 4K because our settings here were for 4K recording and then maybe we could have one set up for

1080P or a different shooting style then we can come in here and we can choose between our different presets so that

we're able to switch between these really fast so let's go back to our main camera interface now we can just press

camera up the top here or we can select settings again to get out of settings and then we can start locking down our

shot here so the first place I'd start here with which lens do you want to use so we can either use the zoom here to

zoom in and out or we can actually specify which camera lens we want to use so you can see here we can switch

between the wideangle lens we've got our default the 24 mil now because I'm on an iPhone 15 Pro Max it's giving me the

option here for a five time zoom which is this one or we can switch to the front hey let's go back to the default

the one times next we can adjust our frames per second so you can see we can go as low as

23.98 we also have a 24 25 all the way up to 60 so we can shoot 4K 60 right now I'm going to set this back to 25 because

I'm in Australia a pal region where 25 is a standard frame rate for us but we talking popular Global frame rates 24

frames per second would be for those of you that like that sort of cinematic look or you've got your 30 frames per

second setting here as well which is usually the default iPhone camera setting now based B on what you pick

here your shutter speed is going to be automatically set correctly for you so you can see that it's doubled our frame

rate here for us so 30 frames per second we've got 1 over 60 if I drop it back to where I actually want it 25 frames per

second you can see that our shutter speed now is 1 over 50 and again setting it correctly like this will help you

remove any flickering from lights and things in your scenes but this isn't actually locked in at this point if we

just tap on the screen here you can see that it's automatically made an adjustment or a change here for us if we

want to lock this in then we can tap on this we can set it to where we want it but then you want to make sure that

you're hitting the pad lock up the top here so that your shutter speed is locked in you can see now we are locked

in at 1 over 50 meaning that wherever I tap on here to adjust focus or exposure is not changing our shutter speed so it

is a good idea to lock your settings down here whenever you can so that you know things aren't changing while you're

shooting now from here we can brighten or darken outshot here using our ISO setting so the lower the number the

darker the shot the higher the number the Bri of the shots going to be but be mindful that if you go too high with

this this is where you start to bring in digital noise and graininess into your footage so we're going either use this

slider here to adjust or there are default settings or presets along the side here for common used ones so 100

200 400 800 and you can see the higher we go the brighter the shot I'm just going to leave this on 100 and the next

one across here is your white balance so if we press on this again we're currently set to Auto we can see that

we're on auto because it's got the little a up here to kick it into manual mode we want to hit this little Auto

button here and now we can manually adjust this so you can see that we can make the shot warmer or add more yellow

or orange we can go the other way and make it more blue or cooler so we can manually dial this in or again there are

presets here for different lighting conditions so daylight incandescent light fluo light so cloudy day and the

next one across here tint this works very much the same way again we've got an auto adjustment here if we want it or

we can adjust really the level of pink and green in our shot with our tint slider here so now that we've adjusted

our shot exposure and all of our recording settings here next you want to make sure that the subject of your video

is in Focus so there is a tap to focus here or we can jump across to the manual focus like I showed you earlier using

the slider here as well and there's also an auto setting for Focus too meaning that if something comes into shot it's

going to automatically adjust for that and then go back into Focus afterwards so that's going to come down to the type

of videos you're making whether you want to use autofocus or not if it's something that's not going to be moving

then I'd suggest you're kicking it into manual focus and we can do that just by tapping on the thing that you want to be

in Focus that'll set the focus at that point and if we're in manual focus mode it will hold it at that point for us so

if you don't want to mess around with manual settings and things in here you can just tap and hold on screen on the

thing that you want to focus on and set the brightness and exposure and everything for and you can see now we've

got AE AF lock so we've locked our autofocus at this point and we've locked our Auto exposure at this point .2 now

the last thing to check before you press record is your audio here you can see that we do have audio bars working which

means like we can see that the audio is coming through we can tap on this we can make Minor Adjustments if we're using an

external microphone we can adjust the volume level on this if we're just on this standard built-in microphone then

right now this is an automatic adjustment but once that's good to go then you just want to hit this button

here to start recording we can see then we got the time code that's counting up at the top here to show us that we are

recording when we want to stop recording we can press the same button here to stop and then we can access our video

files that we've recorded over here on that media area now by default these clips here are saved into the app itself

so you won't see them in your photos area but if we tap on a clip in here then we can play it back we can also hit

the share button here and we can save it then to our photos by choosing save video or we've got all of our regular

share options in here as well and if you are working with the Blackmagic cloud and you're backing up your Clips then

you have access here to log in and connect that through and have them automatically upload or manually upload

for the clips that you're approving now that your up to speed with the Blackmagic camera app if you want to

level up your overall filming process check out the video linked on screen we've also got a link on screen to our

free pdf download the complete guide to filming on an iPhone so grab your free copy of that there's also links and

resources down in the description box below to help you even further and I will see you in the next video