How Apple Created a Custom iPhone Camera for “F1”

You cannot mount a movie camera on an F1 race car. These agile vehicles are built to accurate specifications and capture racing footage from the driver’s point of view gopro on And we call it the day. That is the challenge Apple faced after upcoming directors and cinematography Joseph Kosinski and Claudio Miranda. F1 Apple Original wanted to use real POV racing footage in the film.

If you’ve seen a Formula One race recently, you’ve probably seen a clip that shows an angle from just behind the cockpit where the driver’s helmet is on the frame or the side. Captured with an onboard camera embedded in the car, the resulting footage is designed for broadcasting using specific color spaces and codecs. Convert to the rest of the appearance F1 The film is not too challenging. Instead, Apple’s engineering team replaced the broadcast module with a camera made up of iPhone parts.

Custom Camera

Photo: Julian Chokkat

Photo: Julian Chokkat

The module doesn’t look like an iPhone. It was intentionally similar to a broadcast camera module, and Apple had to adjust its version to weight so that its version would not change the specifications of the car. However, the interior is completely different. (Apple gave us I’ll take a look during last week’s WWDC With an F1 car. )

The heart has an iPhone camera sensor equipped with an A-series chip. Although Apple did not specify accurate sensors or chipsets, these could be the same A17 Pro and 48 megapixel primary cameras, as they were used in several cars in real F1 races throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons. iPhone 15 Pro. It also includes an iPhone battery and neutral density filter above the camera, which reduced the light entering the lens, allowing film editors to have more control over exposure.

The engineering team had to consider this factor as no one expects the iPhone camera to work perfectly in incredible speeds or extreme conditions. We tested the camera module so that it can withstand extreme shocks, vibrations and heat.

Julian Chokkat

The module ran iOS, but there was custom firmware for the camera. The video is captured in log format and captured on Apple’s ProRes Lossless Video Codec, providing a flat look, but editors deliver footage that provides better granular control, matching your vision with the rest of the film. This custom firmware inevitably led to two new features iPhone 15 Pro:Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) color workflow log encoding and support.

With no radio in the module, the custom iPad app was the only way filmmakers could make changes to the camera in flight. When connected via USB-C, you can adjust frame rate, exposure gain, shutter angle, white balance, and more. This is also where you hit records to start or stop recording. The video captured with the module is It is sprinkled all over F1 Film.