How Apple Created a Custom iPhone Camera for ‘F1’

You can't mount a cinema camera on a Formula One race car. These nimble vehicles are built to precise specs, and capturing racing footage from the driver’s point of view isn’t as simple as slapping a GoPro on and calling it a day. That’s the challenge Apple faced after Joseph Kosinski and Claudio Miranda, the director and cinematographer of the upcoming F1 Apple Original, wanted to use real POV racing footage in the film.

If you’ve watched a Formula One race lately, you've probably seen clips that show an angle from just behind the cockpit, with the top or side of the driver's helmet in the frame. Captured by onboard cameras embedded in the car, the resulting footage is designed for broadcast, using specific color spaces and codecs. Converting it to match the look of the rest of the F1 film would be too challenging to be feasible. Instead, Apple's engineering team replaced the broadcast module with a camera composed of iPhone parts.

The module looks nothing like an iPhone. It intentionally resembles the broadcast camera module, and Apple even had to match the weight so that its version wouldn't alter a car's specs. The inside, however, is completely different. (Apple gave us a peek during WWDC last week alongside an F1 car.)

At the heart is an iPhone camera sensor powered by an A-series chip. Apple didn't specify the exact sensor or chipset, but these were used for a few cars in real F1 races throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons, so there's a chance it was the same A17 Pro and 48-megapixel primary camera in the iPhone 15 Pro. It also contained an iPhone battery and a neutral density filter over the camera to reduce the light entering the lens, giving film editors more control over exposure.

No one expects an iPhone camera to perform flawlessly at incredible speeds or extreme conditions, so the engineering team had to consider this factor. They tested the camera module to ensure it could endure extreme shock, vibrations, and heat—it supposedly surpassed the specs provided by Formula One.

The module ran iOS but had a custom firmware for the camera. The videos were captured in log format with Apple's ProRes lossless video codec, delivering footage that looks flat but gives the editors much more granular control to color grade and match the visuals with the rest of the film. This custom firmware inevitably led to two new features in the iPhone 15 Pro: log encoding and support for the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) color workflow.

Since there are no radios in the module, a custom iPad app was the only way the filmmakers could make on-the-fly changes to the camera. Once connected via USB-C, they could adjust things like frame rate, exposure gain, shutter angle, and white balance. This is also where they'd hit record to start or stop recording. The footage captured with the module is sprinkled throughout the F1 film.

While the vast majority of Apple's customers will never use these capabilities, Apple has long been a proponent of artists using Apple hardware to create. With Apple Originals like F1, the company now has a seat at the filmmaking level to further experiment and deliver exactly what the filmmakers want, which in turn allows it to develop new features for the iPhone.

F1 now joins the growing list of films shot—entirely or partially—on iPhone. That includes Sean Baker's Tangerine in 2015 and Danny Boyle's upcoming 28 Years Later, which also releases this month.

It's important to note that while companies tout that a film is captured via a smartphone, it's rarely purely through the capabilities of the smartphone alone. Film sets have significant control over lighting, which is crucial, and these smartphone cameras often have third-party lenses attached to the back and are mounted on tripods and rigs that level them up significantly more than your average vacation videos.

That said, improvements in smartphone cinematography enable more people to get a start in film without requiring expensive equipment. It doesn't take away from proper film equipment either. Case in point: Christopher Nolan's upcoming The Odyssey, the first blockbuster to reportedly be shot entirely with Imax film cameras. Imax CEO Rich Gelfond recently told members of the press at Cannes that Nolan asked his team to make some tweaks to improve production workflows and they obliged, making them lighter and quieter.

When you have Apple bankrolling your film, it's apparently not out of bounds to ask the iPhone makers to craft a custom mini camera to mount on a race car. Anything for the perfect shot.