I have been preaching The Gospel According to Smartphone for at least the last five years—every time somebody says in Quora or Reddit (or here!) "I'd like to make my first movie but I can't afford a camera," I respond, "You already HAVE one in your shirt pocket or bag! If your smartphone is less than a decade old, odds are it has a HD or Ultra HD camera built into it. Even better, it's the camera you know better than any other, because you use it every time your pets or kids do something funny, you see something you want to show your friends, or you just had a fender-bender and need to send it off to the insurance company."
No, they're no substitute for a Arri or a RED, but if you're starting out and don't have a lot of money they're surprisingly good, and you can find decent inexpensive accessories for them like wide-angle, telephoto or anamorphic(!) lenses; external microphones; and tripods/monopods for more stable shooting. Here's a video I shot last Christmas season at a lights show in Brooklyn, at night, with my iPhone 14 Pro (no tripod, no external mic)—https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E-Wpd7l12nociH51Gr0XYXo7bq1mfXjk/view?usp=drive_link
I tried to put it on YouTube but it got a copyright flag because the background music is from THE POLAR EXPRESS. 🤦♂️
Yes! THIS!
I have been preaching The Gospel According to Smartphone for at least the last five years—every time somebody says in Quora or Reddit (or here!) "I'd like to make my first movie but I can't afford a camera," I respond, "You already HAVE one in your shirt pocket or bag! If your smartphone is less than a decade old, odds are it has a HD or Ultra HD camera built into it. Even better, it's the camera you know better than any other, because you use it every time your pets or kids do something funny, you see something you want to show your friends, or you just had a fender-bender and need to send it off to the insurance company."
No, they're no substitute for a Arri or a RED, but if you're starting out and don't have a lot of money they're surprisingly good, and you can find decent inexpensive accessories for them like wide-angle, telephoto or anamorphic(!) lenses; external microphones; and tripods/monopods for more stable shooting. Here's a video I shot last Christmas season at a lights show in Brooklyn, at night, with my iPhone 14 Pro (no tripod, no external mic)—https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E-Wpd7l12nociH51Gr0XYXo7bq1mfXjk/view?usp=drive_link
I tried to put it on YouTube but it got a copyright flag because the background music is from THE POLAR EXPRESS. 🤦♂️