Apple announced its new iPhone line on Tuesday, with the iPhone 17 Pro directly appealing to content creators.
iPhone cameras have long checked every box for what casual users might need, making digital cameras obsolete for most consumers. But for millions of content creators (an industry with an estimated 200 million potential customers), they will need to purchase handheld video cameras from companies like Canon, Sony, Panasonic, Nikon and Fujifilm. Some of these camera brands spin the entire product line sold as “video blog cameras” and feature compatibility between pop-out displays that record selfie videos and a common dimension used for social media.
However, the iPhone 17 Pro could ultimately become a device that will make content creators' other video cameras collect dust.
At a glance, the key difference here is that the new iPhone 17 Pro's camera sensor is 56% larger than the iPhone 16 Pro. The size of the camera sensor affects most aspects of camera performance, including low-light capabilities, field depth, and resolution. So basically, the specs are simply superior on new devices.
However, under more scrutiny, the specs of the pocketable camera weighing 0.5 pounds remain impressive. (The clock is a little lighter than the small camera I've been paying attention to daily street photography.) The iPhone 17 Pro's main, ultra-width and telephoto lenses are all 48mp fusion cameras, allowing optical zooming at 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 4x, and 8x. The telephoto lens is significantly improved from the 12MP lens on the iPhone 16 Pro, while the selfie camera improves from 12MP to 18MP.
In an Apple presentation, Patrick Carroll, manager of iPhone Camera Architecture, said:
However, the most important thing for creators is the video feature of the phone. Like its previous models, the iPhone 17 Pro supports 4K 120 FPS video recording with Dolby Vision, but it's a video feature focused on new creators.
Although included with other iPhone 17 models, dual front and rear camera recordings will be a hit for creators. The entire product line also supports the center stage mode of the front camera. This allows users to capture both horizontal and vertical directions without rotating the phone. These features are great in Pro as they use 4K 60 fps ultra-stabilized video to improve the video capabilities of your basic device.
When it comes to editing and compatibility with professional movie setups, the heart of the creator's workflow – the iPhone 17 Pro takes a big leap.
For creators who record videos and live streams in their home studios, the iPhone 17 Pro supports GenLock. This is a setup that allows multiple cameras to sync and easily work together.
Together with these new iPhone releases, Final Cut Camera 2.0 is an upgrade to Apple's free app, allowing for more professional-level video editing on your device. The updated app allows Creators to shoot in Apple's ProRes Raw format. Apple says it speeds up exports and reduces files without sacrificing quality.
“The update also introduces open gate recording, which uses a full camera sensor to capture a wider field of view at resolutions above DCI 4K,” Apple said in a press release. “This gives editors the ultimate flexibility to reconstruct shots, stabilize the footage and set the final aspect ratio without compromising image quality or performance.”
It makes sense that the iPhone remains a bit historically as desired by a bit of expert. Unlike other cameras, the iPhone has to do that much, not only does it take photos and videos. For example, Canon doesn't have to dedicate hardware budgets to GPUs running complex AI models on-device.
However, the bottom line is the iPhone 17 Pro phone. For many creators, carrying one device to an iPhone is already attractive enough, in contrast to a phone and another camera.