iPhones are already pretty impressive video cameras, but Apple has just made it even easier to fine-tune your clips with the new Final Cut Camera app for iPhones and iPads – which you can now download for free.
Apple announced the standalone app in May, but it has just become available for download via the App Store. Final Cut Camera doesn’t do much that you can’t already do with third-party apps like Blackmagic Camera or Kino, but it’s a lot more advanced than your iPhone’s built-in Camera app – and it’s free, too.
The main advantage of using Final Cut Camera to record your videos is the manual controls it offers. As with the stock camera app, you can adjust your exposure by tapping the arrow in the bottom right corner to reveal a submenu and then tapping the second option from the left.
Unlike the iPhone’s built-in Camera app, you can also manually change the ISO or shutter speed of your video. To do this, tap the ‘auto’ button in the exposure menu to get those extra options. A good rule of thumb for capturing natural motion blur is to make sure your shutter speed is double your frame rate (for example, at 24 fps, set the shutter speed to 1/48s). You can also set the white balance manually by tapping the icon to the left of the exposure button.
The Final Cut Camera app is particularly powerful if you have an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max, because it combines these manual controls with the ability to shoot in the Apple ProRes format. Unfortunately, there’s no option to shoot in the ProRes LT format for smaller file sizes, but ProRes – which is used by professional video editors in apps like Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro – is still a nice option if you’re looking for maximum dynamic range and editing flexibility.
Another neat trick in Final Cut Camera is the ability to use ‘focus pull’ (or slowly changing focus to highlight a focal point in your scene). To do this, open the submenu by tapping the icon on the right and then the AF/MF button (third from the left). Choose ‘Manual’ focus and drag the dial to change the focus.
To help you do this exactly, you can also enable ‘focus peaking’ (above), which will highlight the in-focus areas of your scene in green. You can find this by tapping the settings cog icon at the top right, then Tools, then toggling the ‘Focus Peaking’ option. This option requires an iPhone or iPad with at least an A13 Bionic chip, which debuted on the iPhone 11 series in 2019.
Final Cut Camera also offers superior zoom controls over the iPhone’s standard Camera app. To zoom in or out on a scene, tap the magnifying glass to the left of the three focal length options and then use the slider. This dial feels smoother than the one in the Camera app and is also limited to a single focal length so you don’t have to struggle to switch between lenses.
All these controls allow you to fine-tune your iPhone videos or create a certain atmosphere (for example, by deliberately underexposing the scene or adjusting the white balance). But Apple has also built in some more advanced multi-cam features for professional photographers, which of course also push you towards the Final Cut Pro editing app…
Go for multicam
In recent years, Apple has increasingly touted the iPhone as a professional video camera – and a few features in the Final Cut Camera app certainly help it earn that moniker.
If you have multiple iPhones or iPads, and also a Final Cut Pro for iPad subscription ($4.99 / £4.99 / AU$7.99 per month), you can record a Live Multicam session with the Final Cut Camera app. That effectively gives you four different angles on the same scene, all of which feed into the Final Cut Pro app for quick recording and editing.
To start a Live Multicam session, set up a Live Multicam project in Final Cut Pro for iPad (go to New Project > Record with Live Multicam), then tap the camera icon in the top left corner of the Final Cut Camera app. Once you’ve followed the instructions therein to set up your camera angles, you can start recording on all devices by tapping the record button in either app.
That’s a potentially useful tool for YouTubers, and if you have an iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone 15 Pro Max, you can also record your videos directly to an external SSD to avoid filling up your phone’s storage space. You’ll need a USB cable rated as USB 3.2 Gen 1×1 or better (with a minimum speed of 5Gbit/s), but once you’re connected you’ll see the name of your device appear at the bottom of the final. Cut camera screen.
While the Final Cut Camera app is a handy bonus for the average iPhone owner, these extra tricks make it especially powerful for professional video photographers and owners of the iPhone 15 Pro series. Of course, Apple hopes it will also lure a few Final Cut Pro for iPad subscribers, but you don’t need that to take advantage of some of the features.