Portable pro quality: 4K aerial film shot on iPhone 6s offers amazing look at U.S. cities from above

 

 

Smartphone camera technology continues to improve at a frantic pace. We already know it's possible to take great photos with your mobile device, but it's not often we see professional-quality video shot with an iPhone. Cinematographer Jaron Schneider and his friend Toby Harriman run a creative content agency, Planet Unicorn, and they have wanted to make an aerial film of their favorite cities in the U.S. Without the budget to make the video they envisioned, the project was put on hold. And then the iPhone 6s came out, and they were very impressed with its video quality.

Schneider writes, "The idea that we could shoot something like this on a cell phone was among the 'totally absurd' concepts not too long ago, and before Toby and I had our hands on the latest iPhones, we would have totally dismissed the idea as foolish." But despite this being a smartphone rather than a dedicated camera, the duo say that they were getting "as good or better quality" video from the Apple device as they had been getting with their regular video camera, the Panasonic GH4.

The project focused on using a small kit. Besides the phone, they used only the Ikan Fly-X3 stabilizer gimbal. For filming using the phone, they utilized Filmic Pro which allows for 100 MB/s recording with iPhones. The cities featured in the film below are San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston. Make sure to watch the video in 4K if you can!

For more information, read this article and get a behind-the-scenes look of the project at Planet Unicorn.

(Seen via Fstoppers and Resource Magazine)