This is the iPhone 16 Pro, and ever since this phone was announced I have seen a decent amount of negativity from people, which if I was to sum it up would be a lack of excitement about what Apple has changed and updated with their phones this year. Heads up: this link goes to the newer iPhone 17 Pro. But in my opinion as a filmmaker, if we are talking about the video capabilities of the iPhone 16 Pro in particular, this phone is a really great upgrade and has easily the best video quality that you can get from a cell phone, and arguably some of the best audio quality as well.
So I am going to be reviewing the iPhone 16 Pro from the perspective of a filmmaker and telling you if it is worth purchasing, especially if you are upgrading from a phone that is several years old, like an iPhone 14, 13, 12, an Android phone, and so on.
Also, for the sake of ethics, I want you to know this video is not paid or sponsored by Apple. I bought this phone with my own money.
The iPhone 15 Was A Massive Video Upgrade
If you are not coming from an iPhone 15 Pro but from an earlier iPhone, and I have heard from many people that still have an iPhone 12 and are wondering if it is time to upgrade, let me just say that if you are someone who records videos with your phone, I cannot overstate what a massive upgrade the iPhone 15 Pro was from a video quality standpoint.
The 15 Pro added Apple Log, which boosted the phone’s dynamic range and made it much more competitive with even mirrorless cameras from the likes of Sony and Panasonic, while also significantly dialing back the oversharpening effect that typically plagues most cell phone video. Pair that with the ability to record a very high bitrate ProRes file that holds up very well to heavy color grading, and Apple has essentially given you an incredible filmmaking camera that works way better than anything we have had in this size and form factor before.
The iPhone 15 Pro was good enough that I filmed a wedding with it last year, and the footage looked great.
Likewise, news recently broke that the director of the 28 Days Later sequel actually filmed the new 28 Years Later movie with the iPhone 15 Pro. It is pretty wild stuff. And any time that I have posted about filmmaking with the iPhone 15 Pro or 16 Pro, I have received multiple comments from people telling me that nobody is filming anything professional on a phone. But that is simply not true. While you are busy typing an angry comment about how useless an iPhone is for filmmaking, there are professionals out there creating movies that you are going to watch in a theater with this device, so I am sorry to say it, but you are factually incorrect.
So here are some of my feelings about whether you should upgrade to the 16 Pro or not. If you are coming from any iPhone earlier than the 15 Pro, I would at the very least recommend upgrading to a 15 Pro for these video quality improvements, and heck, you can probably find one for a good discount now that the 16 Pro is out. But like I said at the start, in my experience the 16 Pro does offer some really nice upgrades over the 15 Pro in the realm of video creation, and if you are someone who only upgrades their phone every three to five years, it may be worth it for you to pony up more for the 16 Pro to be better future proofed and have the phone last longer.
4K 120FPS Is Here
For six years now, ever since the iPhone X back in 2017, and wow, that is a long time ago, Apple has been stuck with a maximum frame rate and resolution of 4K at 60 frames per second on the iPhone. To be clear, this has been very usable and I filmed most of a wedding last year at that resolution and frame rate on the iPhone 15 Pro, but this is also a time whenever other cell phones and a lot of other professional cameras out there are capable of recording in higher resolutions like 6K and 8K, which I do not really care about, and at 120 frames per second, which is far more interesting to most filmmakers.
Personally I am more of a 60fps guy. That is my go to for filming slow motion, because I think footage at 120fps looks a bit too slow at times, and once you start filming at higher frame rates like 120fps you start to run into more issues with LED lights flickering due to wonky refresh rates. So like I said, I usually stick to 60fps. But I just said the word usually, meaning there are definitely situations where I feel like 120fps is warranted, so I was thrilled to find that the iPhone 16 Pro is now capable of recording video in 4K at 120 frames per second.
Some of you may be really excited about this, and some of you may be indifferent to this frame rate, but to that I say hey, just because you do not need this feature now does not mean you are not going to be filming something in the future where you wish you had just a bit more slow motion while still having a high resolution video, and that is where you are going to love having the option to film in 4K at 120fps.
A Big Caveat About 4K 120FPS
Now, that said about how great 4K at 120fps is, I do have one big caveat that I discovered after purchasing the phone that you need to be aware of, and that caveat is that while yes, the iPhone 16 Pro can absolutely film in 4K at 120fps, it can only do this with the main camera. It is incapable of filming 4K 120 with the ultrawide or 5x zoom cameras, and I have really not seen many people talking about this.
I do not think it is a dealbreaker that only the main camera can film at this frame rate and resolution, but it is definitely a surprise considering that all of the previous iPhones were able to film in all frame rates and resolutions with all of their cameras. So Apple is clearly pushing the tech pretty hard here, and I suppose we will have to wait for the iPhone 17 Pro to see if this high of a frame rate and resolution is supported with the other cameras as well. Just another thing to ask Apple for in the future.
Change Your Frame Rate In The Photos App
Speaking more about frame rates, we need to talk about another upgrade that Apple added to the iPhone 16 Pro, but I want you to know this is just a software upgrade for iOS 18 and it is also available on all previous iPhones as long as they upgrade. Regardless, it is great to see because it is filmmaking related and we need to talk about it. This upgrade is that Apple allows you to adjust the frame rate of a video after you have filmed it.
Apple realized this is something filmmakers are going to want to use relatively often, especially if you are creating content for social media, so they added the ability to simply go into the Photos app, tap the stopwatch button, and then slow down the frame rate. Now, this is done in the typical Apple way of giving you some control but not complete control. As a professional I would really prefer the ability to adjust the video frame rate by an exact number, for example slowing 60fps footage down to exactly 23.976 frames per second. Unfortunately you are still going to have to use a professional video editing software for that, and you are going to be more limited in your choices for slow motion frame rates in the Photos app. But hey, it is better than nothing.
An Ultrawide Camera Upgrade For Filmmaking
Next, for upgrades that I really wanted to see from the iPhone 15 Pro, I was really hoping for better low light performance and image quality with the zoom and ultrawide cameras. If you have used an iPhone before, it has pretty much always been this way. Apple prioritizes video quality of the main camera above all else, and while the phone has two other cameras, an ultrawide and a zoom, those feel kind of like afterthoughts.
I am happy to tell you that while it is not perfect, Apple has answered at least part of my request. The iPhone 16 Pro’s ultrawide camera has been significantly improved with the addition of a new 48 megapixel sensor, which records video that is noticeably sharper and more detailed than the previous version on the 15 Pro, and this is especially obvious toward the edge of the frame in any footage you record.
In my testing it does not look like there is a big jump in low light performance with the ultrawide camera, but as long as you have enough light I still think this is a good improvement, and if you are someone who likes the ultrawide look, which I especially do for establishing shots, I think you are going to find yourself using the ultrawide camera even more often.
What About The 5x Zoom Camera?
Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the 5x zoom camera on the iPhone 16 Pro. To my eye the footage from this camera looks very similar to footage from the iPhone 15 Pro, which means that if you have enough light, let’s say you are filming outdoors on a partly cloudy day or in a studio with a lot of light sources, you are going to be perfectly fine and I think you will be really happy with the quality of footage you get.
But once the sun goes down you are going to want to either stop using the 5x zoom entirely or invest in a good set of lights, because if the iPhone has to increase the ISO levels for this camera, good luck. It gets noisy quickly, and overall the image looks basically identical to the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Here is hoping the iPhone 17 Pro completes this upgrade process. Come on Apple, if you have upgraded the ultrawide this year, you can definitely upgrade the zoom next year.
A Missing Upgrade, And A Workaround
The next upgrade I wanted to see from the iPhone 16 Pro was also unfortunately not included, but I am hopeful that Apple could add it in a software update whenever they want to. Here is the deal. If you want to film in Apple Log using the native iPhone camera app, which, if you remember, is going to give you the best possible video quality from the camera with much less oversharpening and better dynamic range, the image is gorgeous, trust me, you want to film in Apple Log. Well, the issue is that it is only possible to film in Apple Log if you also film in the ProRes codec.
ProRes is a fantastic codec, do not get me wrong. It is very easy to edit and it is supported on pretty much all video editing software. It is great. The only con is that ProRes is a very large file size codec, and in addition, if you want to film at higher frame rates with the iPhone 16 Pro, like 4K at 60fps or 120, you have to connect an external SSD to the USB-C port on the bottom of the phone to save the files, presumably because Apple does not want you completely filling up the iPhone’s storage space too fast.
Thankfully, here is the big workaround for you. If you choose to use the Blackmagic Camera app instead of the native iPhone camera app, that app gives you two huge benefits. Namely, you can film at higher frame rates and resolutions directly to the phone’s storage, even 4K at 120fps in ProRes with Apple Log.
But I am also going to warn you, please do not try this immediately after you set up your phone like I did, because the Blackmagic Camera app is going to start flashing an exclamation mark at you indicating that it is dropping frames. This is not due to the phone being incapable of recording in 4K 120. It is because the phone is still setting up a lot of things and running a lot of background processes, and that can result in the processor and storage not being able to keep up with the high demands of 4K at 120fps. So give your phone a few hours or a day after you have set it up, and then it is perfectly capable of recording these frame rates and resolutions internally.
In addition, and this is really the big upgrade and my favorite reason for using the Blackmagic Camera app, you can also choose to film in Apple Log using the H.265 codec instead of ProRes, which is going to give you dramatically smaller file sizes while still keeping image quality very comparable to ProRes. So can you see why I love the Blackmagic Camera app? It essentially removes a lot of the limitations of the native iPhone camera app for Apple Log, and gives you a smaller file size in the process.
That said, there is still something so great about the native iPhone camera app and how user friendly and simple it is, plus how quick it is to open and get filming. So my hope for the iPhone 16 would have been that Apple recognized, hey, Blackmagic is already proving we do not need this artificial limitation on frame rates where anything higher than 4K 60 has to go to an external SSD, and look, they are using a more compressed codec as well. So please Apple, give us a software update that lets us record to the iPhone’s internal storage without an SSD, and give us a toggle to film in Apple Log in H.265 as well. We would love that. Please. Those are really the only things keeping me from loving the native camera app, and thankfully Blackmagic does have our backs as filmmakers with the alternative, so it is not the end of the world.
I also have a tutorial showing you how to use the Blackmagic Camera app, which I made for the iPhone 15 Pro, and you can let me know if you want an updated version of that for the iPhone 16 Pro. And if you want some color presets for Apple Log that look fantastic, I have created a set of presets that work beautifully with log footage from any camera, Apple Log included.
Camera Control Is Actually Useful For Filmmakers
This next one is not an upgrade that I knew I wanted, but one I am happy to see included, and that is the addition of Apple’s new Camera Control button. I remember reading rumors about a year or so ago saying Apple was planning on eventually getting rid of all the buttons and ports on their phones, making it just a touchscreen that charges wirelessly. Thankfully that did not end up happening, and as a filmmaker who has multiple cameras with a lot of buttons on them, I am a big fan of buttons and I think they definitely have a place over a touchscreen. There is a reason Sony has not made their cameras just a giant touchscreen with no buttons on them. Humans like buttons.
In typical Apple fashion they wanted to cram a ton of capabilities and versatility into it, so you can press it like a normal button, you can half press it for different things, and you can swipe your finger across it to adjust settings. There is a ton of versatility here, but it is also very overwhelming whenever you first use the phone, and it definitely took me a while to get it dialed in and working how I wanted it to.
First though, I need to address the elephant in the room, and that is that I am left handed, so I am normally holding my phone in that hand, which means my finger is pretty much always going to be touching the new Camera Control button and I may be triggering it accidentally. Thankfully, once I had the phone in my hands I discovered I was wrong about that theory, because the Camera Control button is very flush against the side of the phone. Even if you pick it up with a decently firm grip it is hard to accidentally trigger, which is a big relief. And if you are still concerned about this, you can go into the phone’s camera settings and there is an option to require the button to be double tapped to activate it, which removes a lot of the stress of accidental activation.
Apple showed off a ton of different features in their keynote where they were pressing this new button, including the ability to half press to lock exposure and focus before fully pressing it to start recording a video. Unfortunately that half press feature is not available yet, but Apple says it is coming in a future firmware update. The ability to heavily customize Camera Control and change settings with it is already available though.
I put together Filming A Wedding With The iPhone 15 Pro – Wedding Filmmaking Behind The Scenes as well, which covers the part I skipped over here.
After using it for a little while, I settled on two settings I really prefer. The first is a setting that lets you change your exposure by swiping. Changing exposure in the native camera app without Camera Control is kind of a pain, because you have to tap on the screen and drag up and down, and if you already have the camera focused on something it is going to refocus whenever you tap on the screen. It is just a bit cumbersome to adjust, especially considering that iPhones are not always the most accurate when it comes to exposure and you sometimes need to bring it down to keep from overexposing. Camera Control makes that much easier, and I really appreciate it.
Secondly, I am a fan of using Camera Control to swap between the ultrawide, wide, and zoom lenses. No taps on the screen required to change cameras, just swipe to change your focal length. I am a big fan. Please note you can also set Camera Control to zoom in and out, but considering how much video quality you lose whenever you digitally zoom on a video instead of just changing cameras, I pretty much always recommend changing the lens rather than using the zoom feature.
One more thing about Camera Control that you may not have thought about, but I think it is really great, is that you now have a dedicated hardware button for launching the camera whenever you press it. Sometimes I will be with my family or at an event where I really need to record something right away, but if I am already using my phone that means going back to the home screen to select the camera, or swiping down to the control center and tapping on the camera, or locking the phone and then tapping on the camera. It is just a few extra steps. Now, no matter what you are doing with your phone, the instant you press Camera Control the camera app is going to open and be ready for you to start filming.
Overheating Performance
Speaking of other hidden upgrades, you should also know that Apple says the 16 Pro has a new graphite and aluminum heat dissipation system built into the chassis of the phone that should help prevent it from overheating, which I think is really important considering that this phone now films in 4K at 120fps, and that can generate a lot of heat very quickly due to the massive amount of data it requires.
Because I am based in Texas and the iPhone 16 Pro was released at the tail end of summer, the temperatures were still hitting the 90s every day, so I was very interested to see how the phone would handle recording at these temperatures. I am happy to tell you that in my testing, filming a variety of clips outdoors on a hot day at a variety of frame rates and resolutions constantly, all in ProRes, the phone did get plenty warm and dimmed the screen a bit. It never overheated though, or stopped me from using it, so I call that a win.
The “Studio Quality” Microphones
Next I want to talk about one of the biggest upgrades to the iPhone 16 Pro from really any previous iPhone, and you should know I was really skeptical of this upgrade whenever Apple mentioned it, but I have been very pleasantly surprised. This upgrade is in the area of audio, which, if you are a filmmaker, you know how important audio is for any video. Your audience will forgive shaky footage that is blurry and low resolution, but the instant you start assaulting their ears with crappy sounding audio they are going to click away and want to watch something else.
Talking about the hardware first, the iPhone 15 Pro only had three microphones, so the 16 Pro is getting one more, and these microphones are placed all around the phone so it can record truly 360 degree audio. It is almost like Apple makes a VR headset you can wear where recording in 360 would be really useful. In addition, Apple says these four microphones have a lower noise floor, meaning the audio should sound cleaner and be less noisy if you have to bring up the levels.
So of course I tested this, recording some audio using the Voice Memos feature on my iPhone 15 Pro and then doing the same on my 16 Pro. Both of these samples were recorded in my sound treated studio and are just room tone, meaning I am not making any sounds, and we are just listening for how much noise the iPhone microphones are generating on their own. I also boosted the gain on both examples so you can really hear the difference. The iPhone 16 Pro’s microphones are generating less noise, meaning they have a lower noise floor and they are going to sound better. In addition, these mics just sound really good if you are speaking into them, and if you are someone who makes social media videos with the phone’s built in microphone, this is a real upgrade.
Audio Mix Is Powerful If You Tweak It
We are not done yet, because we now need to talk about another software update Apple has added to the iPhone. This new setting is called Audio Mix, and by default the iPhone is going to record a 360 audio mix from around the phone. But with this tool you can choose to use certain microphones while canceling the audio of others, giving you directional audio without needing to put a giant shotgun microphone on the front of your phone.
The main thing I want you to keep in mind is that this Audio Mix setting is tunable, and you can adjust the intensity of the mix to make it weaker or stronger. For example, in the test I ran I had the intensity set to 50 and it sounded great on my iPhone, but playing it back it did not sound as good on my computer, so just be aware that you may need to tweak this intensity setting whenever you are editing your sound.
The In-Frame option is going to be great if you are recording multiple people speaking and you only want the mic to pick up people who are in the frame. Next you have the Studio setting, which is going to tune the microphones to sound like you are recording a podcast in a studio, so that way you do not have to spend money on sound treatment to kill the echo like I did in this room. Personally, Studio is the setting I would plan on using the most when recording videos for social media. Lastly you have the Cinematic setting, which essentially uses all of the iPhone’s microphones to record all of the audio around the phone but then mixes it in real time so it sounds like it is coming from the front where the camera is recording, and Apple says this is the same way surround sound is formatted for movies. Feel free to play around with that if you want, but like I said, the first two are the ones you are probably going to be using the most.
Should You Upgrade To The iPhone 16 Pro?
So as you can see, while I have seen a decent amount of people being negative about the iPhone 16 Pro and saying they are not as excited about it as they were about the 15 Pro, I do not think that sentiment really applies for us as filmmakers or anyone who records video with their phone, because Apple has packed a ton of useful features for filmmakers into the 16 Pro. And by the way, we did not even really touch on battery life, but the battery life is stellar as well. Even if you are filming a ton of video clips it should keep going all day, which is great.
So here is my take. If you are considering upgrading to the 16 Pro from an Android phone, which to be clear I do not want to start a big war in the comments, but Samsung and Pixel do not have a high quality pro level video codec like ProRes or a high dynamic range log profile like Apple Log, so there is really no comparison here. Apple solidly beats the vast majority of Android phones in video quality.
Or if you are considering upgrading to the 16 Pro from any iPhone prior to the 15 Pro, like the 14, 13, 12, or 11, you should know that the 16 Pro is going to be a massive upgrade for you in terms of video quality, and I think you are going to absolutely love the videos you are able to create with it.
And a side note, because I know people are going to ask, I have seen a lot of people with the sentiment that you should upgrade to the regular 16 instead of the 16 Pro this year, but keep in mind that for filmmaking Apple is only enabling ProRes and Apple Log support on their Pro phone models, and considering just how good Apple Log footage looks, trust me, you want to go with the Pro.
If you have been considering getting into wedding filmmaking, and remember, I did film a wedding with the iPhone 15 Pro, I would highly recommend checking out my free workshop. It is going to show you how to book your next wedding in 30 days or less, and put you on the fast track to starting a filmmaking business and potentially making thousands of dollars on the weekend.
Thanks so much for reading and have a great day!