Video: Those 'Shot on iPhone' ads are not what they seem

Wouldn't it be nice if lies and deceits, even small ones, were made illegal in advertising? Why governments allow it needs no explanation but IMO corruption of any sort than can be discouraged should be. The profit motive seems to be valued more than life itself and this is ridiculous.

They should have a series called "Shot on an iPhone late at night after plenty of beer without any support except a shaking hand."

The quality of iPhone videos, even without the ridiculous gear attached to them, is fantastic. It's state of the art of a few years ago for high level gear, so if that state was perfectly acceptable, so is this. You really could shoot commercials, or features, on your iPhone if you actually relied on your abilities as a videographer, and not on the gear.

What 99.9% of people do not realize is that the billboards along the highway are printed usually at 110dpi and the great distance to the viewer tricks the eye much as with a newspaper when viewed closer than arms' length.

The good aspect is that any camera including a smartphone is better than not having a camera at all. Digital cameras and no worries about film deteriorating has made it possible to take more photos though unfortunately the majority are done with little or no thought, much like tweets by our "president".

Anyone familiar with "fake news" rampant today will not be surprised by "fake ads". Which is what these iPhone ads are. Technically, they get away from being attacked for false advertising but only just. The "fake news" industry, which includes the "fake terror attacks" promoted by "fake news specialists" such as CNN, has trained us to believe everything we see. Surely, governments and corporations wouldn't be trying to fool us, would they?

So you mean the next iPhone will cure cancer and save the world from poverty?

They all do it and not only for phones.
It is the same for d-slrs and mirrorless cameras.

They show results from videos made by really talented cameraman, add tons of stabilisers, rigs, high-end video lenses. Then the stuff gets edited on video software and the end result is not what the average shooter would get.

Oh please. Everyone knows Apple is the only company that will provide the necessary web-click quote for news media, however... everyone does it. Stop implying it's unique to Apple.

https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview-ads-are-fraudulent

In the 1970's, Polaroid shots for print ads came to our studio from the ad agency. The Polaroids were all shot by professionals commercial photographers who did ad work all the time.

We then mounted them inside a custom made copy box that allowed us to shoot the Polaroid converting it to B&W RGB Negatives and made a Dye Transfer Print of it. In the shooting ( Matrix film for the dye baths) process, we manipulated and enhanced it overall for color and contrast. After all that we next did minor airbrush and bleach and dye retouching on it.

Women are not the only ones that get star treatment.

"The Phones will be cheaper than DSLRs!"
Canon 1300D Camera with 18-55mm IS Lens = £309.00
Nikon D3400 Camera with AF-P 18-55mm VR lens = £389.00

Apple iPhone 7 = £510
Samsung = £444
Sony Xperia XZ = £421

No doubt there are cheaper phones, new and used, with less spec than these cutting edge monsters that can deliver similar photographic results, but general statements like Marques Brownlee said in the vid about price comparisons, even when they seem to be using pretty high end (camera) phones, gives the impression that DSLR quality is more expensive, when compared to what they were using in the vid, from the prices above, they probably are not. And that is not taking into account used and previous models but still new DSLRs too. ;-)

This is just the price / quality comparison though, no doubt phones are the multi purpose tool to give you more than just photos. ;-)

The cine lens pictured doesn't make much of a difference and doesn't improve IQ in any way. What it gives you is the ability to pull focus (thought phone sensor DOF is pretty big) and a little bokeh if your subject is close and the BG is far away.

What does make a difference:

Proper lighting - this above everything else is what makes those videos look good - a tiny phone sensor needs light or its terribly noisy. They're obviously lighting everything with more than another iPhone.

A gimbal to stabilize a really light device with some awful rolling shutter

A higher bitrate/manual control app like Cinematic that allows you to control exposure, shutter speed and ISO and record at a bitrate many times higher than stock - so there's more information for professional editors and color graders to do their thing

And of course extensive post processing including something like Neat Video to clean up the footage and spot on color correction

The youtube channel The Camera Store did a great test with iPhone and quite a few mid to high level ILC's cameras.. They printed the results and iPhone won in landscape image.. There no doubt its a great camera.. In low light thats another story..

Remember those "This commercial was shot on a Nikon D90" commercials way back in... 2009? Does anyone doubt there were rigs, a full crew, etc. for those as well?

I think considering how many people still fall for celebrity death hoaxes on the internet, DPReview is doing them a public service with this story.

"I'm shocked. Shocked to find gambling here." Professionals used professional equipment and professional lighting to create the iPhone ads.

While this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone here it probably does amaze the general public.

Shot a family wedding yesterday. Results out of my iPhone SE are generally cleaner than those shot on the Nikon D5500.

Meh... apple at least gives you a disclaimer. Others like Samsung don't give you any disclaimers in their ads... even their ads are disguised.

Marques wasn't right in one point: the price comparison. The cheapest DSLR with lens is around € 320 ($350) and that's about the price of a mid-class smartphone with reasonable optics. Considering high-end phones ($600+), a DSLR is much cheaper.

"We don't know exactly what gear Apple used on its latest 'Shot on iPhone' commercials, but we're betting ..."
Sorry, but this quote from your article makes the whole premise worthless.
Not the kind of quality I expect from DP-review. Please, don't become another clickbaiting-headline generating site!

Even without equipments, and not ignoring that most peoples using the phone camera will just be casual shooters.

Shot on iPhone
"with skill, experience, effort, chance, and flight ticket to exotic location"

Market and financial forces exert tremendous influence on how and when product or content is disseminated to target audiences. In that regard, any meaningful standard of transparent accountability seems tenuous, at best. Sadly, each day seems to reach new lows in the realm of how to artfully present distorted information. Or perhaps we are now becoming more and more painfully aware of how low this marketing bar was set a long time ago.

The problem with the premise of this article is the author does not know what was used. But one thing we know for sure, it was shot using an iPhone, so its sensor is what's in question. And we know it has a great lens. So the bottom line is, the answer is, we don't know what was used.

Well how about that. Color me surprised. I thought "gear doesn't matter," it DOES? Wow. [/sarcasm off]

And by the time you've done all that the "bulk" of gear starts seeming pretty irrelevant I'd say. It makes all of these comments about how even "lugging" a Sony RX100 is just SO much grunt work or such seem really silly.

The smart phone camera definitely has its uses but it can never replace a camera, even for a P&S one. First, the handling is worse off than a camera. Secondly, one seldom can keep it on shoot mode for too long. Thirdly, a phone call can come in anytime to disrupt you while you are trying to shoot. Forthly, the lack of an optical zoom make fast composition a bit difficult. Well, the list goes on.

Even with a good camera, one still require an eye for composition, lighting and exposure. So, thinking that one can shoot "award winning quality" photos by just having an expensive i-phone is an illusion.

Close enough.
Compact Primes, RT Motion follow focus are both pretty cheap.
Anyone could hire that for a couple of hundred a day.

Camera gear used on a normal commercial is thousands of times more than this cheap stuff.

What a shock ...

I consider ANY advertisement or commercial to be fake, companies will say and promise anything to get that money out of your wallet.

Just don't buy it, it's that simple...

"Yes, they were technically shot on those phones" Not even always the case as proven several times...

Funnily enough I've worked on such a shoot and SOME images were shot on the phone, but some from other cameras were mixed in too. And since the production company made no proper prior research to check whether mounting a phone on the intended "thing" was possible nor whether the phone's features were even at all capable of shooting what it was supposed to in the first place (hint: they weren't) it nearly ended being all lies.
I did drool a little when proposing a solution and getting the OK to root the sample phones from the representative of the manufacturer on location so that we could edit system parameters and use a couple of apps to work around the limitations and make the whole thing work at all.

These types of advertising should be made illegal.

While phone makers have a long history of "faking" promotional videos (hello Nokia) phones have been "good enough", especially for video, for some time now.

Providing that you can work with wide angle and deep DoF, you might not need anything else (even an extended selfie stick hanging vertically down can be an effective stabilizer).

Now, the tricky part is lighting and composition and no amount of equipment will help you if you suck at those.

That's why they hire highly capable professionals to film those videos.

Every company is lying to a degree. If you think Samsung are honest... or LG...
Apple ads though with their clinical cleanness and brightness, also promote fakeness as a style, which is probably the worst element in their videos.

That rig in the photo is a prototype of what Nikon should have been producing for ten years now - a DSLR where the phone clips onto the back to provide all the controls/apps/storage/connection/etc/etc/etc imaginable.

But they don't.

They could argue that people wouldn't upgrade their DSLR regularly any more, just their phone hardware or software.

But that's happened anyway. And worse is they're using their phone's inbuilt P&S camera instead of that DSLR with its 10 year old firmware and lack of connectivity any more which just sits in the cupboard.

Bill Gates wasn't very happy when he learned that the Annual Reports of Microsoft were done on Macs for a number of years.

But he's not so annoyed anymore after buying into Apple shares after that personal revelation.

Ooops! Wrong forum...

Carry on, then...

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The bs isn't as much in the ad as in the suckers who then go on to use the ad as evidence of what their phone of choice can do.

Next you'll be telling us L'Oréals skin repair animations aren't accurate...

This is same as the US space programs mania during the Cold War; spending millions on expensive rigs and rockets, hiring best minds in science and PR only to put — a monkey into a rocket. (While their competitors decided to put a real man instead and beat them with real results).
That futile advertising mindset lives today; braindead companies go the same lengths to spends millions, use best videographers and hire incredible rigs only to tie in a monkey camera.

Did anyone really think it was different than this? All of the ads supposedly shot on smartphones are totally made just like this.