Use Cinematic Mode or Davinci Resolve CineFocus?
- Blake Calhoun
- 12 hours ago
- 2 min read
When shooting with a small sensor camera like an iPhone it can be challenging to get a lot of shallow depth-of-field - unless you're close to a subject or using a telephoto lens.
If you're within 5 ft. or so and using the main 24mm f/1.8 camera, you can get background blur and thus some perceived separation and depth. But anything further away the DOF becomes deeper and more or less everything will be in focus.
And by the way, there's nothing wrong with that. Watch your favorite movies from the past and you'll likely notice that most medium to wide shots had deep focus. It was mainly telephoto shots that created background blur and bokeh.
But today it's different. Mainly because of the rise of DSLR and now mirrorless cameras with larger sensors.
Lots of people associate shallow DOF with being "cinematic". And in some cases they're not wrong. Especially as it relates to smartphones as that's a big giveaway that you're shooting with a smartphone - everything is in focus.
So that's one reason Apple originally gave us Cinematic Mode on the iPhone 13. And it is a great way to get a shallow depth-of-field look on an iPhone. But it has lots of problems.
The depth-map it creates isn't perfect, so the edges can look weird
There's no Apple Log support, which is a big drawback for filmmakers
It's currently only available in the Native iPhone Camera app, which has limited control
And the list goes on.
(I actually made a video on the Cinematic Mode topic that inspired this post and you can watch it at the bottom of this page)
So if you want to shoot Apple Log on an iPhone and maybe even ProRes RAW - but also get shallow DOF, what do you?
I'd go ahead and shoot it and then on any shots you want to add shallow focus to - use Davinci Resolve's new CineFocus.
In the aforementioned Cinematic Mode video, I touch on using CineFocus as an alternative to Apple's background blur option, but I wanted to share a more detailed overview tutorial for it here, which you can watch below.
You have to have Davinci Resolve 21. I'm running the paid Studio version, but I've read that this will work in the free version too (but some say it won't - I can't test it to know for sure).
Either way, it's a great option to using Cinematic Mode when you need it. And it will of course work with any kind of footage, not just from smartphones.
And if you haven't seen it, here's the Cinematic Mode video:
For quick shots, especially for social media, I do like Cinematc Mode and use it. But for anything more involved it's nice to have higher quality footage and more control in post using CineFocus (or Magic Mask or even RotoBrush in After Effects).
Happy filmmaking!
-BC
P.S. Speaking of Apple Log, I've now got a new Apple Log Filmmaker Kit that is an all-in-one solution for making your footage look great in post. Check it out here!
