Filmic Pro Unlock the full potential of your ioS camera
there are presets for dialling in a bunch of settings with a single tap
£14.99 FRoM Filmic, filmicpro.com needs ioS 11.1 or later (certain features restricted to newer devices)
Filmic Pro has won a number of awards for harnessing the power of Apple’s iOS camera hardware. Indeed, genuine feature films have been shot with this app.
The redesign introduces three shooting modes. The manual ARC sliders provide quick and easy control over focus, ISO, and shutter speed. These slide in on the left and right of the screen, and are simple to operate with your thumbs. A second mode provides on-screen selectors for focus and exposure control. Simply tap on an area to focus on it, or adjust exposure based on its brightness. The pro Hybrid mode lets you combine the previous two, and also has a digital zoom slider.
The app is well thought-out, with controls available via taps mainly along the bottom edge. A main menu pops out from the bottom right corner when tapped and provides access
to key settings. These include app presets for dialling in a bunch of settings with a single tap, audio and video quality and stabilisation.
Resolution and frame rate will go as high as your device’s hardware can manage; on more recent iPhones and iPads this includes 4K, 240fps, and more compressed formats. You can crop to various aspect ratios when shooting, either blanking out or overlaying the crop markers onto the screen, making it easy to frame shots.
Visual analysis
There are on-screen battery and audio level meters, and various input options, including Bluetooth mics. Advanced visual analysis can also be activated in the form of contrast peaking, zebra stripes, clipping, and false colour. Combined with the manual controls over ISO, shutter speed and exposure, they’ll let you precisely set the look of a shot in a way the native Camera app doesn’t. There’s also a handy white balance selector with presets to quickly dial in colour temperature and tint.
There’s a searchable library and the option to share clips or save to the Camera Roll. There’s no editing – this is capture-only. (Check out our LumaFusion 2.0 review, p97.)
Surprisingly affordable for what it does, Filmic Pro is especially good to use on larger devices, and the results – with practice – are excellent. Hollin Jones