FiLMiC Pro gives you almost total control over how your iPhone captures video. While Manual makes it easier to take great photos, you can’t take great video without an app like FiLMiC Pro. You don’t get quite the depth of control over the exposure settings as you do with Manual, but you get huge control over how the footage is processed and encoded.
With FiLMiC Pro you can set focus and exposure independently using the two reticules. The one resembling an aperture ring is exposure, the square one is focus. Tapping the corresponding button in the bottom left corner locks focus or exposure. The third button—with the square and two triangles—locks white balance. The lightbulb turns the fill light on and off. The filmstrip and gear cog access captured footage and settings respectively.
You can zoom using the Plus and Minus symbols on the right of the screen. Tapping on a numbered button creates a shortcut for your current zoom level. You smoothly switch between different zoom’s by tapping the numbered buttons again. To clear a saved zoom hold down on the relevant button.
The real power of FiLMiC Pro comes in the settings screen. You can select from more than 20 preset combinations of capture frame rate and output frame rate; if that’s not enough, you can create entirely custom set ups with the settings yourself. There are presets for regular, slo-mo and accelerated motion footage.
In the settings you can also select the bitrate. The higher the bitrate, the more information that gets saved. There are four options offering between 12 mbit/s with Economy and a television-broadcast standard 50 mbit/s with FiLMiC Extreme. To get the most form your iPhone, you should be using the highest bitrate you can. Be careful though, if you are using a 16GB iPhone, you will fill up the hard drive in ten minutes of shooting at 30 frames per second with FiLMiC Extreme.
FiLMiC Pro also records audio. If you use an external microphone, it can even handle stereo. Otherwise, it just uses your iPhone’s microphone.
There is a steep learning curve with FiLMiC Pro. At first, all the options available are overwhelming. Once you get the hang of it though, you will be able to record amazing footage. People are making some great films just with iPhones.