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BLACKMAGIC CAMERA GUIDE
Chances are, you’ve already heard of the Blackmagic Camera app. But now, there’s a brand-new update. Version 3.0 packed with powerful features. In this guide, we’ll highlight three of the most exciting additions—dolly zoom, open gate, and new LUTs—complete with video examples. We’ll also dive into tools you might not know well, like zebras, preset buttons, stabilization, and time-lapse. And yes, we’ll be exploring the much-awaited ProRes RAW option, so stay tuned!
DOLLY
ZOOM
Now, Blackmagic has changed that. With the
new dolly zoom tool, you can select two points—an A point and a B point—and
tell the app to zoom between them. You can even set the duration, which really
just depends on how long you want the move to last.
Once it’s set, all you do
is tap the zoom number—say from 4x down to 1x, or the other way around—and then
watch the magic unfold.
In real time, you may notice that the move
doesn’t always look perfectly smooth. But here’s where the enhanced
stabilization comes into play. Once stabilization is applied (if you enable it
while recording), the recovered result is much more fluid, looking like it was
shot on a high-end rig.
Now, there’s been plenty of debate about
whether iPhones truly offer optical zoom, or if those zoom numbers are
just clever digital crops. In our tests, we found that up to about 5x, the
footage looked reasonably clean, though sometimes with a slight “boiling”
effect that hinted at over-compression. And to be fair, even larger mirrorless
cameras show similar but not so profound artifacts when they crop into a
sensor.
To push it further, we experimented—zooming
to 10x and even 15x. And let’s be clear: don’t do that! The results looked bad!
We only did it to demonstrate what happens when you go too far and use the
zoom.
To give you a side-by-side, we also tested
stabilization on and off. With it turned off, the footage looked like it was
caught in an earthquake tremor. With stabilization enabled, the difference was
dramatic—smooth, cinematic, and usable.
Finally, let’s talk quality. Whether using
the stock app or Blackmagic’s, once you reach 5x zoom, the video inevitably
looks a bit softer than non-zoom footage. But the beauty of this new feature is
how easy it makes controlled zooming—something that was nearly impossible to
achieve smoothly on a phone until now.
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CODECS –
OPEN GATE
Here’s a feature that may sound technical,
but once you understand it, it’s a real game-changer: open gate.
Normally, when you record video, the camera only uses part of the sensor—the
area that matches standard widescreen formats. The rest of the pixels are
simply ignored. With open gate, you’re recording with the entire sensor
height and width, which means you capture more of the scene.
To enable it, first choose Rec.709 as your
color space. Then, inside the Codec tab, you’ll find the option for Open Gate.
Once activated, the image on your screen looks almost square, because the
resolution jumps from 8 megapixels to 12 megapixels. Suddenly, you’ll see more
content above and below your usual frame.
The primary benefit here is flexibility.
Since you’ve recorded extra visual information, you can reframe and crop
your footage later—horizontal for YouTube, vertical for Instagram or
TikTok—without sacrificing resolution or quality. That makes it a perfect tool
for creators producing content across multiple platforms.
And with the iPhone 17 Pro now using a true
square sensor, open gate recording is more powerful and practical than ever.
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COLORS & LUTs
One of the neat new touches in this update
is how color control has been reimagined. Tap the display icon at the bottom
left of the screen, and the panel expands to reveal the three core colors—red,
green, and blue. You can even adjust their opacity percentage, sliding until
the overlay is as subtle or as strong as you like.
Now, look just to the right and you’ll
notice the new LUT option. Tap it, and a whole library of choices
appears. From Rec.709 Neutral to a series of creative looks, you can preview
each one in real time as you scroll through them. Keep in mind: by default,
these LUTs are just for monitoring, helping you judge exposure and color
correctly on set. That way, you still have a clean file for grading later.
But what if you want to bake a LUT
directly into your recording? Simply tap the cinema-frame arrow to enable it.
Before doing that, head into Settings, then LUTs, and switch on “Record LUT to
Clip.”
You can also manage which LUTs appear in
your list using the LUT Manager. And here’s a bonus: in the same settings menu,
tap Export LUT and Blackmagic will actually provide you with their
official LUTs for free. You can download them, bring them straight into your
editing software, and keep your colors consistent from shoot to
post-production.
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