Blackmagic Camera iOS Review: Pro Video Controls for iPhone

Smartphone cameras have come a long way, especially on iPhone, where the latest models boast relatively high-end photo and video capture technology.

However, they’re still not at the same level as professional, Hollywood-grade digital cinema cameras. Blackmagic Camera aims to change that.

This iOS camera app (which is also available on Android) offers professional-level manual controls, high-quality codecs, and numerous other features.

It’s designed to help users make more of their smartphone cameras and capture superior quality content than they would with a default camera app.

But is it as good as it seems? To find out, I put Blackmagic Camera to the test.

Read on through my Blackmagic Camera iOS review to learn all about what this app has to offer, how its key features truly measure up, and whether or not it’s worth downloading to your device.

What Does Blackmagic Camera Offer?

Blackmagic Camera is a free camera app for iPhone that’s designed to replace the default camera app for capturing video content.

It doesn’t let you take pictures, but it offers the features and tools you need to record video exactly as you want it.

Aimed at making your iPhone feel more like a high-end digital camera, Blackmagic Camera brings ISO options, variable shutter angles, white balance sliders, and more.

With the aid of these features, users can capture sharper, clearer, and more detailed clips for personal or professional use.

While new users may be a little bamboozled by the sheer quantity of buttons and icons in the Blackmagic Camera interface, the app still feels intuitive and reasonably beginner-friendly. It can appeal to beginners looking to take the next steps in their videography journeys and more advanced users, too.

It also offers a range of storage options. You can save all captured videos to your device, for example, or you can record directly into the popular video editing application, DaVinci Resolve.

You can also upload your captured media to the Blackmagic Cloud service, though you will have to pay extra for that.

Feature Review

What makes Blackmagic Camera iOS such an appealing app is its extraordinary quantity of features and functions.

While a default smartphone camera app simply has a few buttons for zooming in and switching modes, this one introduces dozens of options to adjust the kind of content you capture.

On-Screen Heads-Up Display

The first thing you’ll notice when you load up Blackmagic Camera on iOS or an Android device is the heads-up display. It instantly tells you all you need to know about this app, with so much more information and many more options and buttons compared to a more conventional alternative.

As an experienced photographer, I felt right at home, right away, and I loved having all this data available to me, including information about my device’s lens, how many frames per second I can capture, shutter speeds, ISO levels, white balance, and so on.

There’s such a lot of detail here, and the amount of value you get out of it really depends on your personal levels of digital camera experience.

Some will love seeing the likes of audio meters and time codes on their display at all times, while others might find it a little cluttered.

Professional Codecs

A problem I’ve found with a lot of camera apps is how they compress my content and the limited range of codecs they have to offer. Blackmagic Camera is different, bringing a whole host of professional-grade codecs to the table.

It supports everything from 10-bit Apple ProRes all the way up to 4K for the crispest and cleanest images to more common, conventional options, like H.264 and HEVC (H.265).

This app also gives you the choice to switch between the default Rec. 709 color space and other options, such as Rec. 2020 or P3D65.

With so many options to choose from, Blackmagic helps you feel more in control not just of how you shoot videos, but how they’re saved and stored for later editing or viewing, too.

Advanced Manual Controls

Arguably, the main reason to download and use the Blackmagic Camera iOS app is for its manual controls. Simply put, it lets you customize elements of your video capture experience that you simply can’t control on other apps.

The default iPhone camera app, for example, doesn’t let you manually adjust aspects like shutter speed and white balance. Apple understandably assumes that the majority of users don’t necessarily need to fine-tune these elements and could be confused by extra buttons and sliders.

More advanced, technical users and videography enthusiasts, however, do appreciate the ability to change these options. And Blackmagic delivers the customization they crave, with full manual adjustment of ISO, shutter angles, white balance, frame rate, tint, and focus peaking.

Look-Up Tables (LUTs)

Many camera apps offer filters that you can apply to your images or videos after capturing them, but Blackmagic Camera goes further, with a full list of look-up tables (LUTs) that instantly change the color, contrast, and tone of your clips in real time.

Featured LUTs included with the app include Monochrome, Nostalgic, Rift, Nature, Warm Fade, Vivid, Cinema Teal, and Day Night. These 3D LUTs make it easy to preview, during the moment of capture, how your clips will look after editing, which is such a powerful feature for filmmaking enthusiasts.

The app also offers the option to import your own additional LUTs for even more customization potential. Not only that, but on supported devices, you can even opt to have your chosen LUT baked into the video file, saving you a lot of time when it comes to editing your creations.

Monitoring Tools

Blackmagic Camera also aims to take some of the guesswork and risk out of capturing video content through its myriad of monitoring tools. These helpful features make capturing high-grade content much more straightforward, regardless of your experience and ability levels.

I’ve already mentioned the LUTs, but the app also provides zebra (exposure), focus peaking, false colors, frame guides, and grids, which can all help you when it comes to lining up your shots, centering your subjects, and finding the ideal angles to make the videos you want to make.

The heads-up display also offers a full RGB histogram and stereo meters to keep track of color levels and audio.

Thus, you can configure Blackmagic to provide you with as much or as little real-time information and support as you need while filming.

Media Tab

At any time while using the Blackmagic Camera iOS app, users can tap the Media button to access the app’s media tab, where they can see all of their captured videos and access controls for organizing, searching, and sorting them.

This is also where you can quickly and conveniently tap to upload your clips to Blackmagic Cloud Storage (if you have a paid subscription) or manually select individual or bulk clips to send to a project library to work on later.

Tapping on any of your video thumbnails will also allow you to playback your chosen clips in the app itself and access detailed data about each one, including codec type, frame rate, resolution, file size, shutter speed, white balance, etc.

Extensive Settings Menus

I’m used to working with relatively advanced digital cameras and photography gear, with all the features and functions they bring. So, when I open smartphone camera apps, I often feel let down by the lack of controls and configurations available.

But once I opened the Settings tab of the Blackmagic Camera app, I knew that this one was different.

There are so many options to play around with in Blackmagic that even the most experienced videographers will be left with very little to complain about.

Everything is neatly divided into different tabs and submenus for your convenience. The Record tab, for example, offers options to adjust which code you’re using and which resolution you film at, or to toggle the time code display on or off.

The Camera menu, meanwhile, lets you toggle vertical video capture on or off and control what different buttons on your device do; you can enable an option that allows you to start recording by pressing the volume button, for example.

There are also options menus related to audio capture, with tools to control your phone’s microphone, sample rate, and so on, as well as monitoring tools, live stream options, cloud storage, function buttons, LUTs, and even remote camera controls for more advanced, multi-device filming setups.

Like with Blackmagic’s other features and functions, your mileage with the settings will vary. Some of them might be very useful and relevant to you, while others you’ll leave untouched. But the fact that the app offers so many options to configure and customize your experience is a big plus in my book.

Pricing

Here’s one of the best things about the Blackmagic Camera iOS app: it’s completely free.

It’s free to download, install, and use this app as much as you like, with no hidden charges and no monthly or annual subscription fees to worry about.

The app doesn’t have any sort of optional “premium” plan or features locked behind paywalls. It’s purely and simply a free camera app that makes your device’s camera dramatically more flexible and functional.

That’s one of the reasons I can recommend it so strongly.

At the same time, it’s worth noting that Blackmagic does charge for the use of its cloud services, with multiple payment plans and options depending on how much storage you need.

You don’t need Blackmagic Cloud to use the Blackmagic Camera app, but it can provide some additional functionality.

Who Is Blackmagic Camera For?

After using Blackmagic Camera for a while, I can confidently state that a relatively broad audience should find a lot to love about this app.

That includes relatively casual iPhone users seeking additional controls all the way up to aspiring filmmakers who don’t necessarily want to invest in high-end gear.

In short, if you love filming videos but feel like your iPhone’s camera isn’t quite flexible or powerful enough to get the results you want, I’d urge you to give Blackmagic Camera a try.

It gives you that extra level of functionality, with the professional codecs and advanced controls opening up new ways to capture video content, however you like.

Plus, since it’s completely free, there’s really no risk at all in testing it out.

Some users may find that the learning curve is a little too steep, with so many controls and buttons to pick from. But, if you have even a basic level of familiarity with digital cameras, it shouldn’t take too much time for you to feel at home and make the most of the features this app has to offer.

You might still find that it’s not quite enough and decide to take the plunge on a fancier digital camera to help you pursue your cinematography dreams.

Alternatively, it might help you realize just how good your iPhone’s camera can be, saving you a lot of money in the process.

Final Verdict

Overall, Blackmagic Camera is an app I can wholeheartedly recommend. It far surpasses the basic, default camera apps you find on most smartphones nowadays, delivering those extra features, filters, and functions that videography enthusiasts crave.

I’m disappointed that it doesn’t let me take pictures, so it can’t completely replace my default camera app. But whenever I want to capture a quick clip on my iPhone, Blackmagic has swiftly become my go-to solution.

It’s an app with minimal drawbacks and a lot of positives, and it’s very impressive to see how much the developers crammed into this piece of software.

Give it a try today and unlock your iPhone’s extraordinary potential, absolutely free.