A month ago, Apple announced the iPhone 13. With the product still rolling out globally, Apple executives looked back at the company's 15-year smartphone camera revolution and discussed how the iPhone 13 could improve the experience.
Exams Thiago Lavado spoke with Jon McCormack, Apple's VP of software camera engineering, Graham Thomson, Apple's VP of hardware camera engineering, and Louis Dudley, iPhone product manager.
In this interview, McCormack and Townsend talked about Apple's goal to create the best camera experience for users.
"We can look back over 100 years of photography and film history to understand how photographers and filmmakers use these available tools to create great images and films. What we asked ourselves was, how can we make this known to everyone,” says McCormack.
Thanks to the A15 Bionic chip and software improvements, Apple was able to bring an "industry-only" movie-mode feature to the iPhone 13. At 9to5Mac, our colleague Ben Lovejoy showed off a very good real-world test of this feature, and while it's still in its early stages, he's impressed with this first-generation feature, which you can read more about here.
Jon McCormack explained to Exame how Apple made movie mode available to iPhone 13 users and made it look as easy as clicking a button.
Video segmentation is much more complicated. You need to capture the depth of the scene in real-time in every frame, and that's what we do with the A15 Bionic neural engine, "he added.
For Townsend, when it comes to the depth of field used in movie mode (which can even be edited after the scene has been recorded), "It's interesting to see how the hardware side of the approach changes to reflect this. Hardware is the foundation. We need to think about how the software will use that information, and that's part of the collaboration."
Photography styles, movie modes, improved low-light sensors, lidar scanners, and more tools allow users to tell their own stories with their iPhones:
"That's our goal. When we install a new lens, we try to expand the use of photography so that people don't have to teach them a feature or overcomplicate a feature, "Townsend said.
"We are in the business of letting people create their memories and tell their own stories. Professionals use our equipment to work, but what excites us most are ordinary people telling their own stories, "McCormack concludes.
