The makers of the upcoming Formula 1 feature film "F1" with Brad Pitt faced a special challenge: they needed a camera that could film high-quality scenes from the driver&s perspective of a race car. However, classic cine cameras were unsuitable due to their form factor and the extreme conditions, and the onboard cameras otherwise used for Formula 1 broadcasts delivered insufficient quality. Fortunately, Apple Studios was among the film&s producers. This allowed director Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) and cinematographer Claudio Miranda (e.g. Life of Pi, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) to contact Apple directly with the desire to develop a custom-made camera for this purpose.
F1 Film
And indeed, a team of Apple engineers designed a special camera that is specifically optimized for Formula 1 shots from the driver&s perspective - very similar in appearance and weight to the usual Formula 1 cameras, but with a specially adapted iPhone camera inside.
Apple F1 Kamera - Bildnachweis Julian Chokkattu (Wired)
Officially, Apple did not comment on the technical details of the new camera. According to a report by Wired (www.wired.com/story/apple-created-a-custom-iphone-camera-for-f1/), it is said to be the 48-megapixel main camera of the iPhone 15 Pro with its 1/1.28" Sony sensor and the A17 Pro SoC. This is complemented by a firmware specially tailored to the needs of the filmmakers, which supports Log encoding and the color workflow of the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES). In addition, an ND filter was placed in front of the camera to reduce the amount of light in order to improve the image quality.
Apple F1 Kamera - Bildnachweis Julian Chokkattu (Wired)
Filming took place during real Formula 1 races in 2023/2024 in Log format with Apple&s visually lossless video codec ProRes. Since the new camera module could not integrate any hardware for wireless communication due to Formula 1 regulations, the changes to camera settings such as frame rate, exposure, shutter angle and white balance were only carried out using a special iPad app via USB-C as well as the start or stop of the recording.
Apple F1 Kamera App - Bildnachweis Julian Chokkattu (Wired)
The footage shot with the Apple camera module can be seen throughout the "F1" film, as well as in the following trailer:
"F1" will be released in US cinemas and IMAX on June 27, internationally on June 25, 2025.
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