GoKawiilWhen Apple unveiled the iPhone 13 back in 2021, it made a huge deal over a headline new feature, Cinematic mode. This is the video equivalent of Portrait mode, allowing you to select a focus point and blur the background.
Portrait mode has improved dramatically in successive generations, but the same cannot be said of Cinematic mode. The company appears to have completely lost interest in the feature, and although that’s understandable in one way, I would argue it’s a big mistake …
Portrait mode just gets better
One of the most significant differences between a camera with a full-frame sensor and a smartphone with a tiny sensor is the ability to control depth of field. Put a wide aperture lens onto a full frame camera and you can achieve wafer-thin depth of field to really isolate the subject from the background. For example:
You can achieve similar if less dramatic effects with cameras with smaller sensors, but smartphone sensors are tiny in comparison, and one consequence is that almost everything will be in focus.
Portrait mode uses computational photography to simulate shallow depth of field. It uses a LiDAR sensor to measure the relative distance from the phone of different elements of the photo, and then processes that photo to apply an artificial blur to the more distant areas.
This was initially very crude, but Apple has continued to work on it with better and better performance over the years, including support for using it at night.
When viewed on an iPhone-sized screen, it’s honestly so good today that it can be hard to tell reality from simulation.
Cinematic mode has seemingly been forgotten
Apple seemed extremely excited about Cinematic mode back in 2021. The company shot a short film specifically to demo the capability, and it was incredibly impressive.
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