Who is a target audience? Most Apple users wont spent time in postproduction and colour grade their footages. Pros will stay with dedicated technology made for cinematography.
“Pros” is a wide space these days. Hell, my mate has a film released on hbo max which was entirely shot in 4K on iPhones probably 6 years ago now.
Think of the sheer amount of ‘content’ (used pejoratively) these days. That is not being made by traditional cinematographers. It’s videographers, maybe with a pro camera, but maybe with an iPhone, or maybe one pro camera and an iPhone or two for backup. Think of weddings or similar as well, massive demand. Apparently everything needs to be video so why not this. As an aside, aforementioned director shot our wedding as a favour to us (in 2019) on a 4K lumix and an iPhone.
People vlogging would probably prefer the ergonomics and weight of a phone over something more serious, so I wouldn't be surprised if this competes with the GoPro on functionality and image for 'walk and talk' people?
Guerrilla film-makers will probably love it - iPhones aren't really noticed and are allowed in plenty of places where serious cameras aren't.
I can also see it being useful for some specific commercial ad work, I've seen people specifically shoot on phones to get the relatable phone 'look' for specific shots.
Why? Whats the benefit of having slightly more options on postproduction when you put output to compressed, 8bit, low bitrate platform that most people consume on their tiny mobile screens with blue light filter?
This is not slightly more options. Log is a lot of extra data for post processing.
Most people won't notice the difference that is true but this is true even for real cinema. Most people don't notice or care about things such as shooting on real film, aspect ratio etc.
The why is that people who create care about these things. Color grading and post shot creative manipulation, these things benefit from extra data. If I can't recover shadows or pushing white balance results in banding, those things are going to still be visible on a phone by myself and the small amount of people who do care.
Log is just a curve that save image differently. Extra data are in chroma sample (4:2:2), bitrate and bit depth (10bit). For example log in 8bit is absolutely useless. You wont get higher dynamic range, that is what size of sensor does.
And that curve allows you to process colors/contrast with way less artifacts than a file saved with a more contrast/saturated colors especially if you compound your after effects.
It might in some situations, but generally you will deal with banding anyway (8bit). Log needs higher ISO which means lower dynamic range [1]. Flat footage lacks depth so you'll need edit it, which create a new space for error.
Yes, I do audiovisual production and postproduction for living.
first some people use it as a status symbol, naturally they will buy the pro no matter if useful or not
then there are tons of semi-professional (semi wrt. photo/video capture, not wrt their job) people on platforms like YT, TickTock and similar which do only use their phone for capturing, they probably love this
lets also not forget the people which aspire success on YT, TickTock and others
similar a lot of hobby photographers don't bother with dedicated technology anymore so they might like that, too
and the people which don't carry around a laptop (e.g. on holiday trips or even business trips) but might want to send slightly improved photos from there isn't small either
anyway I guess the main selling point is like "not locking poor" for thos with confidence issues or more likely bad luck to live in less healthy social circles
That was my intuition as well - even starving film students will rent an arri or a red with whatever lenses for student projects, and everyone else just doesn't care.
