A phone is filming Brad Pitt at speed at Daytona — not a cinema camera, a phone running the Blackmagic Camera app as a stopgap. The shot held up, and it is in the finished cut of F1 The Movie, alongside footage from a modified Sony body, a compact module engineered to fit a cockpit, and an Apple-built unit that replaced the car's broadcast camera. None of that hardware is for sale. But the cinematographer's phone was also running five ordinary App Store apps, Apple has named all five, and the Daytona shot is what one of them produced.
That second list is the useful one, and it is the part nobody writes about.
The hardware, and why you cannot have it
Sony's VENICE 2 was the principal camera, across 137 shoot days and ten live race weekends, producing over 5,000 hours of material.
Cinematographer Claudio Miranda, ASC on the choice:
"You need a camera system that doesn't become part of the problem but part of the solution."
Two things were built rather than bought. Sony produced a compact body — described as a sensor-on-a-stick prototype — engineered specifically to fit where a cockpit camera has to fit. And Apple developed a camera module to occupy the position normally used by the car's broadcast camera, the one that feeds low-resolution footage to television.
Be careful with the technical claims circulating about that module. The widely repeated specifics — an iPhone 15 Pro-class sensor, ProRes recording, custom firmware, an iPad app for control — trace back through a chain of aggregators to a single magazine report. We could not open the original. The claims are consistent and probably right, but they are not something we are going to state as verified fact, and several of the pages repeating them add errors as they go.
What is not in doubt is that these were bespoke units. There is no consumer version, no rental listing, no eventual retail release — much like the green Ingenieur on the lead driver's wrist, which IWC built as a one-off and never sold. This is the ordinary condition of cinema hardware and it is worth saying plainly, because "the F1 movie was shot on an iPhone" has become a widely repeated half-truth.
The five apps, named by Apple, with the DP quoted
Here is the part you can act on. Apple published its own editorial listing the apps used on the production, with Miranda explaining each. That is a first-party source naming products, which in our line of work is unusual enough to build a page around. Perfect Days is the other film we have covered where the camera itself is the object people search for, and there the director named it himself.
Blackmagic Camera — and the shot that made the cut
The one with the story attached. Miranda:
"Originally it was intended as a temporary solution, but it was good enough to make it into the film."
He is describing a shot of Brad Pitt at speed at Daytona, captured on a phone running the Blackmagic Camera app as a stopgap, which survived into the finished film alongside footage from cameras costing more than a house.
This is the honest version of "shot on iPhone." Not the whole film. One difficult shot, grabbed because it was the tool available, kept because it held up. That is a better recommendation for the app than any marketing claim.
Artemis Director's Viewfinder
Previewing shots with different cameras, lens focal lengths and color-grade filters before committing.
"It's essential on set for aligning shots and communicating angles with production designers."
What it does for a normal person: shows you what a given lens would see from where you are standing. If you have ever wondered why a room photographs badly, this answers it.
Polycam — 3D Scans & Floor Plans
Scanning locations into measured 3D floor plans.
"On F1, it helped me quickly measure distances to see if equipment like a crane would fit."
The everyday version of that problem is furniture. The app was used to check a crane into a location; it works identically for checking whether a sofa clears a doorway.
Sun Surveyor (Sun & Moon)
Visualising where the sun will be, at a given place, at a given hour. Miranda calls it "fantastic for revisiting locations," and notes it was especially useful when the schedule got disrupted — which on a production shooting around actual race weekends, it would.
pCAM Pro — Camera Tools
The calculator: depth of field, field of view, the arithmetic of a lens.
"Some of the cameras on F1 did not have a focus motor, and we would need to set depth of field with the f-stop to ensure the actors were in focus."
That is a genuinely revealing sentence. Some of these cameras were bolted into a racing car with no way to pull focus. So focus was solved in advance, with maths, using an app.
What the five actually cost
We looked each one up in the US App Store on 15 August 2026. Three of the five are free.
| App | Publisher | US price |
|---|---|---|
| Blackmagic Camera | Blackmagic Design | Free |
| Artemis Director's Viewfinder | Chemical Wedding | Free |
| Polycam — 3D Scans & Floor Plans | Polycam | Free |
| Sun Surveyor (Sun & Moon) | Adam Ratana | $9.99 |
| pCAM Pro — Camera Tools | David Eubank | $34.99 |
So the entire software kit is about $45, and you can have three-fifths of it for nothing.
Two cautions. Sun Surveyor also ships a free Lite version, which is not the one named. And several of these free apps carry in-app purchases or pro tiers, so "free" means free to install rather than free forever. Prices are US and will differ in your store.
Put that $45 against the first half of this article — a cinema camera body, a bespoke cockpit module, a custom unit built by Apple's engineers — and the comparison makes itself.
What this is actually worth knowing
The gap between the two lists is the point. The cameras are unobtainable bespoke engineering. The software is the same software anyone can install. A working feature-film cinematographer solved scheduling, blocking, location measurement and focus using tools priced for consumers, and the studio behind the film published the list.
If you take one thing: the apps are not a consolation prize for people who cannot afford the cameras. Software pricing is its own maze, though — the same Bluey game is $39.99 on Steam and $14.99 on a phone. They are what the person using the cameras also used. Artemis and pCAM answer questions that hardware does not answer at any price.
And the "shot on iPhone" framing deserves retiring. The truthful version — a temporary solution that turned out good enough to keep — is more interesting than the marketing one, and it is the version the cinematographer actually told.
FAQ
What camera was F1 The Movie shot on? Principally the Sony VENICE 2, across 137 shoot days and ten live race weekends. The production also used a custom compact Sony body engineered for cockpit placement and a bespoke Apple-built module in the car's broadcast camera position.
Was F1 The Movie shot on iPhone? No. A shot of Brad Pitt at Daytona was captured using the Blackmagic Camera app as a temporary solution and kept in the finished film, but the film was shot on cinema cameras.
Can I buy the cameras used in F1? The VENICE 2 is a commercially available cinema camera. The compact cockpit module and the Apple camera unit were built for the production and are not sold.
What apps did the F1 cinematographer use? Apple named five: Blackmagic Camera, Artemis Director's Viewfinder, Polycam 3D Scans & Floor Plans, Sun Surveyor, and pCAM Pro Camera Tools.
Which app is worth downloading first? Blackmagic Camera is free and is the one that produced footage in the film. Artemis is the most useful for anyone framing shots, and Polycam is the most useful for anyone who is not.
Why did they need a depth-of-field calculator? Because some cameras were mounted in racing cars with no focus motor. Focus had to be set in advance using the aperture, which is a calculation rather than an adjustment.
Is the iPhone 15 Pro sensor claim true? It is widely reported and plausible, but it traces back through aggregators to a single original report we could not open. We are flagging it rather than presenting it as verified.
How much do the apps cost? In the US App Store on 15 August 2026: Blackmagic Camera, Artemis and Polycam are free, Sun Surveyor is $9.99 and pCAM Pro is $34.99 — about $45 for all five. Prices differ by region, and some free apps have paid tiers.
Where can I see the cameras themselves? Apple TV published a behind-the-scenes featurette on the camera innovations built for the film, which is the video at the top of this page.