So I think the important question is though, if you had spent thousands on dollars on a camera would those lights still be required?
If the answer is yes, then the feat is still an important one.
I know that some lights would still be required, but I honesty don't know the answer if they needed additional lights to compensate or if they could have gotten away with less.
Yes the lights are very important. Lighting is more than just about “how much light there is”.
Important considerations include where the light is coming from, how diffuse it is, and its color.
Lights (or flashes for photography) get used even outdoors. Amateur outdoor headshots usually give the subject racoon eyes since the eyes are sunken in versus the eyebrows. Pros will get light on the face to get rid of that.
> If the answer is yes, then the feat is still an important one.
I can recommend watching the Better Call Saul DVD documentary, they regularly have the lead lighting guy answering questions in there. The tl;dr was to me that yes, you definetely need additional lighting, even if your camera has a massive, light sensitive sensor.
I don't think anyone expects an iPhone to compete with a top of the line Arri 65 or other IMAX enabled cameras when it comes to low light performance (the sensor on these is huge after all), but the intro shot with Apple Park shows that it's possible.
Maybe don't try to reenact a shooting of Barry Lyndon on an iPhone, but for nearly everything else it seems to work just fine.
Explaining that semi-obscure reference: Barry Lyndon is a Kubrick film that famously has shots lit by only candlelight. This was accomplished by using extremely ”fast” lenses created by NASA for (I believe) the Apollo missions.
> After "tinker[ing] with different combinations of lenses and film stock," the production obtained three super-fast 50mm lenses (Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7) developed by Zeiss for use by NASA in the Apollo Moon landings, which Kubrick had discovered. These super-fast lenses "with their huge aperture (the film actually features the lowest f-stop in film history) and fixed focal length" were problematic to mount, and were extensively modified into three versions by Cinema Products Corp. for Kubrick to gain a wider angle of view, with input from optics expert Richard Vetter of Todd-AO. The rear element of the lens had to be 2.5 mm away from the film plane, requiring special modification to the rotating camera shutter.
Maybe I should have written the question better, since I know you would still need lights.
But to me the important question is if it has any impact on the number of lights. If you still need all the same lights to use the iPhone that you would for a camera that is several thousand dollars. it is still really cool.
I think you could shoot Barry Lyndon’s candle light scenes on iPhone just fine. The lens was custom made ƒ/0.7 because the film was shot at ISO 100, IIRC.
People forget how much more sensitive silicon is to light than film.
Edit: got currious, it was ISO 100 pushed 1 stop during development[1]. So, since an iPhone's ƒ/1.78 main lens is ≈2.5 stops slower than ƒ0.7, using ISO ≈1200 should give you the same exposure (if shot at 24fps). Certainly doable.
The answer is no, and that's exactly what "The Creator" showed. High end cameras today are good enough that you can shoot entire blockbusters with only a single light or even with only available light.
But it's not so much to compensate, just to ensure that your shot is lit the way you want, without the weird hard shadows and background-brighter-than-foreground problems that occur in your average space that hasn't been specifically lit for film/TV.
If the answer is yes, then the feat is still an important one.
I know that some lights would still be required, but I honesty don't know the answer if they needed additional lights to compensate or if they could have gotten away with less.