Phone makers continue to cram better lenses and more cameras into their phones, and now app developers are catching up with some of the technological possibilities. A new app called DoubleTake from Filmic lets you record from multiple cameras at once on the latest iPhone handsets.
Which cameras you can record from depends on which iPhone you have, but they're all available to the app. It works with the iPhone XR, the iPhone XS and the iPhone XS Max from 2018, and the iPhone 11, the iPhone 11 Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro Max from last year.
Install the app on the iPhone XR, for example, and you get simultaneous access to the front-facing camera and the single rear-facing camera. Install it on the iPhone 11 Pro or the iPhone 11 Pro Max, meanwhile, and you can access the ultrawide camera and the telephoto camera as well, for a total of four possible video sources.
Even as phones have added more rear cameras in recent years, they're usually presented to the user as a single camera in the interface, with the additional lenses allowing for extra zoom and focus effects. With DoubleTake, each camera can be accessed individually.
That opens up a host of new possibilities for budding mobile film-makers – recording what's in front of and behind the phone at the same time, or recording a wide shot and a close-up shot alongside each other, perhaps.
All the available cameras can be viewed on screen at once, giving you the opportunity to select the right shot before filming starts. Each video feed can be recorded as a separate file, or recorded in split screen or picture-in-picture modes.
On top of the multi-cam features, the DoubleTake app offers focus lock and exposure controls on the multiple camera feeds. Video can be recorded at a maximum resolution of 1080p at 24, 25, or 30 frames-per-second.
"While delivering a professional multi-camera studio experience, DoubleTake by Filmic Pro was designed for content creators of all skill levels and for multiple genres of content from professional broadcast-style news interviews to YouTubers capturing multiple angles during live events, concerts or any situation that requires more than one perspective to capture the moment," says the official blurb.
And Apple obviously likes the technology too – the app's features were demoed at the iPhone 11 launch event back in September.
DoubleTake is free to download and install, with no in-app purchases to interrupt your movie-making process (and it will always remain free, the developer told The Verge). Eventually, Filmic says the functionality will get rolled into the Filmic Pro app that offers a host of other tools for mobile filming, and which will set you back US$14.99.
Product page: DoubleTake
