Kirk Mihelakos, a filmmaker with an eye for detail, took the iPhone 17 Pro and turned San Francisco into a visual poem. His short 4.2K video, shot using the phone’s new Open Gate feature, captures the city’s foggy hills, vibrant markets and sunlit bay with a clarity that’s almost too good for a phone.
Mihelakos shot entirely with the Blackmagic Camera App, a tool pros use for its manual controls and clean interface. He shot in ProRes RAW, a format that captures every bit of data the sensor sees, giving editors room to play with colors and exposure in post. The result is a video with rich colors—think golden sunsets over the Golden Gate Bridge and deep shadows in alleys—that holds up big on big screens. He applied his own Apple Log LUT to color grade the footage, so the tones pop without feeling artificial. This lets the city’s natural beauty shine, from the pastel facades of Victorian houses to the glint of waves in the Pacific.
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Open Gate is the star here, as this feature uses the iPhone 17 Pro’s full 4:3 sensor, delivering a 4,224 x 3,024-pixel canvas. Unlike the standard 16:9 frame, which crops the sensor to fit widescreen displays, Open Gate keeps every pixel, so you can reframe shots for different platforms—square for Instagram, vertical for TikTok or wide for YouTube. Mihelakos chose to stick with the 4:3 aspect ratio, which gives the film a classic, almost cinematic feel, like old-school film stock. Viewers on his YouTube page noticed, with many praising the taller frame for making scenes feel more immersive, like you’re standing on a San Francisco street corner yourself.
Open Gate disables the iPhone’s built-in stabilization to maximize sensor use, so Mihelakos used a Sandmarc Creator Grip and a Motion Variable Filter to keep shots steady. Watch the video and you’ll see smooth pans across the city skyline and fluid tracking shots through markets. There’s a bit of bounce in handheld moments, but it’s subtle enough not to distract. The grip and filter combo proves you don’t need a full gimbal rig to get pro results, though it takes a steady hand and some practice.
ProRes RAW requires serious storage, and the iPhone 17 Pro can’t record this format internally, so Mihelakos connected an external SSD to handle the data-heavy files. This might sound like a hassle, but it’s a small price for the flexibility RAW offers. Editors can adjust white balance and exposure without degrading the footage, which is handy for scenes with tricky lighting like San Francisco’s foggy mornings or neon-lit nights. If you don’t want to use an external drive, the phone can record ProRes HQ at 30fps, stored directly on its new 2TB capacity. That’s enough space for hours of high quality footage, so the iPhone is a viable tool for longer projects.
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