Profoto Camera

Profoto- if you’re listening, could you add a light meter feature to this and/or the connect app that triggers the connected flashes and reads from the iPhone? That would be great! So I recently used this with my iPhone 15 Pro Max and a pair of B10’s. It’s going to be a lot of fun to continue to experiment with. But its overall usefulness might be a bit limited. Chancing the iPhone camera settings is a bit precarious because there are no guardrails. The iPhone appears to have a sync speed, but I can’t sort out what it is. It’s just not like using a real camera. I think if I use it at all, I’ll leave it all to manual. It does a flash pre-fire, and it’s a bit of a slow process. So you’ll need a very well trained model. Pets or kids are probably out of the question here. Anyway, I’m still learning my way around so I won’t dog it too much. It’s fun to use your “big” lights with your phone. It makes me feel tempted to buy an A10 just to have a more portable light to play with this app more often.

I picked up the Profoto A10 for my Sony A7iii with the idea of it being an added bonus that I could capture a few quick shots during weddings to AirDrop to the bride—something polished and instant for a sneak peek. The concept is solid, and I really appreciate how easy and seamless the connection is between the flash and the app. The usability overall is great. That said, I feel like the app isn’t quite living up to its full potential. The Smart Mode needs refinement—it currently only offers three intensity sliders: super bright, a very standard “normal” that could’ve been taken with the native camera app, and then extremely dark. Some half-stop adjustments between those levels would make a huge difference in dialing in the perfect exposure. I also wish the app offered more manual camera control. While I understand the native camera app will always have deeper integration, other third-party apps like ProCamera have shown that you can build in advanced settings like action modes or even digital aperture control. There’s definitely room to grow here. And let’s talk about the 5x zoom—it’s overkill. I understand the choice to stick with native camera lenses over digital zoom to preserve image quality, but at 24mm 1x, distortion is a real issue unless you correct it in post. On the other hand, 5x zoom puts me so far away I feel like I need a day pass just to get the shot. A little more flexibility—or simply giving photographers the option to use digital zoom if they choose—would go a long way. In short, it’s a strong foundation with a lot of potential, but some fine-tuning could make this app an essential tool for hybrid shooters.

Not sure why I expect modern Profoto to offer experience worthy of their insane price tags but it’s pretty unfortunate they can’t get the basics of a camera app to work… ProfotoRAW format mode gives me an error every couple of captures saying the storage is full on my iPhone (not even close to true). When I try the jpeg format instead, I get corrupted jpegs. Pretty frustrating when I just spent $300 on a little led light advertised for phones and $2300 on a b10 plus also advertised to be able to use with phones.