This week, I took the iPhone 17 Pro Max to Jackson Lamb’s Slough House…

I’ve said it before, but the iPhone 17 Pro Max has helped to change me! Yes, the urge came from inside me, but he phone was a catalyst to helping push me out the door.

I’ve realised quite how good this year’s phone is and the opportunities it affords me, so for the first time, I’m letting the iPhone Pro Max off its leash and seeing where it can take me and what I can do with it. It’s exciting, and hopefully my story of what happened this week will encourage you to take a fresh look at the iPhone in your pocket and inspire you to do more with it.

The plan for this story has been brewing in my mind for a little while now, until this week, it became an itch I knew I had to scratch.

iPhone 17 Pro Max on the road

Where do you stand on Apple TV and, in particular, Apple TV originals? I love it and it is my go-to streaming service.

They turn out a helluva lot of great content, the majority of which I like, but Slow Horses is simply another level. Actually, I think I could be turning into a Slow Horse fanboy! I had that sinking feeling of emptiness washing over me last week as season five ended, so I’ve gone full circle and just started watching the first season all over again!

But as I sat watching it recently, with my creative hat on, I became more and more intrigued about where the series was filmed, as the area of London they shoot in looks so gritty, cool and urban. I wanted to be a part of it.

That’s when I started thinking that I should take my iPhone 17 Pro Max on the road with me and find some of the iconic scenes that the Slow Horses team had used. It seemed almost a perfect synergy to take an iPhone to the location of an Apple Original series, and along the way, I could learn more about shooting away from the studio.

And this is what I meant when I kicked off by saying that this year’s Pro Max has changed me. I know it has all the tools I need to shoot content away from the studio, and good quality content as well and that is what I want to fully embrace.

Why the iPhone over a camera?

I’ve recently done a 180-degree change of direction & I’ve decided to lean heavily into iPhone video and photography.

Without the iPhone, I would never have stumbled across my passion for video or photography in the first place. But with a Canon sitting in the studio, why have I decided to lean in so heavily to shooting with the iPhone again?

Earlier this summer, I made a point of taking my only camera with me everywhere. Part of that was proving to myself that I could shoot on a proper camera. I’m still very wet-behind-the-ears when it comes to photography, but I know I have a passion for it.

I also know my ability to learn and absorb when I feel this passionately about something is second to none.

I want another camera, and with luck, I will buy myself one soon. But as you well know, the camera body is only part of it. You need good glass on it to make it work, and those lenses don’t come cheap.

It was the lenses, or my current lack of them, that made me think again about the best way for me to shoot at the moment. I have one decent lens for the Canon – an ƒ1.4 24mm lens that I bought earlier this year. Apart from a few very basic kit lenses, though, that is all I have, which limits the shots I can take.

Whilst I’m not for a moment quibbling with the fact that a dedicated camera will always get better results, until I’ve improved my kit, there is a good chance my iPhone 17 Pro Max is going to suit me better, and it’ll certainly give me greater flexibility.

Apart from the three lenses on the iPhone, I also have three aftermarket lenses. I have a 110-degree wide-angle lens that fits on the 24mm main camera. That’s quickly become my favourite lens by a long stretch. I’d never used the ultra-wide that much on the iPhone itself, but this new lens has given me some amazing shots, like the one below of the iconic Barbican Launderette that’s been featured in Slow Horses.

I have a 2x tele lens for the 24mm camera and a 2x for the 100mm iPhone tele lens. So you see, for the time being, my iPhone rig has got far more options. I do have a decent ND filter for the Canon, but I have two of those for the iPhone and a black mist filter as well.

For the time being, at least, my iPhone 17 Pro Max is a more comprehensive set-up and more portable.

Slow Horses and the iPhone

I’ve got a new passion for life and a real zest to try and capture everything around me every day, and the iPhone is a huge part of that.

It’s more than capable of shooting all the quality I need for now, whether that’s video or photo, and with just a few bits bolted on that I mentioned last week, suddenly I have a mobile rig that’ll be my companion for the next little while.

Back to the Slow Horses idea, though. Having looked around a bit, I started to pull together quite a bit of info as to where they’d been shooting. For me, it would mean an hour train ride to Waterloo and then a 30-minute walk to The Barbican, which is where much of the filming has been centred.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been building a kit bag with these kinds of trips in mind. Keeping the kitbag as compact as possible was always the goal, and I’m super happy with the portability of everything I’ve packed together so far. It’s all there for a reason and plays its part.

I figured Slough House was a good place to start – the Slow Horses HQ. When you see Jackson Lamb looking out of his window, lighting up a ciggy, it’s onto Aldersgate Street, above the Vecchio Parioli Italian restaurant. It’s not a set, it’s for real, and you can see it behind me in this photo.

A learning curve

Last week I bought a gimbal – a DJI RS 3 mini, if you remember.

I said last week that it was a pain to set up, and I stand by that, but it was actually only one part of that setup which was a real stinker. Because the iPhone 17 Pro Max is so slim, it’s a very fine line on getting the tilt axis set. I know this gimbal is geared more towards bulkier, heavier DSLR cameras with heavy lenses attached, which means the iPhone is about as light as it can handle. Anyway, all that to say, put in the work once, be patient, because you’ll end up with a very cool gimbal that’ll set you up for years to come.

In case you’re wondering why I went for something as high-end as the DJI RS 3, it’s because, fully kitted out, the iPhone 17 Pro Max weighs nearly 500 grams, which is too heavy for the motors on smaller mobile phone gimbals.

As with anything, though, there is a learning curve even when it comes to getting the most out of a gimbal – and I am a complete novice. I’ve now bought a briefcase handle for it to get even more stability from it, and I’m learning the ‘gimbal walk’ – if you’ve used one, then you’ll know what I mean.

But this is all part of the fun and is fuelling my passion to get better with this kit each time I leave home. To that point, I said last week that if you’re happy for me to make a few mistakes along the way, then I promise I’ll keep coming back with the latest updates, which hopefully will help you not to make them. If nothing else, I’m dead honest with you and never profess to know it all. We can learn and inspire together.

I freely admit I’m a work-in-progress, but hell, I’m hungry to learn.

Ready steady

Last week, on my first outing with the gimbal, which I shot at Borough Market, I made a mistake – no surprises there!

Because I’m now using ND filters, I’m finally not only getting somewhere with the Blackmagic app, but loving it as well. Now I get why everyone raves about it so much.

At Borough Market, I went full out shooting in ProRes RAW, 4K/24 fps, Apple Log 2. The A-roll stuff, where the camera was on a tripod I was ever so happy with, but the shots when I was hand-holding the gimbal, I knew weren’t perfect.

One of those glaring mistakes I made, I’m really kicking myself about. I’m still getting used to the Blackmagic app, and I’d spent so much time thinking about CODECS and colour spaces, shutter speeds & white balance that I overlooked turning on the stabilisation. Lesson learned! Even the iPhone can be crap in the wrong hands!

And as if that wasn’t enough, also going against me was that the ProRes RAW CODEC has zero stabilisation and I bloody knew that too! I foolishly assumed that the gimbal would sort everything out, but a combination of the wrong CODEC and no stabilisation meant some of the B-roll shots were not too clever.

We live to go again, though – and I will!

On this week’s shoot, I dabbled with seeing how good ProRes RAW is with basic Blackmagic stabilisation switched on and also tried out shooting in the H.265 CODEC as well. Not only will those files be way smaller, but I believe there is some stabilisation enabled with it as well.

Using H.265 meant I could still shoot in the Apple Log 2 colour space, which, although it wouldn’t give me quite as much flexibility in post as shooting in ProRes RAW, it would still look pretty good I figured. I’m guessing it’s all about tailoring how you shoot to what that day’s challenges are.

I’ve also played about with using the Blackmagic app in what is essentially aperture priority mode. It seems that the way the iPhone likes to work to get the best possible results is by shooting at variable exposures and then combining them into one file – very similar to what Panasonic & RED cameras have been doing for a while now.

So on this trip, I tried shooting with the shutter & ISO in Auto and with me locking down the shutter to twice the frame rate to see if I could notice any differences.

Hopefully, next week I’m going to find another Slow Horses location and by then will have had a chance to look back at what I’ve shot, and then I can bring you up to date with my thoughts and findings.

Loving life with an iPhone 17 Pro Max

There’s plenty for me to learn and plenty of mistakes to make along the way, of that I have no doubt.

Apart from having the time of my life, I also think I’ve come a long way in a short space of time with this mobile shooting lark. Compared to shooting in the controlled environment of my studio, there is way more to take on board and adapt to when shooting on location. I have so much respect now for guys who do this professionally.

But all this knowledge can only be a good thing, and when I do finally get another camera, everything I’m learning is totally transferable. I will be a better photographer and more complete.

Circling back, none of this would ever have happened had I not picked up an iPhone Pro. Call it a gateway camera if you like, but the iPhone 17 Pro Max has made me buzz like never before.

Every day, every shoot and every mistake is simply another step down the road to becoming better and fully appreciating what’s around me. The iPhone 17 Pro Max and me are about to have some serious fun!