Connect an external drive to record pro footage directly, bypassing your iPhone

iPhones generally take excellent video, but depending on your particular model, you might have a mini cinema camera on your hands. Apple's recent Pro iPhones can shoot in ProRes, a professional video codec, as well as in "Log," which gives editors greater dynamic range for color correction. (Note that the initial footage looks washed out, but the color information is retained in the video file. ) Choosing to shoot in the best possible formats on your Pro iPhone can achieve some great results, but comes with a huge tradeoff: The files are massive. When switching to ProRes Log, for example, you'll notice an alert on your iPhone "freeing resources," so that you even have enough storage to record a few minutes of footage.

It's not meant for casual videography, which is why Apple doesn't make it the default. If you want to shoot videos like this, however, you don't have to rely on your iPhone's internal storage. Instead, pick up an external SSD. You can now connect it directly to your iPhone 15 Pro or newer via USB-C, and record all footage directly to the drive. That way, you can connect the SSD to your computer for editing without having to worry about the local files on your iPhone.

In fact, this is the only way to shoot ProRes in 4K on iPhone 15 Pro with 128GB of storage. Apple has some specific instructions for setting up the external drive, as well as the drive's specifications, so check those out before buying one.