Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Netflix
Rian Johnson 'badgered' his cinematographer into making his 'ideal iPhone camera'
Getting into photography is easier than ever these days with the quality of cameras that smartphones now boast. Thus, it’s also easier than ever to realize just how bad you are at photography.
While there are many elements that make a good photographer, the key ones are: an eye for it, a quality camera, and the ability to edit. The first of those three — the talent — cannot be taught. The latter two, however, are entirely technological and within your control.
Still, not everyone has the time to learn the ins and outs of photography, ultimately making the creation of professional-looking pictures a bridge too far. Knives Out franchise director Rian Johnson, however, has just made that bridge a whole lot more manageable.
To be clear, this is not a paid advertisement or a sponsored post, but rather an appreciation of one of Hollywood’s most acclaimed writers and directors “badgering” (his words, not mine) his cinematographer Steve Yedlin into making his “ideal iPhone still camera app.”
Knives Out franchise director Rian Johnson says he “badgered” his cinematographer Steve Yedlin into making Chromagraph, his “ideal iPhone camera”
“So I recently badgered my cinematographer Steve Yedlin into making my ideal iPhone still camera app. It shoots RAW, bypasses the iPhone’s look processing and instead uses the same image processing we use on our movies,” Johnson explained on social media in his announcement of the app, which is available to purchase in the Apple App Store.
“I’ve messed with plenty of good 3rd party tools, but this is an elegant one-stop-shop; it just takes beautiful shots with Steve’s special sauce processing. You can fine tune the image in the app (with color, exposure, grain and halation tools) and export it to your camera roll.”
While the app, Chromagraph Camera, does cost $13, the reviews have been nothing short of glowing thus far (I also purchased it for myself and love it). Given that photographers at all levels of success are notoriously litigious about their work, I unfortunately won’t be able to showcase any of their work showing off the app — so we’ll do some memes and viral reactions instead.
AN IPHONE APP THAT SHOOTS RAW STILLS ?????? https://t.co/zznhU61cw0
— eelee l open to video editing work (@thevideodromo) October 28, 2026
what does it mean that we are all optimizing paywalls and onboarding flows but rian johnson drops a $12.99 paid download camera app and hits number 1 on the app store
— Brett Bauman (@brttbmn) October 29, 2026
i bought the rian johnson camera app
— bɘn (@aliencovenant) October 28, 2026
At this time, however, the camera only shoots still photos and not video, and is only available on Apple, not Android.
“A few caveats: it’s stills only, it doesn’t do video, we may pursue it in the future but it likely would only be possible on the last few generations of pro model iPhones. And huge apologies to my Android friends but it’s iPhone only. Hardware consistency across Apple devices is part of what allows us to do this with confidence. Android devices are much more varied, and there’s no way with our small team we could dial it in for every device.”
The above musings about struggling with photography weren’t abstract projection — I was talking about myself. Nevertheless, I like to dabble in it, so I bought Johnson and Yedlin’s app and took it for a spin myself:
