iPhone 12: A Photographer's Review By Tyler Stalman

Whether, you plan to get an iPhone 12. You probably know that apple's cameras define the industry at this point and regardless what you hear from other tech channels reviewing android phones, whether the spec advantages are really significant and the hardware can be better. The truth remains most professional working photographers shoot on iPhone, we're going to be testing both the iPhone 12 and the 12 pro, and we're putting them up against the iPhone 11 Pro and the iPhone 10, because nobody should be upgrading every year, except for tech reviewers, so whatever it is, you're upgrading from you're going to get a bigger jump than just what's inside the 12. So, let's remind ourselves what happened 500 years ago in 2019, when the iPhone 11 was released, because whatever older phone you're upgrading from you're going to get all these benefits too. Overall, it's been an incredible phone. We actually did a lot of tests with it.

We set up a huge studio, set to test the new ultra-wide and see what the three lenses look like in one situation where you could take three drastically different angles, all in the same place. What we're setting up today is a pretty elaborate set. Anya did all the planning here. I did if you guys haven't met any before she is my partner in crime and does all the creative direction on all of our shoots, but not the heavy lifting. By the way, this video was never released to YouTube.

It just didn't get finished, so you're, seeing it for the first time. The biggest challenge was that our studio is actually not big enough, but we needed to accommodate for all the wide, the ultra-wide and the telephoto lens. The addition of the ultra-wide lens is probably my favorite hardware update apple's ever made to the camera, and it opened up huge new possibilities, and now, a year later, I can barely remember how I lived without it. I've been using the pro, so that means I also have the telephoto lens, which is very helpful, but I think a little less necessary. I don't use it as often as the wide or ultra-wide, but it does extend the reach of your camera, so you don't always have to move physically closer to your subject.

The downside is that the telephoto wasn't as sharp as the primary lens, but if you're just posting to Instagram stories, tic TAC, whatever it's still a big improvement over digital zoom, and let's not forget that the iPhone 11 introduced night mode and deep fusion, which were massive jumps forward in apple's computational photography. The iPhone 11 is the most satisfied. I've ever been with an iPhone camera, and it feels incredibly mature. So it would take a lot for the iPhone 12 to impress me. So, let's see, if it does so yesterday, we were kind of panicking because the snow storm hit, just as the phones arrived, but fortunately we were wandering through Calgary and ran into snap photo club, which I had never heard of and no idea existed.

But it's exactly what we needed. It's just like a bunch of totally different studios that you can rent and shoot in and uh. I couldn't ask for anything better to shoot some iPhone tests. The big new feature is a brand-new wide or normal camera, which is a 1.6 aperture instead of a 1.8, and this is coming to all the iPhone 12 models by the way, whether you're interested in the mini or the pro max, and by the way those aren't going to be coming out until November, so you're going to have to wait a little longer for those reviews, if you're not used to thinking about aperture numbers, 1.6 1.8 may not mean a lot, so I'll, compare them to some common professional lenses.50 millimeters, for example, is a very common standard lens on full frame sensors. Now the best of the best right now for canon is the 50 millimeter 1.2 and that costs 2 300. So that's crazy fast.

Not many photographers shoot like that very often, and you can take a step-down from there to 1.4 and that's going to cost you 400 and then there's the very popular 1.8 version and that costs just 125. So in the traditional camera world, every little increment is a big step in terms of cost and performance. Hopefully that might help you place. The new 1.6 aperture lens on the iPhone 12. , it's a real step forward, allowing for 27 more light.

This is what I'd call medium low light. It's not dark enough to go into night mode, so, instead, the iPhone 12 is going to use deep fusion, which is where it enhances these moderately low light situations. This is also where the 1.6 lens should help out and give a little of a boost to the noise floor, a little more dynamic range. If you want to know if your camera is using deep fusion or night mode, you can look at this little icon in the corner. If it's white, that means that it's going to use deep fusion and if it's yellow it's going to be night mode.

If it's not there, it's just taking a regular smart HDR photo in our tests. It has the most impact in low light, but not so dark that you could call it night mode compared to the iPhone 11 Pro it's a tiny bit sharper and cleaner. But if we compare it to the 10, the difference stands out more. The biggest jump forward from the 10 is what an amazing job smart HDR is doing, holding on to the colors and the highlights in those neon signs, even though those phones had their own smart HDR. The highlights would completely blow out.

This has gradually been getting better and better, especially starting with the 10s 10r. I've been loving, smart HDR ever since then. I also wanted to see what the close focus macro shots look like, which are good, not a crazy difference from the 11, but you can see that the both starts to bloom a little bigger thanks to that wider aperture, which, if you didn't know you, can get real both on these cameras, you don't need to use portrait mode. You just have to get closer to your subject and then the background naturally starts to blur. So now, it'll blur a little more and by the way, lots of reason to be excited about the iPhone 12 Pro max, because that will have a larger sensor and that also contributes to narrower depth of field blurrier background.

So when that comes out, I'm going to talk about it. A lot especially on the podcast, the bigger jumps in quality that we saw were on the software side, where night mode and deep fusion are now available on all the lenses and cameras of the iPhone 12. To do these tests, I wanted to try out my invention that I've been hinting at on Twitter. It's the MagSafe tripod, first of its kind um mine is just kind of crappy and homemade with a switch pod, but the magnet does a great job of keeping the phone in place, and obviously I can't wait to see what some real accessory manufacturers offer in the coming months. In this sample of the ultra-wide lens, we can see deep fusion at work, and it just blows away the iPhone 11 Pro way sharper way more detail, and then things get even crazier when we turn off all the neon lights and night mode kicks in the iPhone 11 ultra-wide is struggling to even make out the room, it's muddy, soft and frankly, unusable and now, when night mode kicks in, we have a real photo and keep in mind.

The ultra-wide lens and sensor are unchanged on the iPhone 12. This is all computational photography at work, using that new a14 processor, with a massively doubled, neural engine and the image signal processor. On that thing, all of that integrated chip is so much of the reason that these photos look great number one on my wish list for next year's phone is an all-new ultra-wide lens and sensor. I absolutely love shooting that wide, but I just wish it was on par with the regular wide angle. Okay, this next one.

I know this won't be a good photo, but apple says that they've improved what faces look like in the corners of the ultrawide, so this next photo. This is for science, they have improved the sharpness and the distortion, especially in the corners, but it's just a marginal increase. I really want to see this take a leap forward so that the ultrawide is never a compromise in image. Quality portrait mode has also been improved on the 12 and the 12 pro doing a visibly better job at cutting out the subject. Usually, there's a lot of trouble around glasses or gaps between arms and hands, but it did much better than in previous years.

Moving around these test shots we're seeing here were shot on the 12 pro, which has the brand-new LIDAR sensor, which instantly scans environments in 3d. This will totally change the game for augmented reality, but a question. A lot of you guys asked on both Instagram and Twitter is if LIDAR was going to make portrait mode way better, which would be a good reason to upgrade to the pro. According to apple, it's only active in the dark when the normal cameras start to struggle. Lidar is basically night vision and can focus perfectly, but it's not precise enough to do that.

Cut out around the subject. That's still using the two lenses, the selfie low light portrait mode looks especially good. I was really happy with how those turned out. Sometimes I find night mode on a person, can look a little over processed. It's not great with the skin tones when it goes for its full on HDR look, but you can balance that out by using a flash, sometimes especially the on-screen flash when you're taking a selfie can illuminate the face.

For me, it creates some little reflections on my glasses, but it's worth it really brightens the whole environment and just that light from the screen can turn a selfie from a blurry mess into a totally usable photo. So looking at these dark samples, here's one shot that shows the potential downside of night mode on the ultrawide lens. It pushes my skin a bit too far and in this test, portrait mode had a much better and more natural result, and you can only get that on the 12. Night mode and portrait mode at the same time, very natural results. If we compare it to the primary wide angle lens on the 12 and the 10, you can see that the 12 is crazy, sharp well.

The 10 is just a fuzzy blur I'd honestly, rather something in between, but I'd love to know in the comments. What's your favorite next I'd love to show you some samples of smart hdr3, but unfortunately, Canada came early this year. The morning our phones came in winter came with it and unfortunately there is no dynamic range outside when the 12 and the pro max come out. I will put it to the test, but for now we'll just have to look at apple samples which look great. If you don't know what smart HDR is, it evaluates the whole scene and what got better this year is the way that apple's evaluating every part of it, especially skies and faces, and understanding that difference can really help enhance all the details in the image.

Now, let's talk about video, this is a crazy year for changes to iPhone video, but it's also underrated. In most reviews that I see we spend a lot of time focusing on the photography in cameras, because photography is its sort of like a more popular hobby than filmmaking. But you know what video cameras on phones are the most important creative tool, especially in 2020. If anyone tries to tell you that professionals don't use the cameras on their phones or their laptops or iPads for pro work, trust me they're getting a lot of use and let's not pretend that tie, TOK and Instagram aren't some of the biggest media outlets on the planet. So when iPhones get better, it changes everything that we're watching anyway.

Video iPhones have been the absolute best for years now and that hasn't changed. As always, the videos are sharp, the colors are fantastic and, what's always set iPhones apart is how they deal with challenging scenes with enhanced dynamic range that on the fly, is combining exposures of every single frame. It's the best video you can get on a phone bar, none, and now you've got Dolby Vision, HDR 10-bit on your phone, which is insane, but it's also one of the most confusing big features on these new phones. So we're going to have to spend a minute with it, and also a lot of people were confused. They seemed to think that it only came on the pros, I'm not sure what apple said they confused everybody, but on the regular 12 it's available up to 30 frames per second and on the pro models it's up to 60 frames per.

Second, let's try to understand Dolby Vision by starting with an example. So, looking at this video, it looks great. You can see that new HDR popping out at you, or can you actually you can't, because this video is just published in standard dynamic range as are most YouTube? Videos, see HDR or high dynamic range means a few different things, which is why it's hard to talk about you can capture an image with more dynamic range and to do that apple is using smart. Hdr3 machine learning quickly combines a few exposures to create an image that is more than what the sensor can actually capture in any one photo. But what we're talking about with Dolby Vision? HDR is extending the dynamic range of the viewing experience, and this is made possible by the impressive new OLED screens available on all the new iPhone 12 models.

The pro model's standard brightness is a little higher than on the 12s, but they all have a peak brightness of 1200 nits and that's what you need to see those extra details in your scene that appear to have an even more impressive difference between the highlights and shadows and that's what you need to see: Dolby Vision, HDR, a screen that has both the hardware and the software to support it. So when you look at this sample, it's being displayed in standard dynamic range, I had to do a little adjusting to make it look correct and since mastering anything in HDR standards usually takes training and skill. That's why it's crazy that apple can leverage its a14 bionic processor to instantly adjust these videos on the fly. But for now there is a downside, because Apple is just way ahead of the curve on this one just like when they led the industry. With their high resolution, retina displays consumer video will need to be dragged forward to catch up with the iPhone 12.

Until then, you're likely to see some inconsistent colors as your videos are used on different hardware and software that isn't ready for these new HDR standards. So for the time being, I probably won't be shooting in HDR very often until the workflow gets easier. I expect apps will get updated, have more options like shooting in 10 bit standard dynamic range that'd be very useful right now. The best way to experience 10 bites Dolby Vision, HDR, is shooting and viewing on an iPhone 12. Another big feature we can't test yet is apple pro raw, which is available on the 12 pro and 12 pro max.

We already could shoot raw even on the iPhone 11 using apps like halite, which, by the way, just had a massive update to hell, i2 but apple promises that their new raw format will use all the same software intelligence as smart, HDR, deep fusion and night mode. So I've been talking to camera app developers like Sebastian Dewitt on the podcast about how important raw really is on these iPhones. Okay. So you are the biggest raw expert. I know that isn't inside of apple, the iPhone 10 already had some computational photography, but then in the keynote for the iPhone 10s, they said, hey here's.

This thing called smart HDR, it's going to blow your mind. It makes all images better, but the raw files did look a lot worse, all of a sudden, because what the iPhone is doing a lot of that pipeline. A lot of that computational improvement purely on that JPEG. Now what apple's been promising with this new pro raw format? It says on the website that it's going to get some of those smart, that smart data and bundle it with your raw. So you don't just get the raw, but also all the things that the camera brain would have done.

So should you upgrade, I don't know it depends on which phone you already have. It depends on how much money you have. It depends on a million things. This is 2020, don't put pressure on yourself to go pick up a new phone, but once you've decided you're getting an iPhone 12. Okay, this is the hard part which one do you get.

There's a lot of options this year between the 12 and the 12 pro they are effectively the exact same size. They both have new OLED screens. They both have the same peak brightness, but the pro has LIDAR raw and at 60 frames per second Dolby Vision. Here's how I'd think about it! For now the 12 is the right place to start for most people. You might even forget what you're missing out on if you start with the 12 you're, probably just going to be happy with it, but the iPhone 12 Pro starts at 128 gigabytes, and since I would say that 64 gigs is too small for anybody.

That really cares about photography or filmmaking. It means that the upgrade price to the pro is actually closer to 100. So, basically, if you feel like spoiling yourself, go for the pro you deserve it. But if you really care about photography and filmmaking, you will hold out just a little longer and watch my review of the iPhone 12 Pro max, because it is the new best of the best, and we don't even know how good it is. Yet we haven't seen samples, and it could be a huge deal so hit subscribe for more iPhone camera tests.

Source : Tyler Stalman