iPhone 12 VS 12 Pro // Camera Comparison Review By Matti Haapoja

These are the new iPhones, the 12 and the 12 pro, which I believe are shipping out today and for me, as a filmmaker photographer by far the most important features are the cameras, so I spent all day yesterday trying to get cinematic footage and beautiful photos, and today we're going to review these guys with a heavy emphasis on the cameras. If you want to see all the footage and the photos that we took and the behind the scenes of how we got those make sure and go and check out yesterday's video and then watch this review. But first, let's talk about the new bodies. They look uh familiar kind of like this little guy. I cannot believe that this is how small iPhones used to be its incredible, but uh. I have to say I'm happy that the kind of squared off boxy look is back.

Furthermore, I really like it and on the 12. The edge is this mac kind of finish and on the 12 pro it's this shiny kind of finish, and I actually prefer the matte look better and also the back of the 12 is more of this shiny finish, whereas on the pro it's this matte finish again, I prefer the matte look. The edge of the pro is just like a fingerprint magnet. It almost looks like your fingers are leaving wet marks on the side. That's how big of a fingerprint magnet the sides are.

Both phones have a wide camera and an ultra-wide, and then the pro has a telephoto and also the sleeper feature LIDAR. Yes, this thing has lasers. I love the new MagSafe feature very satisfying uh, basically, there are magnets in the iPhone now and that kind of just very simply, but opens up a whole world of different accessories and ways of doing things. For example, this is a case that has also some magnets that it attaches to, so it doesn't need to be as like, crazy, tight-fitting because it's got the magnets, so it sticks to it. No problem, without it being so tight that it's like crazy hard to get your iPhone out of the case afterwards, the screens look great they're a new OLED panel, and apparently they're a lot more drop proof now, but we're not going to test that out here now.

Let's talk about the cameras, the biggest new feature seemed like the Dolby Vision for video and the pro raw for photos. Now, right now, you might be asking what the heck is. Dolby Vision, I kind of had the same reaction. Dolby Vision is basically just a form of HDR, so you're going to get more or better color, brightness and contrast and with Dolby Vision you actually have what's called dynamic metadata. So every frame has metadata telling your iPhone or TV how it should be showing that footage, and you can actually see that happening at first, it's kind of a gray color, and then it brightens up and adds saturation.

I assume that's the metadata, telling the iPhone how it should be, showing that footage to me in more basic terms. It's almost like you're filming in logs, so you're getting a lot of dynamic range, but then they're already converting it for you, so it has more contrast and saturation and doesn't just look like gray garbage, which happens when you're filming in log and the video quality is mind-blowing. I still can't believe that you're getting this kind of quality from a smartphone. No, it's not as good as my cinema camera or my Sony. A7S iii, there's no competition there, but 100.

I will be mixing more and more iPhone footage into my videos when it makes sense- and I intentionally graded this footage very heavy. I don't usually grade quite this heavy plus it was fall and I wanted to make it look more. Like fall these nice orange tones, I wanted to see how the 10-bit footage handles heavy color grading, and it's pretty impressive. I think it held up really, really well. It's interesting.

The Dolby Vision seems to come out a little brighter than the non-polar vision. Just normal footage, especially in premiere, and I think, what's happening is maybe premiere- doesn't know how to use that metadata properly. Yet- and it's not displaying it quite correctly, I could be wrong, I'm not an expert, but when you look more closely, there is still a lot of detail in the highlights and the shadows a lot more than in the non Dolby Vision footage. The slow motion is kind of the same as in the 11 pro you have 120 frames per second and 240 frames per second, it works, but it's not that great in quality, and you're, not getting the benefits of Dolby Vision and one of the biggest new features for videographers and photographers is the new exposure slider. Now I mostly use the native camera app in my iPhones and every once in a while.

It was so annoying because I would choose a spot to focus on, but it wouldn't turn on the HDR I found using the exposure slider. I was able to trigger the HDR, for example, in this photo of Kai. This is a prime situation of where I wanted to expose or turn on the HDR and get that detail in the sky, but because it's so harshly backlit, it's just exposing for the face, which is great, but I also want that background and if you click on the sky it exposes for that. But then it's not focusing on Kai anymore. These situations were always a little of a problem, but now I was able to just focus on Kai and then using that exposure slider turned down the exposure, and then it triggered the HDR.

I still wish I had more control over the HDR, but it was really nice being able to use the exposure slider to kind of just have a little more control. Then, let's talk about pro raw photos. Well, actually uh pro raw isn't in the new iPhones. Yet I think it's going to be added in a little later. I don't know exactly when, but the deep fusion seems to be getting better and better.

If you didn't know every time you take a photo, it doesn't just take one photo. It takes a bunch of photos and then it kind of just combines all of those taking the best detail and exposures to make this one really great photo with lots of dynamic range and nice colors for you, and I still can't believe that you can take photos like these with a smartphone. It's its unreal, it's so crazy and there's so many times when you would be able to use one of these iPhones and take photos, and nobody would ever guess that it wasn't taking on a DSLR or a mirrorless camera again, it's still not as good as a DSLR or mirrorless camera. There are certain areas where it's its better, but there's still a lot of times when the iPhones just don't look as good, for example, with skin tone. Skin tones are really tricky and just having all of that detail that you get from a big sensor size not to mention shallow depth of field and being able to use that in whatever way you want.

The portrait mode, of course, is still limited in the iPhones, and now we have night mode and portrait also. So, basically, you can take a longer exposure in portrait mode, and it uses the biggest sleeper feature of the phone LIDAR to focus that for you, LIDAR, yes, lasers, on the iPhone and to me LIDAR right now is kind of like when, when you're a kid, and you finally get that that remote control car that you've been waiting for so long, and then it doesn't have batteries and your parents don't have batteries, and you have this amazing remote control car, and you just can't use it, yet you're stuck waiting right now. The LIDAR doesn't actually do very much. Basically, the only thing it does is help with AR and then with the focus in nighttime portrait mode, which is like a very minor feature. In my opinion, I thought they would at least make portrait mode just like way more accurate, because the LIDAR can tell exactly how far objects are from the camera.

So it knows. Okay, this person or object is in the foreground, and all of that is in the background. So let's just blur all of that background, but it's not even doing that. Right now, and I was really hoping that they would enable or make some sort of uh portrait video mode, so you could get shallow depth of field even in video. It's like the last piece of the puzzle and emulating a big sensor.

Look with a very, very small sensor. I was hoping we would get it. We didn't get it, yet now we're stuck waiting for those batteries which, in this metaphor, are the developers please somebody make that happen. We also now have time-lapse with a long shutter. So when you're doing a time-lapse at nighttime with- let's say some cars, you can get those nice light trails of the headlights, and you can actually see when it engages and the image is just so much more clean all of a sudden, and then you get that long exposure.

Look it's 11 o'clock. My Apple Watch is saying that uh I should be winding down for bedtime. I'm out here, killing two birds with one stone, running and uh testing. The time-lapse feature so far. Didn't work on that intersection.

I'm going to try a few more mysteries solved. I figured it out. Uh, it only engages if you have it on a tripod or stationary somewhere as soon as you start moving the phone, then it shuts off. I had it sitting on the ledge, and it started working as soon as I pick it up and start running with it. It works for like a little, and then it shuts it off, which is unfortunate, because you could do really cool hyperlapse stuff if it just kept it going just keep it going, but I'm glad I figured it out also.

This is a good test of uh low light right now, it's pretty dark out here. Uh and I heard the low light on the wide especially is a little better now with the faster lens, and I assume some sort of ISO sensitivity thing for the sensor. Very, very legit talk at 11 at night, skunk dear what the heck. What am I filming a nature documentary out here? A skunk runs by and then three deer, apparently just holding it really still on. Let's say a ledge like this does not work either has to be like completely locked off, which is unfortunate.

I think they need to tweak that a little in the software to make it a little easier to engage. Actually, it would be just great if we could just choose to have it on just force it. I wonder what other kind of wildlife I'm going to run into, but at the same time I love it. It's a really great new feature, the 12 cameras versus the 12 pro cameras. They look very similar.

Even the white balance shifted at the exact same time between the two cameras. When I was doing some of those test shots now, the 12 can only do 10 bites Dolby Vision up to 30 frames per second, whereas the 12 pro can do it up to 60 frames per second. So when you're filming in 60 frames per second, that's when you start to see the differences between the two cameras and, like I said at first glance, it kind of looks like the Dolby Vision looks worse because it's almost overexposing sometimes. But if you look more carefully, there is more detail in the highlights and shadows. So there's a lot more room for color grading and getting all of those details and, as a filmmaker, I very much appreciate that.

Interestingly, in 240 frames per second, the 12 looked like it had a little more detail. I don't know why that was happening, not that you're going to use 240 frames per second. That often anyways photos also looked great on the 12, but, unlike the 12 pro, you won't get pro raw in the future updates and the telephoto camera is the camera that I use the least on my 11 pro. So I don't think you're really missing out that much. If you get the 12, and you don't have the telephoto camera, I haven't had time yet to compare the 12s to the 11 pro, but it doesn't seem like there's that much of a change in the quality of the video or photos, except with the addition of Dolby Vision and the pro raw in the future other than that they seem pretty similar.

But I'm going to have to do. I think I'm going to do a whole different video, comparing the 11 to the 12s. Overall, I'm loving the iPhone 12s. Just incredible the technology that's coming out this year and just making our job as filmmakers and photographers so much easier and more fun and just giving us the ability to capture really high quality images and video so conveniently, and I'm really excited to test out the 12 pro max with the new camera features and let's face it, I'm pretty excited about the 12 mini 2. I've.

I've missed these little phones. Furthermore, I like a little phone, so uh yeah just overall really liking the 12s. Furthermore, I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope you have a great freaking day, even though I'm like exhausted, haven't been getting much sleep at night with the newborn new tech. Just really puts me in a good mood. Alright, see you guys, you.

Source : Matti Haapoja