IPHONE 12 VS PROFESSIONAL CAMERA | Wide, Ultrawide, Portrait Mode, & Lowlight Comparison By Marc Taraz Steiner

What's up guys, my name is mark Steiner, and today we are going to be comparing the iPhone 12 to a professional stills camera. We're going to be testing out the wide angle, camera the ultra-wide angle, camera portrait mode and low light. Let's get right into it, so the pro camera set that we're currently using today is the Sony a7r iii, with the Sony, 20?mm 1.8 g, that is going to be the closest focal length I have to the iPhone both for the wide, and the ultra-wide angle, camera, so we're using the regular camera right here, which is a 26 mil, and now we're going to use the ultra-wide, which is somewhere between a 13 and 14 mil, which is absolutely crazy. So as many people love to take photos of their coffee cup, this is what we're going to be testing with the iPhone, because this is what people use it for and now with the pro camera coffee cup stuff. This is what four thousand dollars gets you all right. So I'm looking at the side by side between the iPhone and the pro camera and right off the bat, the iPhone looks better.

There's, there's more dynamic range, there's more detail. It just looks like a more interesting photo compared to the pro camera, which is kind of mind-blowing. Obviously, the difference in that seven to six millimeter focal length is playing a little here, but for the most part the iPhone looks tremendously more epic than the pro camera, which is mind-blowing. This is where the ultra-wide of the iPhone is going to come in super handy, because it can pick up more with that 13 14 mil equivalent compared to the 20 mil equivalent and right off the bat there's just so much more detail in the iPhone in terms of dynamic range. We're just getting so much more.

The sky is completely blown out on the pro camera, whereas on the iPhone you can actually get a decent amount of sky and there's no flaring on either of them, which looks pretty nice, but dang that iPhone ultra-wide is looking real good. So we're using portrait mode right now and portrait mode is not looking good, hey guys, editor mark here. After getting the photos back on my computer, the portrait photos turned out absolutely fine for some reason. On the back of the phone, the edge detection looked absolutely trash, but the final photos are fine. If you pixel peep, you can see that the edge detection still has trouble with hair, but it's the best it's ever been, and if you're just posting the social media and not pixel peeping, no one's going to notice.

I was actually really impressed by these portrait photos. The both is very natural. The colors and lighting are really nice, and they could easily pass as a pro camera. If you just give them a quick glance, the both is so good. It is even arguably better than the 20?mm 1.8 g and that in it of itself, is very impressive. When a similar edit is used on both photos, the iPhone looks like a more vintage film camera or like a disposable camera, whereas the pro photo camera looks completely different, which I found very interesting in this particular case.

I'd actually pick the iPhone shot over the pro camera, especially when posting the social media. However, in the next portrait test, the pro camera definitely comes out on top. In my opinion, the iPhone photo still looks perfect and is totally passable, but it doesn't have that same character as a pro camera, and I think this is because it's not in an ideal lighting situation. The iPhone photo is very flat looking, whereas the pro camera has more dynamic lighting, which I think is more pleasing and more realistic and stands out more. However, that being said, the iPhone shot has really nice and natural looking both, especially compared to the 20?mm 1.8 g, which is really impressive, so gotta give it to the iPhone, and it's AI and machine learning. It's doing a lot behind the scenes to make this photography.

Look so good and natural and realistic all right side by side we're getting a different angle of the plaza nice little wide, and I'm going to shoot this on the ultra-wide of the iPhone as well and once again side by side. I'm trying to get an even exposure here and the iPhone just keeps everything lit properly, but with the pro camera I have to choose between you know, do I want to bring up the shadows and risk blowing out the sky or keep the sky and just kind of crush the shadows a little. Obviously I can repair this in post, but like right off the bat. The iPhone just has so much more dynamic range. So here I thought this would be an interesting shot because we get tennis courts, and we get buildings in the background which is pretty cool and because it's backlit, you get this nice little relation in the highlights, which is kind of crazy and once again the iPhone is just impressing me because this dilation we're getting on the pro camera.

It's just keeping everything exposed correctly with the iPhone. So it's less of a hazy background, an actual you can see more detail in the iPhone than what your eyes can see. That's crazy that it's literally picking up more sky than what both my actual eyes and what the pro camera can see. That's insane all right, so I'm stopping by to get this house, because I really liked it has a nice contrast with the green and the beige, and it's just it's absolutely insane how much dynamic range these iPhone photos are picking up like the sky is completely blown out on this. I'm sure I can recover it in raw, but oh my god like just right off the bat.

The iPhone looks so good and so clear and retains more color detail as well. It just looks so good, so now we are shooting at night, so we can get to see how the iPhone stacks up against a full-frame sensor and right off the bat. It's looking pretty interesting. You know I'm still going to take the full frame sensor in low light, but the colors and the auto white balance is looking pretty good on the iPhone and the thing about these new iPhones is that they have night mode. So you can see that it's taking a long exposure and that in-body image stabilization makes it possible.

So you can get a longer exposure which is really nice. But what I actually like to do is turn it off and then raise it in post. So I think you're, probably gonna, get better results that way, so I'm definitely preferring the full frame. Mirrorless camera in this case we're getting some weird flaring and ghosting on this iPhone shot here, but it's still impressive to see how the highlights are retained, whereas they're not as much on the mirrorless camera. Again, you can change that in raw and the depth of field wide open at f.1.8 is really nice on the full frame. Mirrorless camera definitely better in low light than the iPhone.

But in this situation, because there's so much light, the iPhone is not going to night mode, so we can manually turn it off when we want to, but it's not needing to right now. So that's really impressive. So in ideal lighting situations the iPhone is once again doing pretty well, I still prefer the full frame mirrorless camera in this situation again. This issue with the lights is an issue on the iPhone, and I'm not a huge fan of that. That's going to get real annoying.

If I was doing any sort of photography on the wide angle camera the ultra-wide angle, camera it's not as much of an issue, I'm actually not seeing it. It's only on the regular wide angle. It doesn't really seem to show up on the ultra-wide angle. So that's kind of interesting to see. This is an interesting thing we have going here.

We have some Christmas lights going and the iPhone with the wide-angle camera is looking pretty good. Doesn't look that noisy, but then we go to the ultra-wide and super noisy, and we're instantly getting the night mode necessary to do this, and it's taking the long exposure right now and then that long exposure is still very, very noisy compared to the mirrorless camera. So that's fascinating to see that the long exposure is significantly noisier, even though it's taking a long exposure and that's where that less wide of an aperture comes in with the ultra-wide. But it is impressive that even the ultra-wide can do long exposures, which is really nice. If you want that interesting angle, but the fact that the regular wide angle is so much brighter just shows that it doesn't even need to go into that night mode for this shot, which is fascinating.

We're now getting portraits and again the full frame is looking perfect because of that wide angle lens with a wide aperture. So we're getting that nice both depth of field blur on the full frame, but the iPhone is doing a perfect job, and it's actually not that bad. At all the overall exposure. I'd say it looks better on the iPhone, but you know again in post. I think that the full frame camera is going to look better, but the iPhone did have to take a long exposure in this particular setting, which is interesting because I didn't think it would have to, but it did take a one or two second long exposure and that's how it's achieving its perfect low light performance here.

It's still not as good as a full frame camera, but it is compensating pretty well. So what did we learn from this test? A pro camera still has its place in the world and is going to be used for professional work. There are no worries there, but for the average person in everyday scenarios the iPhone is catching up. Real, quick and looks perfect and in some ways the phone even surpasses a pro level camera when it comes to dynamic range and detail out of this small 12 megapixel sensor, the phone is really impressive and actually has more dynamic range straight out of camera than a pro level camera, which is mind-blowing that you're getting that kind of performance out of your phone, and that is made possible because of processing. I found the same thing to be true when I did my note: 20 ultra 8k comparison, because the phone is using processing power, it's able to stitch together, multiple exposures and therefore get more dynamic range and detail out of a shot which is incredible and that's even more pronounced, with photography, you're stitching, like 12 layers of photos together with a bunch of data.

That's why the iPhone photos look so good straight out of camera, whereas the pro camera only takes one single exposure. Every time you hit the shutter when it comes to lenses, I was actually really impressed with the ultra-wide angle lens on the iPhone. This thing is absolutely epic, when used in the right circumstance and is far cooler than a telephoto lens, because the iPhone is shooting compressed images on a small 12 megapixel sensor, even with all that processing power behind it. It does not hold up in editing. If you start doing some crazy edits, it does fall apart really quickly.

I did notice some banding in the sky when I push the image too hard, and you're just not going to be doing some crazy edits on these compressed images, whereas with a pro camera the sky is really the limit. When it comes to raw images that are exposed correctly. I also found the grain to be far more pronounced on the iPhone and that again is because of its small 12 megapixel sensor. Yes, apple pro raw is coming, and I'm very curious to see how that fits into the equation and how powerful it is, but straight out of camera, it's hard to argue with how good the photos are on the iPhone, and I really doubt that the pro raw is going to give you that much more of an advantage than all the amazing post-processing the phone does already, and I still think true raw photos coming out of a pro level. Camera are going to be far more flexible than anything you're going to get on your iPhone raw or not in low light.

The iPhone really started to suffer against a pro level camera and the a7r iii isn't even that great of a camera in low light. An a7s three would absolutely destroy both of these, and the upcoming a74 would probably fare very well against these as well. The iPhone's noise, flaring and banding was just very pronounced in low light situations, and I don't know whether it's the image stabilization or the post-processing, but this weird ghosting flaring issue with the wide-angle lens just makes it unusable in certain circumstances, to be fair, the ability to take usable, clean, handheld photos of your phone is pretty impressive. All in all phones are catching up at an alarming speed to pro level cameras and most people looking to upgrade from their phone to a camera are going to have a very difficult time, finding something budget-friendly that outperforms what they already have in their pocket. But I want to know what you guys think.

Are you excited about the iPhone photos? Do you think this is the future computational photography and phone photography? Let me know in the comment section down below my name is mark Steiner, and I'll see you next time.

Source : Marc Taraz Steiner