The Google Pixel 4 Versus the Canon RP for Night Photography - Blind Test By Andrew & Denae

- Hey guys. Tonight we are going to be doing a little blind test between the Canon EOS RP and the Google Pixel 4. (upbeat music) I've had on my radar a long time, this desire to try out Google's Night Sight and to compare it to what I'm used to getting at night with a full-frame mirrorless camera just to see how they compare. I've heard good things about the Night Sight, I'd really just want to see what I can get. And, as fate would have it, this guy showed up in the mail, the other day. This is the Google Pixel 4 as a gift from Google, thank you Google.

And I thought what an opportune time, I know that with this device Night Sight has really been improved. It's come a long way. From what I understand it really is the best computational photography implementation of night photography that we have. The Google Pixel has two lenses a 27mm equivalent 1.7 aperture lens employing a small 12 megapixel SIMAL sensor and then also a 44mm equivalent lens which rocks a 12 megapixel sensor. And the way that Night Sight works is that when you hold it really still and take a photo it will take a burst of a bunch of photos and computationally you kind of put all those together to get less noise out of an image, more detail out of the shadows.

So how does that compare you know these tiny lenses and sensors and computational photography, how does that compare to our Canon RP? Not the Canon RP I know is not the best low-light full frame camera on the market. Now, that's fine. I don't really want to compare the very, very best that full frame has to offer on the market. A consumer camera probably one of the most affordable consumer full-frame cameras will do just fine for this test. So like my other blind tests I'll show you some shots side-by-side with both cameras I won't tell you which is which until the end where I will reveal the truth to you and you can decide weather you need to be horribly disappointed or completely vindicated in what you think you're going to prefer.

So, we are going to head to the industrial side of town, see what we can see take some shots. But honestly guys I have no idea what to expect from this test but either way I think it will be fun. By the way I'm doing all of these shots hand held. I could use a tripod, but at night its nice to be a little bit more inconspicuous and just run and gun it a little bit more and the Google Night Sight is awesome because it will stitch together photos even if you move slightly, so at least that's the claim. So, we will see how it does compared to hand-held Canon EOS RP which I do have a cage to lend a little bit of stability, make things a little more fair I guess for the EOS RP.

We'll see how it goes. (upbeat music) This next shot will be a really good test were at iso 12 thousand 800 on this video camera here, so I suspect that's what I'll have to be shooting at on the Canon to get this. (upbeat music) I do have to say though, one of my favorite types of photography is night photography for so many reasons. If you ever get tired of your talent, if you just feel like there's nothing else to shoot, you've shot everything in your local place of residence, try going out in the middle of the night. It's kinda like the up side down in Stranger Things, right.

Everything is sort of opposite, shots that you would have never have thought would work during the day work at night. And not only that but it's just it's so much more peaceful and contemplative. There really is no rush or urgency to chase a shot before the light changes and nobody around to really interfere with what your doing. You can take your time, slow down and just enjoy it. (upbeat music) All right, I'm back in the studio now and it is time for the big reveal.

The Google Pixel 4 was A and the Canon EOS RP was B. So what did you think and what were your impressions? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. As for me, as I study these photos I think that there are a lot of interesting take aways here. And the first and most obvious take away is that the shots from the Google Pixel are without a doubt significantly less noisy. It doesn't mean they are better in every situation but they are unquestionably better and more usable in extremely low-light conditions.

Getting properly exposed images with the Google Pixel 4 and Night Sight is amazingly impressive. With the EOS RP, you'll have to balance how high your willing to go with iso and the resulting noise that that will bring to your image verses how low you'll think you'll be able to go on the shutter speed without introducing motion blur. Add to that the dynamic of needing fast and expensive lenses preferably with fast aperture and image stabilization and it makes shooting with a mirror less camera hand held in low light a much more complicated prospect. As compared to the very simple point, hold still and shoot process you get with the Pixel 4 and Night Sight. Beyond that in extremely low light conditions with a camera like this if you don't have a tripod, you'll probably just have to shrug your shoulders and walk away from a lot of shots because you aren't going to get a shot that will work whereas with Night Sight you can confidently pull it out and take that picture knowing you'll be able to get a properly exposed all be it perhaps soft photo.

Another thing that is either very nice or very unhelpful depending on your perspective and workflow is how much Night Sight magic you want to bring to bare to bring the shadowy areas back into exposure on the Pixel 4. Since the phone needs to balance how long to make each individual exposure, also how many exposures to make. It's very important for the phone to know ahead of time how much of the shadows you want to expose for. Even if you manipulate phones raw files later in the lightroom, you'll never be able to recover the shadows like you could if you were doing it in camera with Night Sight. So you pretty much have to get that right in camera.

Again, depending on who you are this could be something that you appreciate or hate but either way if you get it wrong there's no real going back in post even if you shoot in raw on this phone. Like with the photo I'm gonna show you now, where I totally overdid the effect and I don't like it. And while were on the topic of getting it right in camera verse editing it later in post, I should also mention one draw back of the Pixel 4 with Night Sight. And that is white balance algorithm Google relies on machine learning to develop their auto white balancing algorithm and while it seems plenty reliable in day light from what I've seen so far, at night its not excellent and I would prefer to be able to adjust it to taste. It's frustrating that you can't edit the white balance in camera.

And that gives you a disconnect in the workflow where you're working with the exposure and the dynamic range in camera but you have to shoot in raw and then edit the file more in post, edit the white balance later. It would have been nice to eliminate that post production step entirely since we're already doing so much in camera anyway. Now, when it comes to comparing sharpness, things are a bit tricky here and it largely depends on how much darkness we're shooting in. My technique when it comes to shooting with a mirrorless camera or a DSR camera for that matter in low light is to go as low as I dare with the shutter speed and then shoot in short continuous bursts, that way I can choose the sharpest shot in post later. And with that technique and comparing it to the Pixel 4 shots, I do feel like EOS RP shots are technically sharper but in really low light that high iso noise negates any of that perceived sharpness.

So even though the Pixel is combining stacked hand held images with softer results, it still appears sharper at normal magnifications because its clear of noise. Of course one thing you will not be able to get with Night Sight, or at least not yet, is that computational shallow depth of field that you can get in Pixel's portrait mode. Shooting wide open with a full-frame camera in low light, will give you some of that subject isolation that you may want. Although it could be a disadvantage to the full frame camera if you want the whole photo sharp, front to back. With that wider depth and field on the Pixel 4, it's easier to get that where without a tripod you just won't be able to stop down far enough on full-frame camera to get that same wide depth of field at least not in low light.

So those are my main take aways but I do need to mention one other strange thing I noticed in this shot with the Google Pixel 4, and that was a strange ghosting of the open sign light flare. I have no idea what caused that in this photo. If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. In the mean time, I can only assume it's a ghost in the machine. So when it comes to just getting a properly exposed shot with low noise and extremely low light or just being able to recover extremely dark shadows, hand held, the Pixel 4 with Night Sight wins.

No question. You get full control of dynamic range and can bring back the shadows as you shoot as much as you want. And if you often want to shoot with a wide depth of field, you'll have an advantage here, but you do sacrifice control over white balance and sometimes what the computer picks for you isn't great. You also loose the ability to get shallow depth of field if you ever require that. If you don't mind using a tripod, you will get unquestionably better results with a full-frame camera with better fine tune control.

However, you will be required to bracket exposures and combine images to get that same level of dynamic range that you can get computationally with the Google Pixel 4 Night Sight. I guess that's the biggest take away, and that is that smartphones are making more progress when it comes to computational photography out of necessity and the mirror less camera manufacturers are getting lazy. They need to step up the game and bring to software on these cameras the software that phone manufacturers are bringing to bare to stay relevant. But that's all I got for you today guys. Remember as always kindness before cameras.

We'll talk to you again real soon.

Source : Andrew & Denae