iPhone 12 Pro so
so hello
so
tell me
so i've waited a long time for this device and there's a couple reasons behind that one
is this is actually the first time that i've gone two years without upgrading this is my current
iphone the iphone 10s max and i've never actually had my hands on an 11 or 11 pro so i never besides
just watching other people's youtube videos i've never actually seen or had the capabilities in my
hand of what that camera could do and on their virtual stage apple really focused this year
on the pro cameras and everyone was really excited about most of the features that they announced
until my standards for what this camera is going to be capable of absolutely skyrocketed and so
on my first day of having it i want to share my findings and talk about why i'm actually kind of
disappointed now if you're new here what i focus on is the true capabilities of smartphone cameras
and what is the best way to get the highest quality out of that camera over the past couple
months i've reviewed the samsung galaxy 20 ultra the sony xperia 2 and i'm working on the pixel 4a
right now completely different types of phones and cameras but all of which i did a deep dive
on the camera capabilities now i always do testing both in the stock camera app that it comes with
as well as a third-party app for video we're using filmic pro on ios since the mc pro 24 fps app
is android only and for any stills photography in case you're curious i use halide which they
just had a huge new update halide mark ii um so if you're interested all those links will be in
the description and to edit the photos i use dark room both fantastic caps but again for this video
we're gonna be sticking to video stuff so i got the phone actually later in the afternoon today
and i didn't really start testing it till the evening time and so i went outside actually during
blue hour which comes right after golden hour right before dusk and it's a very small window
of time at this time of year and so minute by minute everything was getting darker and so is a
great test to compare how much better in low light the iphone 12 pro is compared to my 10s max and
to my surprise it's not a world of difference in certain situations so taking a look at this clip
for example the 12 pro has a faster lens it also has a two-year newer sensor so it's going to be
much brighter and you can also tell that although the 12 pro still is noisy compared to something
like a real cinema camera it's definitely a less distracting noise and it's kind of a better noise
than what the 10s max is so so i am happy with the better noise and even some of these shots
got all the way up to 2100 iso but even at 1600 it held together okay but honestly i remember doing
this same exact shot at nearly the same time of day if not a little darker on the 20 ultra
galaxy 20 ultra i think that phone honestly did a little bit better let me know what you guys think
down in the comments now honestly the hardware obviously gets better every year but one issue
that a lot of people are talking about that is very noticeable that is borderline kind of
a killer for the overall vibe of this camera is the fact that they still have not gotten rid of
the terrible lens flares these almost look like those dots that you know a bunch of like ghost
hunters will say are those like glowing orb things and if you have any sort of light source that is
coming through that lens it is going to reflect this really ugly dot all over the screen and if
you're in a city at night taking video you're just gonna have like a million dots everywhere every
time a car moves every time you move past street light honestly i'll say that is the biggest con
to the hardware of this phone as with every phone that exists nowadays uh all three cameras that are
on this phone are completely different sensors and have completely different capabilities since again
we're talking about low light situations right here the ultra wide lens is basically unusable
i wouldn't recommend using it in extreme low light situations at all it's significantly
darker than anything else the main sensor is definitely going to be the best one and the
telephoto honestly did pretty well i think that one would be a perfectly fine complementary lens
what neat little tidbit though i will say is i did notice that as i'm recording video you can
actually switch between any of the lenses just by tapping them but on my 10s max you can zoom in but
it's not actually changing the camera sensors or lenses you're basically just digitally cropping
at that point so before you start recording you have to pick which lens you want to start with
and so it is kind of cool that you can on the same video clip use all three lenses on the 12
pro i'm sure that was there on the 11 pro but you can tell me down in the comments many hours later
all right so i literally just got back inside did a bunch of shooting today playing around with the
12 pro and by the way before we get into the daylight exterior footage i gotta say i thought
i'd use this case a lot more but as you see in the b-roll i took it off for most of the shots because
like most of their silicone whatever cases it collects dust and everything
in your pockets like crazy so not a big fan of these cases and also like a lot of people
are reporting the stainless steel for the 12 pro collects not only fingerprints but grime
like crazy so like fingerprints you know on the screen you can just take your shirt and wipe
off and stainless steel like you're gonna need something special to clean that now last night
when i was testing low light footage filmic pro was there to save the day but to be honest most of
today i actually stopped using film link pro after a while she really started to like the look of the
dolby vision footage that was coming out of the stock camera app and i also wanted to use that
more because i wanted to show you guys what the footage looked like you know they talked about
this in the keynote others have talked about it but as soon as you take it away from a dolby
vision screen aka my computer and my monitors it looks very different it looks under saturated
and it doesn't look anything like what you shot and when you play back on the phone itself if
you're like most people which again they talked about in the keynote who take videos on their
phone and just look at them on their phone again then you're gonna be just fine and it's gonna
look exactly the way you shot it in a lot of these interiors the hdr really i was impressed
with like this shot of the room here you can see that the outside is still properly exposed again
it wasn't overcast day it wasn't a dark overcast day like it's storming out but it definitely
wasn't super bright i have a feeling that it would be blown out if it was but it definitely
still has a nice natural hdr look it's not looking too hyper realistic like i've seen
some phones try and do and actually samsung phones tend to do that quite a bit where they really
over saturate and really hyper realistic which again a lot of people like and that's totally
fine but iphones have always had a very natural look and this kind of sticks to that natural
tradition while also keeping more in proper exposure but you can see some of the noise
levels getting a little high on the shadow side here like the shot of the blinds however going
through and color correcting adding some slight noise reduction in davinci resolve clean it up
actually pretty nicely and then all the exteriors everything was really sharp relatively no noise it
still has a digital look so i'd recommend even softening it up a little bit but there is no
log profile in the stock camera app so when you look at the scopes here everything is going to
be top to bottom stretch as much as possible so to get that cinematic look you actually want to
kind of bring down the highlights and bring up the shadows a little bit because movies actually sit
kind of more in the middle the commercial look is more contrasty and punchy and it really stretches
the top and bottom of the waveforms but for a you know softer cliche cinematic look you want to kind
of squeeze it a little bit more and then add some contrast and mess with the mid-tones to get the
proper curves and contrast that you're looking for and i was pleasantly surprised that you could push
the image quite a bit i was able to add some red 709 luts some very base uh like a base cinematic
lut and then make a bunch of corrections again as i said before you are working on compressed
footage so it is not raw videos so you have to be careful you have to finesse it phone footage you
just can't manipulate it as much so you have to be careful or else you're going to start breaking
the image and you'll see different splotches kind of like i'll show you an example here
where this is what it looks like when you push a grade too far and the image just can't handle it
but i could definitely get a sense that the 10-bit color um was allowing me to push the image further
than i've ever pushed phone footage before and so you may be asking michael all you're talking about
is how great this footage looks you just said it was the best phone footage you've ever seen
so why are you disappointed i'm disappointed because apple put so much amazing resources time
and energy and money into amazing technologies like partnering with dolby vision and putting
10-bit color and newer codecs working on better autofocus and just everything on the back end
but when you give someone a pro device you should give them control the fact that the pro
models still don't have any enhanced or advanced software features that are completely different
than what's on the basic iphone 12 or any other iphone to me is just ridiculous i never cared
about it too much until i experienced the galaxy note 20 ultra that pro mode completely changed
the game and yes there are third-party apps like filmic pro but at least as of right now filmic
pro doesn't have 10-bit color dolby vision and so you're not getting all the amazing new
technology that apple implemented into the camera and so if you use the stock camera app all i have
is to tap on the screen and slide up and down for you know exposure changes and after the fact i
can go in and adjust the highlights and shadows a bit but the fact that i can't control my iso
my white balance shutter speed and dare i say even have a log profile to shoot in directly in
the stock camera app i think it's time and they've spent the past couple of years really focusing on
still photography i'm really excited for apple pro raw or whatever the new codec is coming out at the
end of the year for photos if they can be the first company to create a raw mobile video codec
that will be a huge game changer and if anyone has the time money and resources to do it it's apple
and so while the camera hardware and most of the shots that you get out of the phone are amazing
i just wish that they allowed me to have the control that i want as a pro the iphone 12 pro
isn't really a pro device it's just another great iphone i'd love to hear what you guys think about
all this and my opinions let me know down in the comments below if you agree with me disagree with
me tell me why i'm open to learning to changing my mind and all that good stuff just realized i'm not
wearing my watch that's a fun tan line i'm really excited in a couple of weeks for the 12 pro max
to come out and to see that bigger sensor bigger pixels i think it's going to be an amazing phone
it's not going to have any different software features than any of the other iphones out
there and overall i think that's just kind of a really limiting experience and that makes me
really sad because this has the potential to be the best camera phone out there but the software
is just too limiting thanks so much for watching guys hope you have a fantastic rest of your day