So I was curious, and I think a lot of people are curious
what's the dynamic range of an iPhone?
Alright.
So results, this is Imatest.
So what we did is we, is we
we captured some footage of the chart and then
we take that footage and we analyze it using
this like math labs based program that compares
how many stops the camera can see.
And by stops we mean increasing intensities of
light against how noisy that gets because it is
a balancing game between how noisy your image
is and how much you can see.
And so if you've never seen a, a dynamic range
analysis before this top number slope-based DR
that's how many stops total. Base ISO on this
camera is ISO 55.
At least that's what the blackmagic app is reporting.
That's, that's the lowest, I don't know
we couldn't figure out what like the base ISO is
in terms of what Apple assumes has the most dynamic range.
But we might have found something.
Yeah, we might have found something.
Yeah. The lowest you can set the ISO two
in the blackmagic app is 55.
And so if we look here, total stops 12.2.
Now it gets interesting as we go down
these are different levels of noise
noise tolerance for you.
So say you, you were
you were willing to accept a lot of noise
then that would be the low score here.
And if you're willing to accept like no noise
then this high score of 0.1
that's so 10.4 that means 10.4 stops have like no noise.
Everything else gets a 12.2.
Medium is usually what we aim for
which is a signal to noise ratio of two.
If you get a good score there, that's pretty good.
This is the number that when we compare cameras
we normally compare this and maybe the top number to
just gauge how many stops a sensor has.
Now what's weird about this is
that the top four numbers are all 12.2.
And I've seen this in the past.
And usually what it means is, is
that the image is being sort of shifted
down in a sense to bury the noise between the
below the noise floor.
But you're also sort of putting a soft cap
on how many stops you can see total because it's
it's sort of doing this whole shift thing.
And this is probably by design thinking
that if people are shooting in this range of ISOs
we're gonna get rid of the noise for them
and we'll still give them a reasonable amount of dynamic range.
But they're not gonna get the whole thing.
They don't know what to do with it the first place.
That's probably what Apple's saying, right?
And this, this pattern carried on even as we move up.
So this is ISO 100 now same thing.
12.2. 12.2, 12.2 all the way down.
And ISO 200 pretty similar result.
This could be that margin of error thing where
we're trying to get the shutter speed just right.
Yeah. But again you're getting all twelves here
and then a 10, a low 10
on the high and 400 pretty much the same
as we moved from somewhere just before 400 up to 800.
We did notice though that the clipping point increased.
Yeah. And what happens is with, with log profiles
this is all in log by the way.
Yes. We, we shot, yeah in, what do they call it?
Apple log or something?
Apple log, yeah.
So we shot an apple log. Log profiles have clipping points
and usually they'll tell you
in their white papers what they are.
Maybe you're shooting S-Log3
and it's like 94% or something.
What that means is that you're not getting all the way
to a hundred at 94 is the clipping point.
Anything above 94 is just saturated pure white and
and that's the curve.
And then when you work it into Rec.709
then you fill your zero to 100
and you have your actual blacks and whites and stuff.
The clipping point changed as we increased iso
which does help to support
that those lower ISOs are actually below the native.
Yeah. Because on a lot of cameras
say your ISO 800 is native
let's say you turn it down below 800, you, you
do that thing where you push everything down, press it down
clip down point goes down, shadows get cleaner, whatever.
Something similar is noticing here.
'cause as we go to ISO 800
now all of a sudden both medium high and high are different.
The angle and where the, it's
it's not that different from 400 but it's slight.
It's starting to change.
And then we found
that the biggest jump where it was like, okay
now we're doing something different was around 1100
and you can just like look at the graph
It's totally different.
It's
And then now the line's over here and all these stops
are now being like measured and everything's completely
different. The slope based air jumps up to 13.6.
This is a theory because there's so much going on
with the phone pipeline that's hard to control.
What we think happened because we used false color
and we used zebras and we were able to measure
the clipping point that changed with the false color.
For instance, it was yellow was everything was clipped
and yellow.
But the legend for false color showed that it went to red.
It went to like up to 95% red.
Nothing was red.
When we got to 1100, then the brightest stops flicked
onto red making me think that we now release the soft cap.
Exactly. You know, now we're getting all the stops.
But you're gonna get noise and stuff now.
Right. And that kicked in again, we were using a sliding
Stick. And if you think about it
like even if we weren't shooting log, it kind of makes sense
if you were developing this camera for people
if they need to see everything, it's like okay
they've hit a point where, you know, we can't just
keep trying to soften this out for clean cleanliness.
Yeah, let's just give them everything.
'cause clearly they're shooting something
they wanna see it all.
So if it's noisy
so what they wanna get all that information right?
Yeah.
Yeah. Now if it was a regular like mirrorless camera
this would be a flat stop and we would say
oh there's your native iso, it's at whatever.
Here because we were working with that jog wheel
we don't know exactly the number, but it was around 1100.
Yeah. That it kind of clicked in and we can now
see a more normal result of what I would, what I would
this is what it would normally look like for me
if I was testing a a different, like a mirrorless camera.
Yeah. We see a total 13.6, we're still getting 13.6
on the low, which tells me that maybe there's still
a little bit more clipping point ceiling.
We can lift up 13.1 in the medium.
So now we're getting noisier, noisier
noisier as we go down.
And the medium high is still 12.2
which makes me think that might have been apple's target.
Yeah. Was this amount of noise
this particular noise ratio of the medium high.
They're like, let's just make it where if they're shooting
below this, we'll just give 'em medium high
the 12.2 we'll shut the rest of it down.
And that's that.
If you're willing to shoot at higher ISOs and we'll talk
about reasons to do that, then you can get theoretically
up to another stop and a half.
But you'll have to, you know
manage noise and know how to work with that.
And then we found another little bit of a jump around.
We have as 1480 again plus or minus.
And this one was just
that the red went a little bit darker red.
Yeah. And the zebras tolerated
from like 91, 92 up to closer to 95.
Yeah. Anything beyond this
we didn't really notice a difference.
I think we put it up to 3000, 4,000.
Nothing else really changed.
So this is around, it would make me feel like if there was
like a, a native iso, it might be like a 1250 or something
like that, you know.
Where you're gonna get the most dynamic--
you're gonna get all the stops.
Yeah. And based on this being 13.8, it makes me feel
like it's a 14 stop sensor.
Yeah. And to get all 14 stops, you gotta be around that.
I guess the closest full stop or closest stop would
be at like a 1250 or something.
You gotta be around that 1250 zone.
And
For the audience, that's a pretty good number.
Yeah.
Like 14 stops is is I would say, I don't know, high end 70%
of mirrorless cameras.
Some do 15, some do 13, but 14 stops-- a lot of Sony like
'cause Sony also makes sensors for other cameras.
I'm, I'm also
fairly convinced it's a Sony sensor in the iPhone
IMX whatever, whatever they call a lot
of those are 14 stop sensors, right?
And then the medium score here of 13.3, we can't say
for sure the noise reduction, like what exactly is going on.
You always have to, even when we do Sony mirrorless cameras
they have noise reduction.
You don't control it, you can't turn it off and measure it
on and measure it.
There's noise reduction going on.
These numbers are always inflated by noise reduction.
You basically have to have a cinema camera or
like a LUMIX camera where you can turn off the noise
reduction to see what is my base dynamic range
with nothing happening.
Yeah. So reduce these by an appropriate amount based
on noise reduction, but it's good scores.
That's a good score.
Yeah. The the clean, clean, clean number is above 10.
Which I've seen these go down to 7, 8, 9.
That's a good number.
Medium high.
Still sticking around there.
The 12.2, 12.3. 13.3.
If I was getting that, if I was getting that
with low noise reduction on a mirrorless camera
I'd be singing its praises.
Absolutely.
And that's like an advertised, you know,
blackmagic pocket 6K pro dynamic range.
Yeah. They'd be
Yeah. They'd be like, look at us go.
Yeah.
So yeah, we don't know exactly what's going on
but these are good scores and I feel confident enough
in this data being meaningful despite the caveats
in measuring it.
Yeah. It, it just suggests that this is, if you're trying to
shoot a movie with this or whatever, this is probably
what you wanna be looking.
If you wanna unlock all your dynamic range
and you're familiar with noise, you want, you're willing to
work with and stuff.
Yeah. You want to aim 11, 12, 1300 ISO and you're gonna get
you're gonna get everything.
So let's take a second and talk about
Shooting high iso.
Yeah. Shooting high iso.
'cause I do think that everybody starts out, when
they start to learn stuff about cameras, they learn well
when it's bright out you turn your ISO down
'cause you wanna don't clip your highlights.
Yeah. You gotta turn down your ISO and when it's dark you
gotta jack that ISO up so you can see in the dark
people always say that.
See in the dark right.
You don't wanna see in the dark.
It's A low light beast.
Yeah. You need lights.
That's what you need.
If you're shooting a movie, you need lights.
You know I'm spitting, I'm so upset.
I'm spitting.
Environments are about noise just as much
as the camera if not more.
Yeah. So say you're
in a very bright environment, daylight, midday
everything in that scene is gonna be above the noise floor.
Yeah. So noise isn't gonna be an issue.
So then you might as well shoot
at a higher ISO capture all the dynamic range
like you said, the sky behind the talent or whatever.
And then you wanna sort of attenuate the amount
of light that's hitting your sensor by another means
which would normally be ND and iris.
Yeah. Now you said you cannot control the aperture.
No It's fixed.
1.8 depending on the lens, either are 2.4
Or should we mention which one we used?
Like Yeah. So we shot everything on the 1x
which is the 48 megapixel main sensor.
That's
Supposed to be the best one.
It's the best one that's on the, on the phone.
Yeah.
But in that case it's a f/1.8, fixed 1.8
Always.
Yeah. With this it's gonna be either ND or shutter speed, right?
Now shutter speed--
If you jack up the shutter speed to darken the image
you're gonna have to again deal with motion blur.
But now in the other direction where you're not
gonna have any trails
and that's gonna be kind of sharp and frenetic, robotic and yeah
exactly. So ND.
ND is the answer.
Historically, I've never
I've never put an ND on a phone so take it away.
Yeah.
No. There's cases, there's, there's clips
that you can buy on Amazon and stuff.
I think Moment makes a bunch
of stuff that you can just sort of screw on a
a variable ND onto your phone.
And that's how you would control that exposure.
Yeah. To compensate a high ISO in a brightly lit environment.
Right.
So you'd put it on
you say you'd put it on your fixed 1250 ISO or whatever.
Like this is my most stops according
to Gerald and Patrick's nonsense.
Yeah. You're like, I wanna hit that 1250 ISO Imma dial that in.
Yeah.
And now I'm using ND to make the shot look the exposure.
I want it to look and now I'm getting all my dynamic range.
Totally. Now when the opposite is happening
and you have some experience doing this recently
if you're shooting in a, in a gloomier moodier
now you've got stuff that's below the noise floor.
Ideally you want to turn your lights on, you know
and like that's that's the answer there.
Yeah. And, and it doesn't mean that you're losing the mood.
Think of it this way.
A contrast ratio can exist regardless
of whether everything is bright or not.
If one side of my face is X-brightness
and their side of my face is 1/2 X-brightness
I can make this twice as bright.
This is, and this twice as bright
and they'll still be the same ratio.
And then in post you just make it as moody as you want.
Bring it down after.
Yeah. So more lights means above the noise or you open
up your iris and you let more light in.
Again, that's not an option.
No. Or you slow your shutter speed, you can get motion blur.
Right. So, so
Yeah. And low light, the best, the best thing you
can do is get that ISO low.
Right? Yeah.
So get as low as you possibly can for that noise floor to
be clean.
And I've noticed even
if you're not using the blackmagic app, you
Got a grip on that Titanium.
(laughs)
Slippery tit, a slippery titanium.
I've noticed even if you don't want to use a third party app
and if you're just shooting with the iOS app
they give you an EV comp so you get plus two or minus two.
And if you're in low light
even in an environment like this, I'd probably get it
down to like minus 1.7 if not pushing minus two.
'cause it forces the phone to drop that ISO
and you just get a much cleaner image
if you gotta bring it up a little bit.
It's a much cleaner image to work with.
And then if you can lock it off at that
then you could be looking at that
and then you could start cooking lights on a hundred and
and like get it the way you want.
Knowing I've got, I've got my noise down, let's
let's get some lights moving around and make it work.
So that's just, that's just, that works for all
that's not just phone advice.
That's all cameras.
Yeah. Photographers that shoot raw stills
knew this stuff years ago, you know
the first ones to, to try to, camera myths, you know
but Filmmaker IQ made a great video on this too
if you wanna know more where it's just basically like, look
sometimes you gotta jack that ISO up even when
you're shooting in a bright environment to get
more stops in your highlights or whatever.
Right? Totally.
And it seems like, again, all the caveats we mentioned
but around 1100 to 1400 is where you're gonna unlock
that 14 stops of the sensor and the score is pretty good
Patrick. It's good.
It's pretty good.
(laughing) it went from Olivia Rodrigo music video to
to eventually Henry Ford inventing the Terminator.
Yeah. And that's how you end a video.
That's how you end it. Done. Good.