filmmaking for a lot of people comes from a desire to tell stories
and while that's partially true for me i'm more have an obsession with light and colors
but the truth is most of us have amazing tools in our pockets
and that's why i really love developing this series where we do deep dives into
what these cameras are truly capable of in 2020 we saw a lot of awesome phones
but in this video is about what i believe to be the top two smartphone cameras of 2020 because
with both the iphone 12 pro max and the samsung galaxy note 20 ultra you can make amazing things
and speaking of amazing things huge thanks to our sponsor beastgrip if you want to learn more about
how to win one of their brand new anamorphic lenses we'll be featuring in this video keep
watching to learn more details with that our way let's dive right in i'm sure most of you know how
things work around here on this channel but just in case you're new this is not your average type
of phone comparison review quite frankly i don't care about 99 of what phones have to offer and so
sure while i think it's cool that the new iphone is squared edges and has a magnet on the back and
no i don't really care that the note 20 ultra has a high refresh screen or built-in pencil but if
you're interested in the camera and pushing it to the complete max and getting the most out of it
this is definitely the video for you all right so let's talk the stock camera apps first let's
go with the simple one iphone pretty much hasn't changed its software features for video in quite
a few years unless you count the ability to tap to change your resolution and frame rate that's a
pretty pro camera feature wouldn't you say oh and i guess you do have grid pro feature number two
and yeah the only way to change exposure of course uh everyone knows this is the good old tap and
hold to auto exposure auto lock it's a good thing we have third party apps we'll talk about later
moving on to the samsung galaxy note 20 ultras stock camera app here things get significantly
better now for the sake of this video when i say stock camera app everything we talk about
is going to be in pro mode since this video is about pushing these cameras and using them in
the most professional way possible and in here you get a bunch of settings yes you can change
the iso the shutter speed go to autofocus manual focus controls of course you can change your
resolution your aspect ratio your frame rates and even has a nice little histogram button which
i also appreciate if you go into the settings you can have some advanced features depending
on what resolution frame rate settings you're choosing so if you're willing to step back from ak
go all the way down to 4k then you can get hdr 10 which is going to be the nice 10-bit color
which is going to be a little bit closer to the dolby vision on the iphone so that's the
features of the stock apps but how does that translate into an actual final image because on
paper so far the note 20 ultra is definitely the superior more pro camera than the iphone is but oh
the apple debate of sneakiness is their ability to create something that is so simplified that
you as the end user don't have a lot of options yet it always gives you such a pleasing product
and that's exactly what i found using the 12 pro max i mean the adobe vision of course we've made
a bunch of videos on the past couple months it's fantastic the flexibility you have in post even
though you're not meant to edit dolby vision b on that is amazing and i've made an entire
video on color grading dolby vision if you want to check it out card above but also the dynamic range
on this phone is just absurd a lot of these scenarios especially when i was in the woods
it was a very bright sky with very shadowy woods and tree lines and i never really had to think
about it with the iphone we're going to talk more about these rigs in a couple minutes here
but anytime i had just the phone by itself through on the b script anamorphic they're on the depth of
field adapter with a cinema lens attached to it i never had to think about it too much it pretty
much just always came out nicely exposed and then the samsung when you get your settings right
this phone without a doubt can capture amazing quality video but that's kind of the key is
getting everything right and even if you get your settings right you still have to make compromises
a very shadow tree line where it's backlit by the sun and bright sky
pretty much gives you a silhouetted tree line with an exposed sky if you expose for just
the ground you're gonna blow out your highlights and the sky is going to be just bright white and
very much not look cinematic at all now the most frustrating and hardest part
about the note 20 ultra to me is the 8k sensor listen it's clearly a marketing not gimmick or
scheme like it technically is 8k and in my initial review i talk about how good it can look and that
is still true and if you notice any shots like this one where i shoot in 4k it's a little wider
but then if i go to 8k it has a heavy crop to it in my head it should be reversed where 8k should
be wider and then 4k is cropped in moving on now let's talk about that 8k in comparison to 4k
should you shoot on ak in comparison to doing the 4k hdr 10 mode again i kind of agree with all the
other um online review sites saying no because here's the thing is these cameras are shooting at
relatively low bit rates so if you were to zoom in four or six times you technically may get a
little bit more sharpness in there but again also these phones are doing post processing
their own sharpening their own denoising and so to me it doesn't look that much better
i'd rather have the better color bit depth because there's a way bigger difference that
you'll notice between shooting an 8-bit color and 10-bit and having that flexibility in post
to color grade a little bit more and get more of a stylized look without breaking the image alright
so let's talk low light see both the iphone 12 pro max and the note 20 ultra have larger than average
phone sensors and people automatically equate to bigger sensors being better in low light which
generally is true however remember before how i was talking about 108 megapixels that means you
have 108 million pixels packed into the relatively same size amount of surface area as the sensor on
the iphone which has 12 million pixels when you have less pixels on a surface area that means each
pixel photo site is bigger it means that each photo site can capture more light more color
data faster without needing as much light and so what you can see is that the iphone holds up in
low light pretty decently i think it definitely fares better than on the samsung they almost try
to hide the amount of noise it would have by doing their own denoising and then actually upping the
contrast making it a punchier image which makes the blacks like really crushed blacks and just
for a fun little experiment here but i'm going to turn off whatever color grid i have turned on
hello this is the raw footage coming from my pocket 6k now just for comparison i'm at 400 iso
you shouldn't really see any noise now if i grab the note 20 ultra 4k mode so it's a little wider
i'm going to go to 400 iso and 150th over shutter speed so that way i can match the proper settings
hello note 20 ultra this is how that's looking how about the shadows look down there a little bit
okay so see it's not super noisy because it's very punchy it's very high contrast all right let me do
the same thing with my iphone doing the same thing hopefully the autofocus gets me i can see i'm in
composition at least let's look down shadows over there boom
hello iphone let's see if the skin tones are any better there's literally no debating which one
looks better i will say when i pan away that it does like the crunchy skin thing as well because
it's exposing for the shadows but when you compose for yourself it understands that that's skin tone
so it's not over but from what we've seen so far the dolby vision on the new iphone is just
really impressive another thing that's really impressive is the new sensor shift stabilization
on the iphone when i went to grab these wood shots i actually brought my osmo mobile
um but apparently i forgot to charge the battery so i had to film everything handheld and as you
can see from this comparison clip here i think it's safe to say that the iphone is definitely
more stable than the samsung's it's not bad but it's definitely better alright so now i think it's
time to step things up a notch and start rigging these things to be a little bit more ready for
a more film set all right guys so as i mentioned beats grip is the sponsor of today's video a huge
shout out to them and they sent out a whole bunch of products that i've been using throughout this
video so if you're an iphone user can't recommend enough the beast cage here this thing is 100
solid metal there are some pretty good cases and cages out there for phones but none i have
ever used have felt like this and everything's completely customizable so currently you were
looking at the iphone 11 pro model they have them all the way back to the iphone 7 and se series
and the iphone 12 line is coming by the end of next month now let's say you're not an iphone user
they still got you covered with their beast grip pro now this is made out of a very strong plastic
and this thing is crazy customizable again this can fit pretty much any phone out there they've
got their pro series nd filter line all the way from nd4 to nd64 and even without the lenses you
can pick up the 37 to 58 millimeter filter mount that way you can just put on a nd without needing
a lens so this little guy is awesome this is their wide angle lens which the reason you may want to
pick this up is if you're like me and you have something like the 12 pro max you could still
use your main sensor throw this guy on and this is actually designed and manufactured by kenko
tokina which makes some incredible lenses as well of course no matter what lens you're using you
want a really good piece of software to go along with good hardware and so you should check out the
beast cam app available for iphone only in here you'll be able to de-squeeze your anamorphic lens
turn on the depth of field to flip back the proper rotation of the image and also you know one of my
favorite talking points is bitrate for video and you can go all the way up to beast mode which
is going to give you 160 megabits per second and lastly the star of today's show this is the brand
new 1.55 x anamorphic lens it's finally available now and you can pick it up in the affiliate link
down in the description below a couple notable things about it is like i said before it has
filter rings on it this is going to give you a more subtle anamorphic look but still have
a lot of the characteristics that genuine cinema anamorphic lenses will give you on a real camera
now beastgrip actually has decided to give away one of these lenses and either beastgrip pro or
beastcage depending on whichever phone you have and want to use with it alright so here's how you
enter to win the anamorphic lens it's real simple make sure that you are subscribed to my channel as
well as bscript tv and leave a comment down below telling us why you'd want this lens and what sort
of project you would be excited to use it on in one week from this video going live we will pick
a winner to win that awesome combo so good luck to everyone thanks again to b script for sponsoring
this video let's get back to the comparison now quick disclaimer before we go forward with
these test results is while beastgrip loved my enthusiasm for experimentation they did want me to
mention that the 12 pro max and the note 20 ultra are two phones that have not been specifically
calibrated for these existing products that i'm testing out here today so if you have one of
these phones or getting one of these phones the 12 specific cases are coming out next month or
you can take a look at my hacks and see what the final results look like and form your own opinion
as to how it looks alright so first up let's talk about this anamorphic lens this anamorphic lens
in my testing has a very subtle flare you really have to get the right lighting source in order
to get the really like fully across the screen flare most of the time you'll get a very nice
kind of light elation or just a little streak or hint of that blue purple light
all anamorphic lenses have a huge distortion and this one being a 1.55 x is a very wide screen
view this is a 2.76 aspect ratio most of the time when you see people do widescreen here on youtube
it's like two three nine and this is 2.76 this is ultra panavision and so on the edges you are
going to see that kind of barrel distortion that is supposed to be there it is not supposed to be
straight lines one last thing about the anamorphic lens is b-script definitely recommends turning the
stabilization off if you're doing a very slow moving or stationary you can get away from with
some stabilization turned on but if you do it too much you'll definitely get some of that warpy feel
so it is recommended to turn that off now obviously to utilize the anamorphic while shooting
you're gonna need something to de-squeeze the image because anamorphic images automatically
are squeezed i highly recommend downloading the beastcam app the colors and the sharpness that you
get from this app i think look really good and now on to our final experiment the dof adapter now if
you guys saw my hello using the iphone 12 or max as a cinema camera video you know that i used the
dof adapter and things came out very soft i could not get it to focus for whatever reason now this
beautiful commenter right here who actually has the dof adapter and the 12 pro max um basically
did his own experimenting and found this awesome little macro lens um kit that you can get for like
10 or 15 bucks on amazon so now that we have the little hack put together time to see if it
actually gives good results but again in terms of the actual phones i was finding the same problems
uh with the note 20 ultra that i was before where if i wanted to expose for the buildings and the
shadowed areas i'd have to choose that which would then blow out the sky or expose for the
sky and basically get really dark shadowed areas or possibly even silhouetted but when i just threw
my iphone on this rig everything just was exposed properly it looked great straight up looks like it
came from a mirrorless or dslr camera i am super impressed with this little 10 hack that allows
the 12 pro max will work by the way if you have any other iphone besides the 12 pro max the 12 pro
12 mini 11 all the way down to whatever you don't need this focus adapter for it to work the dof
adapter just works out of the box great to me this is game changer like when i make these videos
using x phone like a cinema camera the thing that usually is missing is real depth of field
alrighty final thoughts like it's been a couple months since i had the note 20
ultra in hand but i remember when i made the video on it that i was constantly impressed and granted
i was comparing it to my 10s max at the time and i hadn't even tried like the sony xperia 2
or google pixel phones and it still is a really good camera don't get me wrong i love the amount
of options you have in shooting modes but there's no clear winner as like this is what you should be
shooting in because they boast about 8k video but then you're stuck with 8-bit color not to mention
a major crop in on your image and so 4k hdr 10 seems like the way to go but then it's like i
want ak and i don't know it's like they added all the right features and settings they just didn't
make the combinations right and to me that just says hey we wanted to be able to put ak hdr10 and
whatever other features on a poster board because this phone has all of them meanwhile the iphone
which frustrates the heck out of me for its lack of pro software features that allow me to change
things without using a third-party app like beast cam it's one of those things where i hate to throw
out the steve jobs line don't crucify me in the comments but it just works any rig that i attach
it to or stand alone by itself gorgeous but hey this channel is a democracy what do you guys think
about these two phones which one do you think won in my tests have you used them which one do you
prefer in your daily use and i'm just curious out of all the beast grip products i showed off which
one is your favorite would you rather have the dof adapter would you have rather have the anamorphic
lens remember you have one week to enter the giveaway for the anamorphic lens and don't forget
to comment down below why you think you should win and what you would use the anamorphic lens for if
this video brought you any value don't forget to click that little thumbs up button huge thanks
again to b script for sponsoring this video and just being an awesome partner in all of this and
helping me experiment and really try to push these videos and elevate them so that i can push
mobile filmmaking further thanks so much for watching guys and i'll see you in the next video
you