[Applause]
[Music]
hey what's up mkhd here all right so
we're back at it again those of you who
are new here since the last one this is
a bit of a social experiment so if i
were to ask you which camera is better
the iphone 13 pro
or the asus zenfone 8.
i think i have a hunch as to which one
would probably win we all know what
smartphone cameras we think we like and
don't like but that's heavily influenced
by confirmation bias so if i show you a
photo that you know is an iphone versus
some other random phone you don't like
as much then your eye will automatically
be drawn to every little thing that's
better about just the iphone photo but
what if we do a comparison where we
remove the labels and you don't know
which one is the iphone and which one is
the alternate or better yet bring in 16
phones so you don't know what any of
them are any of them could be your
favorite phone any of them could be
something you thought you loved or you
thought you hated you put them in a
bracket style format blind voting winner
moves on to the next round and we narrow
it all the way down to the people's
choice best camera this is the blind
smartphone camera test 2021 so that's
exactly what we just did over on
instagram for the past week brought
together 16 phones that all came out in
the last year and set them up seated
them in a bracket style you can find the
behind the scenes of us setting it all
up on the studio channel if you're not
already subscribed over there by the way
you're really missing out what are you
doing that's all the behind the scenes
and all the fun projects you could ever
wish for and more but then we took all
the photos ran the side by sides and got
our winners and the winner was
well i'll get to that in a second but
how did we get there well here's the
bracket of all the letters that we
started with and here's what every
single one of those smartphones was at
the beginning now you might have already
voted over on instagram either way i
saved that story on my profile so if you
go over there you can see the blind
smartphone camera test and you can see
each one and what you voted for but
let's go over how each one of those
rounds actually went so the first round
was a relatively simple picture of me in
the corner of the room but there's
actually a lot to the frame as you can
imagine so there's a subject in the
middle but also the window behind me was
a huge indicator of dynamic range
there's a blue mat with a painted
android a gold helmet a red subscribe
pillow lots of details to go from here
so in the first round the samsung galaxy
s21 ultra took down its little ultra
brother the axon 30 ultra then the
battle of the gaming phones the rog
phone 5 dominated the legion gaming
phone the sony xperia pro i somewhat
surprisingly defeated the oppo find x3
pro
and the oneplus 9 pro takes out the
flagship mi 11 ultra then the pixel 5a
took out the pixel 6 pro in the pixel on
pixel crime then iphone gets its first
ever win in the history of this test for
four years with a first round win over
the moto edge then the zenfone 8 crushed
the poco x3 gt
and the real me gt squeaks out a win
over the surface duo 2. so
that is a lot and we definitely had some
interesting match-ups set up in the
first round just to kind of see how they
would go some of these results did not
surprise me at all like the galaxy s21
ultra
i think everything about that photo was
better than the zte it was brighter it
was crisper it had better dynamic range
everything about it not surprised at one
but some of them were not as clear-cut
like for the gaming phone battle for
example you know the rog phone i think
it took a better photo than the legion
phone especially with dynamic range you
can see that in the background in the
window behind me but
it did have some serious over hdre
looking issues that the legion didn't
have especially with this sort of halo
effect around my face and in the battle
of the pixels pixel 6 versus pixel 5a
actually expected the slightly brighter
pixel 6 photo to win given all of the
things basically equal and also the
slightly blurrier background versus the
subject thanks to the bigger sensor but
the pixel 5a with the slightly more
balanced photo actually did get the win
also just a small note you can see me
smirking slightly in this one as the
photo gets taken with the surface 202.
anyway
second round the rog phone pulls off and
upset and beats the galaxy s21 ultra the
oneplus 9 pro pretty soundly beat the
sony xperia pro i
the pixel 5a ends the iphone's run by
beating the 13 pro and the real me gt i
think pulls off the biggest surprise
here by beating a perennial contender in
the zenfone 8. and really almost all of
these were closer battles here than the
first round mainly because this photo
just doesn't have that much to it right
it's flatter has less depth almost no
dynamic range challenge other than maybe
the candle and so this one just came
down to
exposure
and color i noticed the warmer photos
would make the candle and the cookie
appear a bit more saturated but honestly
in this round it was pretty simple
basically what we learned the first time
did win the test again in all cases the
brighter photo won
so then in the semi-finals we had
oneplus 9 pro squeak out of victory over
the rog phone 5
and then the google pixel 5a handily
beat the real me gt and this was a
really interesting one so you might have
already known or noticed this but reds
are notoriously the hardest color for
these digital sensors to reproduce
well for a variety of reasons but that
makes a lot of differences in things
like skin tones and red threads and
accents like this but also when the
whole photo is on a red pool table and
so this was a case where how well you
handled reds really mattered and
actually in both cases the brighter
photo actually
lost because they were too bright they
overexposed and so the photos that were
a little more neutral that had more
reasonable looking reds ended up winning
so then the finals came down to the
oneplus 9 pro
and the pixel 5a raise your hand if
that's what you had written down at the
beginning as what your last two standing
would be doubt it so this one had
several skin tones a sky behind some
subjects in front of a distant
background and some album art vibes for
sure and the winner of the blind
smartphone camera test in 2021
is
j
the 399 google pixel 5a
it definitely won this last photo from
having more contrast and bringing in
more color from the sky
i don't actually think there's a clear
answer to which photo is better per se
like the oneplus saturated skin tones
more and had much more deep shadows
while the pixel was pretty crunchy but
didn't really let any shadows get
totally dark and it was much more hdr-y
looking especially with the faces but at
the end of the day 75 of you picked the
pixel as your champion the people's
choice blind camera test winner so
what did we learn from this
well first of all we've done this test
four years in a row now running and it's
been wild every time this might be the
last time we do it or maybe we might
shake it up and do it in a different
format next time we'll see but with
these tests we've picked up a couple
things and so have some of the
smartphone companies too number one
being that all other things held equal
in a side-by-side test people typically
pick the brighter photo as the winner
now that doesn't mean it's necessarily
the better photo that just you know just
reflection of the format of the test
which is when you put two images side by
side typically people are just drawn
almost always to the brighter one then
number two
sharpness so while i love a crispy photo
uh it isn't necessarily ever a factor in
determining which one of these photos
wins and most of that is because we do
this test on social media where
compression
kind of erases any advantage you might
have in that sharpness department now a
lot of people always comment every year
oh why don't you put these like on
google drive somewhere so we can
download them and zoom in and pixel peep
but that's kind of not the point the
point is it's just a gut reaction of
seeing a photo someone posted online
somewhere on social media which is where
you typically see them so that's where
we posted it and then my latest theory
the one i think is most interesting
number three
is that it turns out most people just
want the most finished photo
out of their smartphone cameras so
there's a lot of data out there about
how people actually shoot photos on
their smartphones and it turns out
most of the time
most people just take the camera out of
their pocket open the camera app hit the
shutter button they don't even tap to
focus and then that image is the one
that they're done with they're going to
share it they're going to put it online
they're going to text it to their
friends
that unedited photo
done but that being said i always look
for patterns in these sort of things
anytime there's numbers and to me the
most interesting thing about this year's
test
was that i looked at prices of the
phones that we used and it turns out the
price of the phone had almost nothing to
do with whether or not you guys voted
for it as the better or worse camera so
in the first round the more expensive
phone one five
but lost three
then in the second round the more
expensive phone won zero times and lost
all four then in the semis it was an
even split one one and lost one and in
the finals yes the cheaper phone did
actually win it all this is one of the
hardest videos to make every year
consistently it's obviously the seating
and the planning and shooting all the
photos and getting it exactly right and
then posting them editing tallying all
the three million plus votes organizing
everything into our thoughts and really
finding out what we've learned each year
but it's always a lot of fun fun fact
i wanted to include twitter again in the
voting alongside instagram but this time
the
backend beta feature that was enabled on
my account for those previous years
thanks twitter was actually deleted it
doesn't even exist anymore it was
allowing me to post images and polls in
a single tweet so i just did everything
on instagram this year but at the end of
the day my question to you is which one
would you now pick as your best
smartphone camera now that you've seen
all the results and all the photos from
everyone if you're curious on how we
make these you might want to check out
the studio channel but also you'll
probably be interested in my skillshare
class on how to make mkbhd videos
whether it's the explainers or the
product reviews or the impressions all
of that in one place so skillshare is an
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with thousands of inspiring classes to
learn something you don't already know
things like photography or video editing
or motion graphics one of my favorite
things ever is the senior motion
graphics designer from youtube channel
coursegazart made a skillshare class on
motion graphics i took a motion graphics
class in college
it wasn't nearly as good as this one so
i was pumped to go through that and i
highly recommend it as well and now i
watch the in a nutshell videos with yet
another newfound level of respect for
the incredible videos this team makes
and skillshare is curated specifically
for learning so there's no ads and
they're always launching new premium
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follow your creativity wherever it takes
you so if you want to check this stuff
out definitely head to the link below
and the first thousand of you that do
that use my code will get one free month
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which is absolutely worth it
so i'll see you guys over there
thanks for watching
catch you later
peace
[Music]
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