Speaker 1: The iPhone I see is Apple's newest iPhone, but how do its cameras compare against the flagship iPhone 13 pro let's find out.
Speaker 1: Okay. I know exactly what you're thinking. This is not a fair comparison, and it's not supposed to be, it's like comparing a fear to a Ferrari, but really wanted to find out the difference of what five to $600 actually makes when it comes to the cameras. And just like all my other comparisons, pretty [00:00:30] much everything you see in this video has been shot on one of these two phones, no edits straight from the camera. So let's see the photos like all comparisons, personal pre plays, a big part in all this and the screen you're viewing on really does make a difference. Both of the phones are running the latest version of iOS 15.4. So let's see the photos
Speaker 1: Starting off with the photos from the main rear camera. And I'm gonna be brutally honest with you for a lot of the [00:01:00] photos taken in bright eye outdoor light. I really couldn't tell much difference between the two at all. Especially when looking at a reduced magnification like this, I'm genuinely surprised at how close they are, even when pushing in a little bit to look at some of the details like here on the windmill, you can make out the tiles well on both and here on the sign. It's also sharp on both of the while. It's not best practice to shoot straight into the sun. I did wanna see how each camera coped with lens flare and in this comparison, it's [00:01:30] pretty close. However, the 13 pro does have a larger image sensor than the se on its main wide camera, which means that you can get more shallow depth of field.
Speaker 1: Both phones have smart HDR and in shots it appears the 13 pro does do a little bit better at balancing the shadow and highlight detail than the se. But again, the difference really isn't as dramatic as the price difference would lead you to believe. Now's a good time to mention both the phones use photographic styles. This is basically applying a preset [00:02:00] to your images before you take them. And you can see the effect on screen important to note, this is not a filter because it's actually identifying and applying local edits. So it knows things like grass should have the effect applied, but if it sees a face in the photo, it would make sure that skin tones stay accurate. All the photos I'm using in this comparison are on the standard photographic style and that's turned on by default. I find the phones are really very similar in how they render colors on this standard profile. Although in some situations [00:02:30] I did find the se liked to add a touch, more saturation, to images like this shot of the flowers. And of course the 13 pro lets you shoot in Apple's pro roll format for the most flexibility and latitude for editing your images. After been taken
Speaker 1: Both the 13 pro and se half portrait mode built in, but they work in slightly different ways. The 13 pro lets you use either the wide or the three times telephoto camera to frame your portraits. While the se [00:03:00] obviously only has that one perspective from the wide lens edge detection is just not as strong on the se, as you can see in this photo of a bra, the detail on her hijab gets cut out a little bit while the same photo on the 13 pro does a much better job detecting where the edge actually is. The same goes on this photo. You can see the se just doesn't get the edge right at all, and completely loses clear sunglasses. Overall, the portrait photos from the 13 pro are sharper than those from the se, especially when you look at a close magnification, [00:03:30] you can adjust the F stop on both phones either before or after you take the shot to adjust the level of background blur this.
Speaker 1: Isn't actually physically putting down the lens. As you probably know, it's all software based. Now the 13 pro lets you take portrait mode, photos of pretty much anything you want, but because the se only has that single lens at the back. It's not able to take portraits of anything else, but people you'll just see this flag on the screen that says no person detect it. If you try and take a mode image [00:04:00] of flowers, objects, or even pets, this isn't unique to the se some earlier single lens iPhones like the iPhone 10 R didn't support portrait mode without a person in the frame. Look, maybe you care, maybe you don't. I'm just sad that I can't show you more portrait mode photos of my puppy.
Speaker 1: Now we're standing on one of the highest points San Francisco to check out the telephoto cameras. Oh really? Should I say optical zoom on the 13th pro and digital zoom on the se the 13 pro and 13 [00:04:30] pro max go to three times optical zoom at F 2.8. Now I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that the digital zoom on the se is remotely comparable to the optical zoom on the 30, because it's just not, but in a pinch you can keep the se steady enough and have enough light when you digitally zoom into around three times. It's okay. You just won't wanna look very closely at the details is all I'll say. And the five times digital zoom, which is as far as the se can go. Yeah, that's pretty unappealing.
Speaker 1: [00:05:00] We've just seen the tele photo. Now let's look at the ultra wide camera on the 13 pro. This gives you a totally different perspective. Something you can't really get on the se just by stepping back a bit also because it has auto focused on the ultra wide. This means the 13 pro also supports macro photography. This lets you get as close as two centimeters from your subject and it's not a dedicated mode on the interface like portrait mode. It automatically switches from the wide camera to the ultra wide. Once you move [00:05:30] in or you can now toggle the effect manually by changing the settings in the camera app, the se doesn't have an official macro capability, but you can get fairly close before you hit its focusing limit side by the photos don't have the same dramatic closeup effect like they do on the 13 pro. But I was surprised I could capture as much detail as I actually did on the se and you'll notice because I was so close to the flower with the 13 pro I'm actually blocking the sunlight on it
Speaker 1: Time for my least favorite part, but still important [00:06:00] to talk about the selfie camera for all the photos I took with the front facing camera. I noticed the se always had a little bit more contrast than the 13 pro the white balance skews warmer on the cheaper phone and the dynamic range is not as strong. I definitely found the shots looked more accurate and true to life from the 13 pro. Again, you'll likely notice the biggest difference in portrait mode selfies. The true depth camera on the more expensive phone is just better at edge detection, but if you don't like that kind of slightly contrasty look from the photos from the se that much, you can also [00:06:30] use a custom photographic style on the selfie camera to get them a little bit closer to what the 13 pro delivers, and it will still maintain skin tone. Accuracy video recording is also limited on the se to 10 80 P on that front camera while you can film 4k 60 on the front camera of the 13 pro.
Speaker 1: Now let's get into lowlight images. The key point of difference here is that the 13 pro has night mode while the se does not, or let's look at some low light photos before we jump into [00:07:00] night mode. Now at reduced magnification without night mode active, the images are surprisingly similar. I really had to do a double take. When I was looking at these sets of photos, the exposure parameters are almost the same on both. The se really does look like it holds its own when there's enough ambient light. But if in a little bit you can tell that it loses quite a bit of detail, especially on these rocks here on the path. Both phones also use Apple's deep fusion, which is an image processing technique designed to help improve detail and clarity in medium to [00:07:30] low light shots. While you have no way of telling when deep fusion is activated, the fact that the cheaper se can often look almost as good against a phone with much newer hardware is a Testament to the processing power on board.
Speaker 1: And it's so much better than the se from 2020, which really fell apart in this category. Now let's look at some actual night mode photos in much darker situations. Here's where you'll see a much more pronounced difference with a 13 pro not only brightening the entire image much more because of the at longer exposure. [00:08:00] It also produces photos that have less noise and that are much sharper when there's hardly any ambient light. The SES low light photos do start to fall apart. The 13 pro takes a much better image of the cactus in this scene, brightening the rest of the surrounds while the se just looks super blurry and noisy. It honestly remind your photos. I'd take with phones before night mode existed a couple of years ago. Auto focusing in lowlight is also much slower on the se. And I did have a couple of occasions when I [00:08:30] needed to manually select the focus point by tapping on the screen.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about video. Both can shoot in 4k up to 60 frames a second. And the video image is again much to my surprise. Similar on both when you're filming with amp light. Overall, the video image on the se has a bit more contrast to it than the 13 pro like you saw in the shots during the intro optical image stabilization was fairly close with an edge to the 13 pro for walking and tracking shots like this one. [00:09:00] There's a lot more flexibility though, when taking video with the 13 pro thanks to 4k recording on the Ultrawide and the tele photo cameras. Now, I really did miss this. When I switched back to the se the 13 pro also lets you take videos one step further with HDR, E vision recording, and these videos look fantastic. As long as you're watching playback on either the phone screen itself or a supported device, there's also another mode on the camera interface of the 13 pro that we have to talk about. And that's cinematic mode. This detects when faces enter the frame and shifts the focus accordingly. [00:09:30] Now I've been using the 13 pro since launch and I can count on one hand the number of times that I've used cinema amatic mode. I love that it's there, but this is not a must have feature for me. Oh, and don't forget the 13 pro also records in ProRes two, the se does not.
Speaker 1: So we are coming to the end of our comparison and it's not so much about picking a winner here, but seeing how close and how far the phones really are in their camera capabilities. I'm surprised that the older [00:10:00] hardware can actually compete in the same ballpark as the 13 pro in some categories. And those obvious advantages like additional focal lengths auto focus on the ultra wide and the LIDAR sensor really do seem to make the most difference here. Hey, thanks so much for watching. Let me know as always a witch phone, you like the most down in the comments below. And if you have any extra questions I can answer for you can also hit me up on your favorite social media platform. And there's also links to everything I've talked about in the description [00:10:30] below. See you later.
