As much as I like my iPhone 14 Pro that is a clear win for Google. No sitting on the fence for this one other than from the most ardent Apple fans.
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Camera Comparison: iPhone 15 Pro Max vs. Pixel 8 Pro
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The Pixel Pro is looking pretty darn good these days’. I’m still running the 12 max and I have no ambitions to upgrade this year. I will likely upgrade next year, and will be taking a serious look at the Pixel 9 Pro. 🤷♂️
Why don’t you just say “the pixel is better at taking photos but I prefer the iPhone” and not bother wasting everyone’s time on the video. Pointless.
I'm an Apple guy, but there's no comparison here. The pixel photos are better.
You're an extreme case, but I agree with your overall point from your first post. A friend of mine took some very scenic panorama shots with his IPHONE 7, and then had them printed on a special metal material and hung on a wall in a decorative way. Guess what, nobody knows the difference and they look very cool.
The fact of the matter is most photos are taken relatively quickly just to capture a memory and most people aren't pixel-peeping those photos if the photo accomplishes that goal - capturing the memory.
That said, I'm still a sucker for a good phone camera comparison...
Man, do I agree with you on that! I used to lug around my a900 with primes when I would visit my GF in Italy. It was brutal. 🥵
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Ugh, yeah. I've found that foliage shots on an iPhone often has a weird posterized, artificial, over-sharpened look. And I wish the engineers weren't afraid of a little image noise. I'd rather have texture, even if it meant more noise, rather than the smeared look. Sometimes fine color details are obliterated—like blue eyes becoming gray as the color is smeared. Though with the way that smartphone cameras combine multiple exposures, maybe "just leave more noise in the image" is not as straightforward as it seems.
This is what I was trying to say about my family photos. For me it’s about capturing the moment and technical perfection is not only irrelevant but gets in the way. Many precious moments are unplanned and the camera you have in your pocket is the only choice you have. Also, pointing a large camera and lens at people completely changes their look compared to something done casually with a phone. The prints I make for family photo albums are perfectly fine from a phone and I don’t believe a high end mirrorless camera and lens will add more value for this use case. In fact some of my most precious family photos are from decades ago where the quality from the film SLR camera that produced them pales in comparison to modern phones. I also do landscape photography and for that use case a high end camera works much better.
Unnatural clouds and lack of details are better? Okay.
What kind of "test" is this? Do people primarily use their cell phone cameras for pictures of random buildings and taxi-cabs?
Try taking a picture of a toddler (or dog) in a living room at night playing with a stuffed animal.
Movement, life, detail, low lighting. Actual stuff people want to look good. What does it matter if a car can go 300mph if it doesn't have a steering wheel. Sure, the iPhone can take a decent picture of a car outside zoomed away 500 feet. Great. Why is that the flagship feature of the flagship phone? It's because Pixel wins that segment and Apple knows it.
Try taking a picture of a toddler (or dog) in a living room at night playing with a stuffed animal.
Movement, life, detail, low lighting. Actual stuff people want to look good. What does it matter if a car can go 300mph if it doesn't have a steering wheel. Sure, the iPhone can take a decent picture of a car outside zoomed away 500 feet. Great. Why is that the flagship feature of the flagship phone? It's because Pixel wins that segment and Apple knows it.
Both are comparable. I prefer the Pixel 8 on some and the 15 Pro on others. Overall, the 15 Pro appears to produce more natural looking photos but it's still close enough that either is fine.
1. Pixel but the iPhone one could be edited to look like the Pixel one.
2. iPhone
3. iPhone/Pixel
4. iPhone
5. iPhone
6. Pixel
7. Pixel (but the iPhone photo is likely more accurate)
8. iPhone clearly
9. Pixel/iPhone (maybe iPhone first but the Pixel one appears a little less saturated)
1. Pixel but the iPhone one could be edited to look like the Pixel one.
2. iPhone
3. iPhone/Pixel
4. iPhone
5. iPhone
6. Pixel
7. Pixel (but the iPhone photo is likely more accurate)
8. iPhone clearly
9. Pixel/iPhone (maybe iPhone first but the Pixel one appears a little less saturated)
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The Pixel wins it for me I have to say.
NOT because of the telephoto lenses or ai nonsense, neither of which I care for. I also don't care for the slightly warmer/yellow tones of the Pixel (though something that's easily changeable). The one thing that the Pixel wins HANDS DOWN, is it actually seems to take pictures that are more true to life, and not overly contrasted, with crushed blacks and too much sharpening that the iPhone has.
That's been my (and anyone that has any interest in photography) absolute HATRED of iPhones in the past 4 or 5 years!
NOT because of the telephoto lenses or ai nonsense, neither of which I care for. I also don't care for the slightly warmer/yellow tones of the Pixel (though something that's easily changeable). The one thing that the Pixel wins HANDS DOWN, is it actually seems to take pictures that are more true to life, and not overly contrasted, with crushed blacks and too much sharpening that the iPhone has.
That's been my (and anyone that has any interest in photography) absolute HATRED of iPhones in the past 4 or 5 years!
The thing is, you can always up the contrast in your phone settings (or in any app if you want to edit them). You can't really dial it back though once baked in. That's what I hate these days on iPhone photos.
I’d guess that the contrasted look is closer to what you’d get with a standalone camera that doesn’t do any of the fancy “smart” processing that all modern phones do.
Real life has more contrast than even the brightest of OLED phones, so the range has to be compressed to show it as a photo on a screen—and even more to show it printed. The Pixel phones are more aggressive at evening out the tones in the image.
But your eyes are also constantly readjusting exposure as they look at a real scene, so while the iPhone may be more technically accurate in an absolute sense, the Pixel may be closer to recreating the experience of looking at the real scene.
Also, iPhones have supported true HDR for photos since the iPhone X, and Android is just now adding it. And web support of HDR images is still experimental. So these comparisons aren’t really even fair if you aren’t comparing them on HDR displays.
Not really. It’s not as simple as adjusting contrast, because tone mapping is localized in the image, and baked into the pixels. You can’t un-tone-map an image.
Its not talked about often but I fly around using my iPhone camera a lot for work like documenting things in the construction phase as well as network planning. I mainly take photos and record video with the .5 lens. I capture directly using the OneDrive app so my team can immediately review so capturing that perfect shot the first time is very important to me.
I wish the Lidar system was better as I've tried to do virtual 360 of small areas but it ends up looking like everything is melting.
Yeah fair enough, it’s not a really big issue for me either. It just seems like a strange thing for Apple to make a big deal of. I know they all do, but I’ve never seen anyone take a picture in real life like the ones they show on stage.
RIP to new iPhone 15 Pro Max owners whose cameras are now rendered obsolete just weeks later!
That comment would have made sense in 2010, but not in 2023.