Camera Comparison: Pixel 7 Pro vs. iPhone 14 Pro Max

[Schnegg]

It seems crazy that only smartphones can do computational photography. How come the camera companies don't have this (with on/off and tons of settings) on big-sensor offerings? Canon, Nikon et al. should have decades of experience about what white balance and color tones should look like under all kinds of circumstances.

 

[CabanossiHead]

It seems crazy that only smartphones can do computational photography. How come the camera companies don't have this (with on/off and tons of settings) on big-sensor offerings? Canon, Nikon et al. should have decades of experience about what white balance and color tones should look like under all kinds of circumstances.

I think thats not the point of someone buying a 2000 Dollar camera. They dont want a picture that a computer told them what it should look like. They go home, take the SD out and pop the pictures into lightroom or photoshop and need good raw files.

 

[Schnegg]

I think thats not the point of someone buying a 2000 Dollar camera. They dont want a picture that a computer told them what it should look like. They go home, take the SD out and pop the pictures into lightroom or photoshop and need good raw files.

As an owner of expensive cameras I personally agree with that. But average users get worse results out of pro gear because the everything auto mode is bad. I see an opportunity to blow these smartphone pics out of the water for average users and the camera guys are slacking in the software area.

 

[_Spinn_]

They both look pretty good.

 

[d686546s]

As an owner of expensive cameras I personally agree with that. But average users get worse results out of pro gear because the everything auto mode is bad. I see an opportunity to blow these smartphone pics out of the water for average users and the camera guys are slacking in the software area.

I'm sceptical how much of a market there really is for expensive cameras with average user.

Smartphone cameras are more than good enough, I'd think, for what most average users really want.

 

[Freida]

Well, maybe although in DxOMark testing the Pixel Pro 7 gets a touch better score. I have the 14 Pro myself but I can clearly see the areas where Pixel just wins.

Wow I scrolled through the pictures and liked every single iPhone shot better. Then I was surprised the article gave lots of credit to the pixel.
And then your comment… it obviously comes down to personal preference.

 

[LeeW]

I am no photographer, my 14 takes amazing images and I am happy with it. That said, anyone who thinks the iPhone is better than the Pixel in those images is deluded.

 

[therunningman]

I'm curious...how many people here take their photos at face value, and do not do any adjustments (like color balancing/exposure/etc.)? I find that when I take pics, the first thing I do is start to see what I can do to adjust and improve the pic.

I'm still using the "old" iPhone 13 Pro Max, but I'm just amazed at the pictures that it takes.

 

[MajorFubar]

Anyone thinks the iPhone takes better pictures purely based on the images shared by OP, well you're welcome to your opinion but probably best to stick with your day job, unless your day job actually is a photographer, in which case it's probably best you quit.

 

[CabanossiHead]

I'm curious...how many people here take their photos at face value, and do not do any adjustments (like color balancing/exposure/etc.)? I find that when I take pics, the first thing I do is start to see what I can do to adjust and improve the pic.

I'm still using the "old" iPhone 13 Pro Max, but I'm just amazed at the pictures that it tak

I feel the normal user does not retouch. If I take my parents for example they dont and still get great pictures out of their iphones and are happy with it.

I do retouch but I feel less than with my p30pro. Like with that I needed to saturate pictures again after they were desaturated and so on.
With the iphone I do some white balance, and light and contrast via curves (I use snapseed and preset styke in camera settings: more contrast)

 

[vkd]

If someone was to offer to give me, I would take the Pixel any day over the iPhone with that ridiculous camera bump, that gets bigger and more ugly and absurd every year, instead of getting any better. How anybody can talk about design and hold that thing in your hand is just a complete paradox. On the design score, Apple lost big time. Mind you the Pixel is price gouging too, so you can't throw that just in Apple's face either, you'd have to have two cream pies, one for each.

But if I had to pay over 50p for a phone I wouldn't buy either, not worth my time to be flooded with so much propaganda, ads, terrible rubbish like TikTok, spam not to mention spying on me big time, tracking me, location tracking, and the rest. And the worst insult is to have to pay for that experience. They are taking the mickey.

 

[vault]

iPhone grass looks so artificial on that second picture. So much detail is lost.

 

[paulvee]

Comparisons like this, especially under casual conditions and procedures, are basically meaningless. More like clickbait.

The camera on either of these phones is WAY more capable than most users need or can take advantage of.

 

[ecodave]

Dan I really enjoy your comparisons and let's face it a lot of this is subjective. But you gush over the Pixel 7 shot of the lady with the dog. As an alternative view I think that one is fake looking, it exaggerates her face lines (she probably doesn't appreciate this) and in many ways it looks like a 4k television attempting to display a lower res image and it fakes the resolution resulting in a piece of bad art instead of a real image. The Pixel image is harsh, the colour looks bad and it is inferior. The iPhone 14 version is much better, much and much more natural. And on another note digital zoom is interesting, but it is only something I play around with such as zooming in on a bird to help identify it. But in my work as a photographer I still avoid digital zoom like the plague. Results vary from minute to minute and you cannot rely on it to get a good image. I used my phone for 95% of of my photography and video work these days, but I still carry a mirrorless canon with a 100-400 lens for anything that requires zoom.

 

[wezunblai]

Comparisons like this, especially under casual conditions and procedures, are basically meaningless. More like clickbait.

The camera on either of these phones is WAY more capable than most users need or can take advantage of.

blablabla

I think ALL of you are wrong.
This article is very very interesting.

Why ?
Because you are probably coming from US, but you should know that the iphone 14 pro and 14 pro max are terribly expensive and don't deserve it. And this article confirm that.
an iphone 14 pro max begins at 1480 EUROS (because it's a 6.7inch phone) where you have it at 1099$ and a 14 pro is at 1330€

And finally, pixel provide almost same quality for 500 euros less ???

I'm sorry, but I definitively consider buying a pixel after my iphone 12 died... because iphone became too expensive on the old continent

 

[webkit]

blablabla

I think ALL of you are wrong.
This article is very very interesting.

Why ?
Because you are probably coming from US, but you should know that the iphone 14 pro and 14 pro max are terribly expensive and don't deserve it. And this article confirm that.
an iphone 14 pro max begins at 1480 EUROS (because it's a 6.7inch phone) where you have it at 1099$ and a 14 pro is at 1330€

I think you are "wrong" because you are comparing iPhone prices in Europe with VAT against iPhone prices in the U.S. without sales tax (our VAT equivalent).

For example, the pre-VAT price of a 128GB iPhone 14 Pro in Germany is 1,086 € which at the current change rate is around $1,074 USD. The same phone here in the U.S. pre-sales tax is $999 USD. Also, the iPhone in Germany has a longer warranty than the one in the U.S. which means an equivalent phone here (with the longer warranty) could actually be higher USD priced pre-VAT/pre-sales tax than one in Europe.

 

[MacAddict1978]

Seems like a mixed bag, and subjective as whoever took these photos didn't try hard to make them as close as possible to the same picture (different distances.... come on!)

The Pixel seems to do a much better job with colors and not overly artificially light dark photos, but the iPhone seems to have sharper details.

 

[Deathshead]

Hmm doesn’t look bad tbh, but the iPhone wins.

r U high?

 

[happydude]

I think this comparison shows that the Pixel might take marginally better "bad" photos. I find all the examples pretty tasteless and basic here, which is probably on par with your average Joe iPhone user but I think many buying the iPhone Pro line care a bit more about photography and creative work in general. The iPhone 14 Pro is a far better tool if you know what you're doing with it with higher quality sensors, higher quality computational work and an absolutely untouchable organic quality to the 48MP ProRAWs that to be honest don't even need editing most of the time. They come out with the same look and feel as photos from my full frame mirrorless setups, whereas the high resolution modes of competing Android flagships look embarrassing, most notable Samsung's horrid 108MP output. If you put even a little bit of thought into what you're doing with the iPhone, you'll get a better shot almost every time than anything else out there. If you snap the first thing the camera sees without thought about framing or the subject matter or what choices it's making, it'll be a tossup.

I do this for a living and wouldn't want anything else in my pocket given the choice if money was no object. And honestly you'd be surprised at how much pro, paid content gets shot on iPhone these days either alongside real camera setups or in lieu of because clients want options.
Look at what can be done in professional and semi-professional hands:

iPhone 14 Pro Camera Review: A Small Step, A Huge Leap

When the iPhone was first introduced, it packed in quite a few innovations. At a now-legendary keynote, Steve Jobs announced that Apple was launching a widescreen iPod, a phone and an internet communications device. These three devices were not separate new products, he revealed — they were all...

lux.camera

good perspective. I'm a part time night sky photographer and for my needs a full frame mirrorless is it or nothing. iPhone can't hold a candle to even a low end cropped sensor dslr much less full frame mirrorless for Milky Way or aurora shots.

in the end, to each their own. and I still stand by the vast majority of iPhone, even iPhone pro, consumers are just point and shoot instagram people. good to have the tech for those of us who care to do it "right" but end of day it's mostly a marketing gimmick to stay at the top vs the vast majority's average use.

same can be said of any of their machines tho. how many college kids have a MacBook Pro and all they do is safari web search and ms office use. so it goes.

 

[M3gatron]

For a phone, the 48 Mpixel ProRAWs are absolutely stunning and peerless (show me another phone producing truly better-resolution images with higher detail resolving abilities.). Ofc it is worse in every respect than a decent APS-C (e.g., Fujifilm X-H2, which beats it in even the resolution department) or FF camera. However, a phone is 1, always with you and 2, eliminates the need to purchase a dedicated camera if (and only if!) the quality satisfies you.

The Xiami 12s Ultra - 50MP 1 inch sensor with 1.6µm native pixels vs 1.22µm on the 14 Pro.

 

[radus]

Agreed, except maybe the display but that's very subjective.

The damn Apple watch, ease of Face ID authentication, air drop with mac, airpods... yup, I'm glued!!

But, I love the Pixel 7 series!! Besides the camera, the voice to txt, battery ( on the Pro ) and phone features are simply amazing. As a smartphone, the Pixel makes the iPhone look dumb!

Face id is cool but if I wake up at night and want to listen an audio book it is easier to open the Pixel 7 Pro with the fingerprint / thumbprint then raising the head for face id …

 

[gammamonk]

In Europe the pixel 7 pro is at 899€ while iPhone 14 pro 1319€. It’s 50% more for a worse camera...

Keep it going with that prices, Apple…

Wow, you can't explain that by saying "strong dollar" since both companies are US based, the heck... Here it's $899 for the Pixel and $999 for the iPhone. I'd take the iPhone for sure.

 

[rileyes]

Wow the Pixel 7 Pro looks so much better!

Some of the examples looked better on the iPhone, some looked better on the Pixel. All the phone cameras are so good now, it seems like they're trying REALLY hard to keep pushing that as a reason to upgrade, yet the differences now are so minuscule, it doesn't even really need to factor in to your purchasing decision anymore.

I would spend twice the price for an iphone that didn't have a massive camera bump sticking out of the back.

You know the last thing I used my camera for? It was like two days ago and I took a picture of a serial number so that I could type it in to a website later. Before that, which was maybe a couple weeks ago, I took a picture of my kid doing some obstacle course. This picture was shared with one person--my wife.

I'm not making art here, and neither are 99% of the cell phone "photographers" out there.

 

[Menneisyys2]

The Xiami 12s Ultra - 50MP 1 inch sensor with 1.6µm native pixels vs 1.22µm on the 14 Pro.

Come on - not really available outside China...

 

[CabanossiHead]

Some of the examples looked better on the iPhone, some looked better on the Pixel. All the phone cameras are so good now, it seems like they're trying REALLY hard to keep pushing that as a reason to upgrade, yet the differences now are so minuscule, it doesn't even really need to factor in to your purchasing decision anymore.

I would spend twice the price for an iphone that didn't have a massive camera bump sticking out of the back.

You know the last thing I used my camera for? It was like two days ago and I took a picture of a serial number so that I could type it in to a website later. Before that, which was maybe a couple weeks ago, I took a picture of my kid doing some obsticule course. This picture was shared with one person--my wife.

I'm not making art here, and neither are 99% of the cell phone "photographers" out there.

this. the only time I was mad at a bad camera on the phone was when visitin L.A. years ago and wishing my shots where more clear.
Now I love that when I photograph a serieal number I can actually copy paste it from the image. I think i grew older in the past years and now the comfort of an iphone and the many things it lets me do natively just...make me happy