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iPhone 4 vs iPod Touch 4 Comparison Videos

iPod Video won me over.

The Screen on the iPod looks more and more like a TN panel. It's too bad they don't share details on this. :(

I think the iPod takes better video (in this comparison) than does the iPhone 4. I find the camera shake, and lag on the iPhone annoying in these videos, and the image looks overexposed to me, more than it looks like the iPod Touch is over-saturated. Regardless, I think if you could blend the saturation / exposure of the two, I think it would be perfect. Yes the iPhone's lens can grab more detail, but I had to pause the video to actually get a detailed comparison going. I typically watch my movies at 30 FPS, not frame by frame, so the tiny bit of extra detail means nothing to me. ;) .

Perhaps the iPhone had too many background applications open, causing it to lag on video capture? Not sure, but in this comparison the lack of shake, and overall smoothness of the iPod's video won me over.
 
Screen

As an awesome surprise when I bought my iPhone 4, i found that the new display wouldn't distort when I wore polarized sunglasses. My inner-geek instantly became curious if it was due to the retina display or the in-plane switching technology, or some combination thereof. I really wanna play with the ipod touch now and find out if just the retina display attains the same results.
 
Piggie said:
Just to add.

I can of course fully appreciate that if you were to swing a phone of low end video camera around quickly, take photo's of racing cars zooming by, helecopter blades spinning etc etc, then there would be some image breakup around these fast items.

It would be acceptable.

what is not acceptable at all if if the image fragments up whilst just strolling along a path shooting video or a slow pan across your garden or other such movement.

I'd like to see more iPhone4 footage.

I seem to recall seeing image breakup before, but I put that down to bad youtube encoding.
Click to expand...

I have not noticed any such issue with my camera on my iPhone 4, I have been nothing but totally amazed with the quality of video. Photos are hit and miss, some looking spectacular, many looking decent, some looking awful; but I have yet to not be floored with the video quality.
 
Too many pixels

koobcamuk said:
More proof that more MP does not mean a better camera!
Click to expand...

The touch back camera sensor has the right number of pixels for 720p video. The iPhone has about 7x too many pixels hence requiring some processing. Could that have something to do with these video results?

For stills, however, I would want the 5MP camera.
 
OMG, would everyone quit complaining about the shaking of the iPhone 4; it's obvious that these tests were done at the same time and the iPhone was in his left hand while the iTouch was in his right, I'm willing to bet that he's right handed, and just had a steadier hand with the right. Although I will admit the colors did seem to pop a bit more on the iTouch, and that would just be a personal pref.
 
Aucun Express said:
Yeah, but have you seen how shaky it is on the iPhone 4?
Since it was released, I really hated the way the videos seems to be shaking.
I'm not asking for a steadicam, but the result is pretty lame if you'd ask me.
Of course, many people will say that this camera rocks and all, but you'll see, in a few years (if not next year) when this will be fixed and that everyone will want the new "non-shaking camera" on the new iPhone.
Click to expand...

Really? You think?
 
Just a question, does the iPhone4 use autofocus in movie mode?

Using AF would massively improve closeups. Does the iPhone4 use that potential or is it wasted like on many compact digital cameras (that fall back to fixed focus operation in video mode)?

This would not make a difference in a shot like shown here because everything is at infinity anyway.

Christian
 
christian_k said:
Just a question, does the iPhone4 use autofocus in movie mode?

Using AF would massively improve closeups. Does the iPhone4 use that potential or is it wasted like on many compact digital cameras (that fall back to fixed focus operation in video mode)?

This would not make a difference in a shot like shown here because everything is at infinity anyway.

Christian
Click to expand...

Yes it does, you can also touch to refocus during video recording.
 
840quadra said:
Yes it does, you can also touch to refocus during video recording.
Click to expand...

Good to know. Maybe someone could make a comparison with something that is closer to the camera (like talking to a person). It should be much sharper on an iPhone4 than on the iPod touch (that only has a fixed focus camera).

Christian
 
Christian247 said:
OMG, would everyone quit complaining about the shaking of the iPhone 4; it's obvious that these tests were done at the same time and the iPhone was in his left hand while the iTouch was in his right, I'm willing to bet that he's right handed, and just had a steadier hand with the right. .
Click to expand...

He was probably having to grip the iPhone in a 'special' way to avoid dropping any calls.
 
rspeed said:
The iPod's camera has a wider field of view (which is generally a good thing for this sort of device) and much better contrast. The iPhone's video looks a bit washed out.

I'd really like to see a low-light comparison.
Click to expand...

Pretty much how I viewed it as well.
 
The touch 4's video isn't over saturated. Strangely enough there's appears to be a major polarization difference between the two. You can clearly see it in the windows of the cars, a dramatic difference in glare. If you frame it forward the iphone 4 clearly has more motion blur while panning but they seem to be almost equal on tilt.
 
Having the high resolution screen was my most hoped for inclusion. I figured the chance was poor because it would dissappear the showiest difference between it and the iPhone. When people talked resolution parity for the sake of apps I had hope.
Never cared about the cameras 'till I was told they were so bad. I probably won't use them except for facetime....

Anyway, the screen. Very happy. From normal viewing angle it looks fantastic. I am nearsighted so from my normal viewing distance I can see pixel texture in the gradiants and fuzziness in the curves of letters. Think they will bounce up the resolution again? For me? Ahh, reality intrudes. 60° off perpendicular toward the top (camera) it starts to go blue. 30° off perpendicular toward the bottom it starts to go blue. 45° on left- blue, 20° on right- yellow. I imagine if I am sharing a movie or some such I will allow my favored guest to watch from the center and I will take the position off the camera side.

Now to read the thread....
 
uploading video

I got my new 4th gen ipod touch in the mail thursday, and the video that it takes in low-light is decent, but fuzzy. Also when I load video up to the computer and play it through quicktime, its like its playing 3 second clips to make up a video, so you get the effect of skippy video. :confused:
 
Stiksi said:
Looks like the iPod touch uses the entire sensor area for video while the iPhone 4 uses only a part of the sensor. That means the iPhone also uses only a part of the lens area for video, which means that all dirt, grease and flaws in the lens will be magnified. I would think this plays a big role in the iphone's worse flare problem as well as camera shake (more tele, more shake).

The iPhone camera is designed for still images, the iPod's camera is clearly designed for video.
Click to expand...

Indeed, I thought the iPod's video looked a bit smoother for multiple reasons. Less camera shake, smoother video. But what would cause the smoother video? It looked like the iPhone didn't capture a consistent framerate - it chopped a couple of times like the system had other things to do. Does the internal memory get fragmented or something?

Perhaps I can be swung by this generation of iPod after all.
 
mdriftmeyer said:
If you mean the darker hues and saturation, then that's your personal preference.

The iPhone 4 shoots are more accurate video of the actual light level.
Click to expand...

I agree. The iPod most likely has the same algorithms as the 4, but the difference most likely is the lens. Much less detail due to lower MP, more contrast, saturation, and lower light getting through. Need to play them back on a large monitor. You'll want the iPhone. :apple:
 
Glideslope said:
I agree. The iPod most likely has the same algorithms as the 4, but the difference most likely is the lens. Much less detail due to lower MP, more contrast, saturation, and lower light getting through. Need to play them back on a large monitor. You'll want the iPhone. :apple:
Click to expand...

This.
 
G4-power said:
Theoretically yes, but it would either require dropping the fps to about one third, or extreme processing power. Or both.

A real HDR is usually made of three or more exposures, so the videocamera would have to take three differently exposed frames and combine them into one HDR-frame. This would drop the fps of the video to around one third, which would made the video stuttering, plus it would need quite much processing power. Probably more than the iPhone has if the processing were to be done in real time.

A "fake HDR", some call them FHDR, single-exposure HDR or whatever, could be used as well. The iPhone/iPod should capture the video normally, but then use tone mapping methods to correct exposure in each frame, which would need, again, quite much processing power. It could be possible, but I don't think it'll look good, though.
Click to expand...

Look, there is some serious misunderstanding about what "HDR" is and isn't. Let's clear up some stuff here.

What you are talking about is tone mapping. When you take 3 exposures and combine them, you're just tone mapping - bringing out visible range in various parts of the exposures. You're not generating an HDR image.

What you call "fake HDR" is an oxymoron - it doesn't exist. You can't pull out data that isn't in the image. All you're doing here is exaggerating what little information is already buried in the image. It has nothing to do with HDR.

The end result of "real HDR" is a high-dynamic-range image that can be edited with various HDR tools. It contains more range than can be displayed all at once on most display devices.

Since none of the sensors in any iDevice have a high dynamic range, and since no image generated by an iDevice is an HDR format, you can't get HDR from an iDevice, regardless of how many exposures you take.

Not that anyone will bother to read it, but here is more information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

To summarize, the only way to get "true" HDR images is through rendering that handles unlimited range lighting calculations, via HDR image sensors (RAW data from cameras is a small subset of HDR), or by combining multiple exposures into an HDR file format, such as EXR.
 
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