iPhone 12 Pictures taken with the iPhone 12 / 12 Pro

[nitschi]

New iPhone 12 pro is terrible at photos compared to the 11 pro I am a photographer using canon 5d mark IV and not impressed night mode outside on front facing camera is bad not impressed

What are you even talking about?

The 12 Pro is at least on par with the 11 Pro and performs mostly slightly better (Smart HDR 3 does a better job at retaining contrast while working out the details and the slightly wider aperture helps in lower light situations).

The changes aren't significant, it's just the sum of tiny refinements and no one should expect a big jump from 11 Pro.

But it certainly isn't one thing: worse than the 11 Pro.....

 

[canyonblue737]

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12 Pro on the left. iPhone 8 on the right.

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12 Pro on the left. Iphone 8 on the right.


In all honestly? From this little outing with my 12 pro im a little bit dissapointed. Im a photographer and I use a D750 which has tremendous quality. Im also a bit naive, and an eternal optimist, and was really expenting to have my mind blown from a tremendous increase in quality in the 12 pro.

This has so far not happened.

The increases in photo quality are mostly computational, that means the hardware is more or less unchanged. Yes, the lenses have one extra element, but it doesnt really add that much.

A computational approach to photography has a tendency to be a bit.. well... too computational. Its simply not good enough at correcty determinig how to process the image.

The HDR images ive taken so far feels overprocessed, and out of my control. The shadows are a bit too strongly pushed towards the middle, and the same goes for the highlights. See the halos around edges on the shots from the 12 pro? Especially in the leaves of the trees. Its simply processed very heavily.

For an average user I bet this saves time, and it gets you a picture that looks well exposed and "worked" with. But for someone who is very detail oriented and into photography the results can feel a bit tacky and cheap.

Perhaps the pro raw feature will remedy this and give us a little bit more control over the strenght of the procssing of the image, im optimistic towards that.

Ohh well, its naive to think that where will be MASSIVE improvements in photo quality from an image sensor the size of half a stamp.

The 12 pro is good, by all means its a great phone with a great camera. But dont upgrade from an 11 pro for the camera alone!

The Pro Max will be better, for sure, but not untill the sensor of the camera increases and the lens elements gets even bigger will we see a truley big jump in quality from the images from an iPhone.

Ok rant over, thanks for reading. Ill just post pictures from now and let them speak for themselves

Thanks for a good writeup. In almost every single example I do think the 12 is significantly better than the 8, but you are dead on right... it is the computational photography doing the magic at this point. Look at the skies... on the 8 it sets the exposure decently for the foreground which leaves the sky a white mess... the 12 is taking dozens of shots and applying HDR and the skies aren't blown out. The leaves are sharper true, but they reveal a lot of extra detail like the veins with better color. The reality is these phones are still limited by physics in terms of what a tiny tiny lens can do vs. a real camera with a lens that weighs the same as 5 entire iPhones or more, and obviously the sensor size that then reads the light that comes through the tiny lens is also very, very small (let's see how much a finally bigger sensor helps the 12 Pro Max this year). Apple has worked miracles to use essentially artificial intelligence to take flawed data and make it look far better than it deserves.

My hot take? I don't think the 12 Pro Max will even be that big a difference...

 

[anticipate]

Here are a few of my yard with 1x, 2x, wide angle, and of my dog normal and portrait. All I can say is the color is wow at least in the screen.View attachment 972198View attachment 972199View attachment 972200View attachment 972201View attachment 972202

Wow Portrait mode is a LOT better on A14/IPhone 12. It doesn't carry over as much in iPhone 11 even running 14.2 beta.

 

[canyonblue737]

What are you even talking about?

The 12 Pro is at least on par with the 11 Pro and performs mostly slightly better (Smart HDR 3 does a better job at retaining contrast while working out the details and the slightly wider aperture helps in lower light situations).

The changes aren't significant, it's just the sum of tiny refinements and no one should expect a big jump from 11 Pro.

But it certainly isn't one thing: worse than the 11 Pro.....

I suspect you are right and I'm waiting on Fedex for my 12 Pro (I upgrade yearly) but I'll have to see as I've been burned before... the XS in many ways had inferior camera results to the X as a result of too heavy handed processing in the neural engine. Remember the "watercolor skin" debacle? Apple improved it a lot over the year but the XS had fundamental flaws with how it applied computational photography that actually harmed some images vs the X that tried to do less. The 11 Pro was a big jump and I think Apple really nailed it last year so while the 12 Pro doesn't look like a huge jump (we will see about 12 Pro Max, I have my doubts) with just a bit better a wide lens, a bit better ultra wide processing and sharpening, and the expansion of night mode and deep fusion to all or more cameras I'm hopeful it won't get worse... but computational photography can sometimes be an art, and the artist has screwed up before!

 

[Samut]

In all honestly? From this little outing with my 12 pro im a little bit dissapointed. Im a photographer and I use a D750 which has tremendous quality. Im also a bit naive, and an eternal optimist, and was really expenting to have my mind blown from a tremendous increase in quality in the 12 pro.

This has so far not happened.

The increases in photo quality are mostly computational, that means the hardware is more or less unchanged. Yes, the lenses have one extra element, but it doesnt really add that much.

A computational approach to photography has a tendency to be a bit.. well... too computational. Its simply not good enough at correcty determinig how to process the image.

The HDR images ive taken so far feels overprocessed, and out of my control. The shadows are a bit too strongly pushed towards the middle, and the same goes for the highlights. See the halos around edges on the shots from the 12 pro? Especially in the leaves of the trees. Its simply processed very heavily.

For an average user I bet this saves time, and it gets you a picture that looks well exposed and "worked" with. But for someone who is very detail oriented and into photography the results can feel a bit tacky and cheap.

Perhaps the pro raw feature will remedy this and give us a little bit more control over the strenght of the procssing of the image, im optimistic towards that.

Ohh well, its naive to think that where will be MASSIVE improvements in photo quality from an image sensor the size of half a stamp.

The 12 pro is good, by all means its a great phone with a great camera. But dont upgrade from an 11 pro for the camera alone!

Thanks for all the samples. They are not bad considering its a phone but I felt the same when I opened the full resolution samples from the hardware zone review.

I found out that the pictures seemed to be already little bit overprocessed when playing with them in Lightroom. Hopefully the proraw will allow us to edit images more to our liking.

I still have my hopes high for the larger wide sensor on pro max. At the end computational photography is still reliant on sensor and there is only so much you can improve with algorithms.

I fully agree that upgrading from iPhone 11 does not make sense for sake of image quality.

Though for many casual shooters coming from older phones who don’t care about editing images themselves it looks like a solid upgrade.

 

[anticipate]

View attachment 972187 View attachment 972186

12 Pro on the left. iPhone 8 on the right.

View attachment 972189 View attachment 972190

12 Pro on the left. Iphone 8 on the right.


In all honestly? From this little outing with my 12 pro im a little bit dissapointed. Im a photographer and I use a D750 which has tremendous quality. Im also a bit naive, and an eternal optimist, and was really expenting to have my mind blown from a tremendous increase in quality in the 12 pro.

This has so far not happened.

The increases in photo quality are mostly computational, that means the hardware is more or less unchanged. Yes, the lenses have one extra element, but it doesnt really add that much.

A computational approach to photography has a tendency to be a bit.. well... too computational. Its simply not good enough at correcty determinig how to process the image.

The HDR images ive taken so far feels overprocessed, and out of my control. The shadows are a bit too strongly pushed towards the middle, and the same goes for the highlights. See the halos around edges on the shots from the 12 pro? Especially in the leaves of the trees. Its simply processed very heavily.

For an average user I bet this saves time, and it gets you a picture that looks well exposed and "worked" with. But for someone who is very detail oriented and into photography the results can feel a bit tacky and cheap.

Perhaps the pro raw feature will remedy this and give us a little bit more control over the strenght of the procssing of the image, im optimistic towards that.

Ohh well, its naive to think that where will be MASSIVE improvements in photo quality from an image sensor the size of half a stamp.

The 12 pro is good, by all means its a great phone with a great camera. But dont upgrade from an 11 pro for the camera alone!

The Pro Max will be better, for sure, but not untill the sensor of the camera increases and the lens elements gets even bigger will we see a truley big jump in quality from the images from an iPhone.

Ok rant over, thanks for reading. Ill just post pictures from now and let them speak for themselves

The iPhone 12 Pro Max has a 1/1.2" sensor in wide. It is very nearly a 1 inch sensor (how they fit that in there, I am not sure). This should be the most significant increase in quality iPhone has ever had from a "crunchiness/over sharpened" factor. Of course we won't know for sure until it's released... the processing may hurt it. Then again, one will get ProRAW to be able to make processing choices yourself.

Otherwise the differences in iPhone 11 and 12 are minimal at best, unless you include Portrait mode and added might modes (and 10 bit video, which is a big deal).

 

[lrsone]

 

[the future]

The iPhone 12 Pro Max has a 1/1.2" sensor in wide. It is very nearly a 1 inch sensor

Do you have a source for this (or can explain the way you calculated this yourself)? I think I read somewhere that the Max sensor is now something like 1/1.9 in size.

 

[canyonblue737]

And a 4K video shot in 30 FPS. I’m quite surprised at the stabilization. The first is the 11 Pro Max from yesterday evening. The second is the 12 Pro was now.

View attachment 972210

View attachment 972211

Obviously a lot of stabilization going on there but constant noticeable warping because of it is noticeable. I'm honestly surprised it isn't better by this point, GoPro has been doing their "Hypersmooth" 4k stabilization for 3 years now using very, very underpowered camera chips (nothing approaching an iPhone's A series processor) and they have stabilization that is staggeringly good, its like a gimbal in decent light and shows none of this warping. I would have thought Apple would have caught up to a tech like that by now...

This is HyperSmooth in Action

gopro.com

 

[Jumpie]

Obviously a lot of stabilization going on there but constant noticeable warping because of it is noticeable. I'm honestly surprised it isn't better by this point, GoPro has been doing their "Hypersmooth" 4k stabilization for 3 years now using very, very underpowered camera chips (nothing approaching an iPhone's A series processor) and they have stabilization that is staggeringly good, its like a gimbal in decent light and shows none of this warping. I would have thought Apple would have caught up to a tech like that by now...

This is HyperSmooth in Action

www.googleadservices.com

I wanna wait and see how the 12 Pro Max does because the the sensor

 

[canyonblue737]

I wanna wait and see how the 12 Pro Max does because the the sensor

I'm certainly curious but there is no way a 6.7 inch iPhone is for me, so the results hopefully are a preview of what I'll see in the normal sized iPhone 13 Pro next year...

 

[Samut]

Thanks for a good writeup. In almost every single example I do think the 12 is significantly better than the 8, but you are dead on right... it is the computational photography doing the magic at this point. Look at the skies... on the 8 it sets the exposure decently for the foreground which leaves the sky a white mess... the 12 is taking dozens of shots and applying HDR and the skies aren't blown out. The leaves are sharper true, but they reveal a lot of extra detail like the veins with better color. The reality is these phones are still limited by physics in terms of what a tiny tiny lens can do vs. a real camera with a lens that weighs the same as 5 entire iPhones or more, and obviously the sensor size that then reads the light that comes through the tiny lens is also very, very small (let's see how much a finally bigger sensor helps the 12 Pro Max this year). Apple has worked miracles to use essentially artificial intelligence to take flawed data and make it look far better than it deserves.

My hot take? I don't think the 12 Pro Max will even be that big a difference...

Hopefully we will see some larger sensors from Apple in the future as in combination with some lighter processing using ProRaw they should in theory give us some very nice results.

As Apple has decided to invest heavily on computational photography I suppose they could not use larger sensors from Sony as they currently have much slower read-times compared to smaller sensors from Sony.

“Sony says the conventional design of the sensor offers faster read-out speeds than the pixel-binning Quad-Bayer technology deployed in most current high-end phones. The entire sensor can be read out in 10ms versus 32ms for a 12MP image from a Quad-Bayer sensor.”

 

[Samut]

The iPhone 12 Pro Max has a 1/1.2" sensor in wide. It is very nearly a 1 inch sensor (how they fit that in there, I am not sure). This should be the most significant increase in quality iPhone has ever had from a "crunchiness/over sharpened" factor. Of course we won't know for sure until it's released... the processing may hurt it. Then again, one will get ProRAW to be able to make processing choices yourself.

Otherwise the differences in iPhone 11 and 12 are minimal at best, unless you include Portrait mode and added might modes (and 10 bit video, which is a big deal).

I think its going to be a 1/1.7” sensor if you calculate 47% increase from 1/2.55 sensor in iPhone 11 and iPhone 12.

 

[LonestarOne]

There are some night-mode samples on YouTube.

 

[LonestarOne]

As Apple has decided to invest heavily on computational photography I suppose they could not use larger sensors from Sony as they currently have much slower read-times compared to smaller sensors from Sony.

You’re assuming that they’re using Sony sensors. The launch video contains one brief mention of the “custum Apple sensor”. (I didn’t catch that reference until my second viewing.)

 

[xDENTALPLANx]

iPhone 12 vs iPhone 6.

There was exceptionally low light in the room (pitch darkness aside for one very small bedside lamp)

 

[Samut]

You’re assuming that they’re using Sony sensors. The launch video contains one brief mention of the “custum Apple sensor”. (I didn’t catch that reference until my second viewing.)

Apple has traditionally been using sensors from Sony, including the lidar. As sony is leading manufacturer for sensors I would say it is safe to assume they have not changed their supplier.

Edit: I have posted this article before but if you look at the sensor stack used in Xperia 1 ii it looks quite similar to what was in Apples presentation of iPhone 12. Therefore I believe both of the phones might share some of the same dna which is not a bad thing.

Sony provides an in-depth look at the Sony Xperia 1 II camera tech

 

[PieTunes]

Is that looking down Doyers while standing at Pell? I was just there last week. God I miss New York. What a hell of a town!

Great photos, thank you for sharing!

View attachment 972287

 

[Jumpie]

Hey, what type of dog is that? We have a rescue dog that looks just like him/her and the rescue group couldn't give us any detail on the breed or mix.

If you would have to ask lol. I can’t remember. But she’s a mix. Her brother is the same color in the opposite she is.

 

[theaudiobully87]

Lol at people (‘photographers’) getting shirty that the camera isn’t as good as their DSLRs. I mean. I’m shocked. You mean to tell me that the camera on a multi purpose device isn’t as good as your single purpose device? I don’t believe it. I expect more from Apple.

 

[Coffee_Time]

Lidar is 100% LG z camera. 😂You guys don't know anything. Sensors need a chip, glass, lenses, packaging, software, that is done by LG Innotek for Apple. Search LG Innotek iPhone on Google. 😂

 

[agsystems]

And a 4K video shot in 30 FPS. I’m quite surprised at the stabilization. The first is the 11 Pro Max from yesterday evening. The second is the 12 Pro was now.

View attachment 972210

View attachment 972211

The lens flare issue remains - Apple is aware of this I imagine but unable to remove it

 

[theaudiobully87]

Lidar is 100% LG z camera. 😂You guys don't know anything. Sensors need a chip, glass, lenses, packaging, software, that is done by LG Innotek for Apple. Search LG Innotek iPhone on Google. 😂

What?

 

[Samut]

Lidar is 100% LG z camera. 😂You guys don't know anything. Sensors need a chip, glass, lenses, packaging, software, that is done by LG Innotek for Apple. Search LG Innotek iPhone on Google. 😂

Thats an interesting observation. So basically sony makes the sensors and LG packages the camera modules.


“LG Innotek will be supplying 3D Time of Flight (ToF) modules for Apple’s next generation iPads and iPhones in 2020, according to industry sources on Sept. 16.

The ToF sensors for the iPad modules will come from Japan’s Sony, unlike last year when the sensors that LG Innotek supplied to LG Electronics’ G8 ThinQ smartphones came from Germany’s Infineon.

Sony is also likely to manufacture the ToF sensors for the iPhones as well, for which LG Innotek will be an exclusive supplier.”

LG Innotek to supply ToF modules for iPad, iPhones in 2020 - THE ELEC, Korea Electronics Industry Media

LG Innotek will be supplying 3D Time of Flight (ToF) modules for Apple’s next generation iPads and iPhones in 2020, according to industry sources on Sept. 16.ToF is a camera technology that allows...

www.thelec.net

 

[Joneszee904]

What I really want to see is if in night mode they still let in the light reflections in the picture. Having little green lights all over your shot really ruined it for me. I’m really hoping the 12 solved this issue.