Canon M50 vs The New Apple iPhone SE (2020) — Can mobile photography keep up? By KINOTIKA - Hosted By Zach Mayfield

This video is brought to you by gear focus the best place to go, to buy and sell used gear. What's cooking everybody Dave Mays here with Connecticut today we're comparing the Canon m50 to the brand-new iPhone SE. And yes, this is a dongle coming out of it because recording my audio with this phone now, because I received this iPhone SE a little later in the day, I only had about an hour and a half of sunlight left over to do my comparison, so I grabbed both cameras put on my mask, made sure to keep six feet between myself and others and went out and took a few pictures and video with these two cameras. So without any further ado, let's jump into my comparison between these two cameras, so the first photo is taken at a little park. Nearby and again, I did keep my 6 feet, distance from everybody and wore a mask. As you can see, the m50 doesn't look very good if we zoom in to 100%, you can see.

You know, of course, how sharp Corner is the kit lens isn't really that bad? It's an F 3.5 aperture, and you can actually see some depth of field going on there with the fence in focus and the sharpness of the text. You can actually read all that text there. The colors look good dynamic range, isn't the best. This is all just baked in with the standard profile. I turned some saturation down a little in the contrast down, but you can see in the skies in the corner.

It's totally blown out. The clouds are completely overexposed and if you really wanted to push this you're, not going to have a ton of dynamic range in JPEG. But if you go to the iPhone shot zoom in to 100%, you can again see here how sharp everything is. In fact, I can still read all the text just like before, and the resolution on this camera is great, 12 megapixels, so it's plenty for your average shot. The thing that's most amazing about this image is the sky is not as overexposed as the previous shot and that's because the iPhone does a smart HDR effect where it's exposing for the shadows, the highlights and the mid-tones, and it brings all those images together to create this image.

So if you go back and forth and look at them side-by-side, you can see if the m50 does have a more contrast, II kind of more natural look to it, but the iPhone is actually seemingly capturing more detail. Now, if I wanted to I could shoot the image in raw on the m50 and create a similar looking HDR effect to the m50 shot and I do think. The m50 shot is more pleasing because of the background blur that we're getting but side by side. Apples to apples here, both of them are very good. The color on both of them looks fabulous moving on to the shot of the water and the mountains and in on the m50 again it looks perfect.

Colors look very pleasing I'm, not overexposed, because I exposed for the sky here and if you zoom in to a hundred percent on this image, you can see how sharp everything looks. It's not perfect again, this lens isn't the best and that's maybe giving us a little of a softness on the edges. Here you can see the trees are getting a little soft, but right in the middle, everything seems to be sharp. The mountains. Look nice and sharp overall, very pleasing image, but check this out.

As soon as we go over to the iPhone again, you can see how much of the sky we're kind of losing with the m50 because of its limited dynamic range again, you could simulate this effect with a raw image on the m50, but then you're having to do a lot of post-processing and a lot of posts to work on it. This is literally straight out of the camera with the iPhone SE. This there's no color correction done to this image. If you zoom in you can see again how sharp everything is and this time corner to corner sharpness, all the way through the trees are a little sharper here. The iPhone has a much smaller sensor, so it does kind of have a little of a muddy look to it, and you know when you compare it to the m50.

If you see the side-by-side comparison here, the m50 is on the bottom, the iPhones on the top straight out of camera, though I'm gonna favor, the iPhone shot because of the sky and the water. It just looks so much better because of the dynamic range going on. But if once you zoom in you can see that the m50 does have overall, more detail, that's because of the larger sensor and just overall, better glass, but here's something that's fascinating with the m50. Just simply can't do, and that is using an app like the spectra app. It's an app that I found because the App Store recommended it.

They said it was one of their top performing apps of the year in 2019, and so I downloaded it to give it a try. What's so cool about it is you can create a long exposure, look without the need of a filter? Usually if you want to have that kind of streaming water effect or the light trails that you see on cars, you're going to need a filter to stop down the light to keep that shutter wide open for a long extended amount of time. The spectra app simulates it using an app you just can't do that on in 50, and I was able to create this really glossy glassy. Looking image with the iPhone using this app everything looks nice and sharp. Then we have this really cool effect in the water.

I tried my best to do it with the m50 I didn't have an Indy filter at all. I basically tried to open my shutter up as long as possible, without over exposing I was able to bring it down a little, but there's nowhere near as much of a blur going on the water and I think the iPhone shot looks so much better. So this is the Canon m50 straight out of camera 60 frames per second 1080p mode. This is the 4k 60 and oh, my gosh such a crazy difference between obviously 4k and 1080. The only reason I did at this comparison, I mean obviously 1080 to 4k, is a huge comparison.

I would even argue that the 1080 on the iPhone would probably look way sharper than the 1080 on the m50, but the reason I did this is that on the m50 there's a very heavy crop that goes on in the 4k mode. So if you want to compare it in terms of framing, you want to compare it with the 1080 on the m-52, the iPhone SE 4k, because then your framing is going to look the same, and obviously the 4k 60 on this camera is significantly sharper. It looks great we're having that same kind of crazy dynamic range going on as well here, which is really amazing. To look at the sky is totally exposed, as well as the water and the mid-tones. It's because the iPhone is doing the same kind of HDR effect with the video which is unique, and you can't do that on a real camera.

If you zoom in to 200% side-by-side, look at the details on this tree compared to the iPhone and the m50, it's just really no comparison. The iPhone is significantly sharper and obviously to be as fair as possible. I did want to try the 4k mode on the m50. This is what 1080 looks like and that's how much of a crop that happens in the 4k mode on the m50, but difference is massive, have a huge jump in quality. The trees are super sharp I, really think this image is very pleasing, and even though the 4k on the iPhone is probably sharper than this I find the m50 s 4k to be more pleasing and more cinematic.

So, if you're willing to deal with some caveats of the m50 s, 4k mode, which is the crop and the lack of the autofocus, you do have a contrast based autofocus in this mode, but it is terrible. You're, basically, going to have to manually focus to do 4k on this camera. If you're willing to deal with those caveats, the 4k on the m50 is perfect. Look at the difference between the trees here, one is very sharp, but it's kind of got a post-processing look to it. It's over sharp, in my opinion and the m50, looks very cinematic and pleasing and if that's a little too soft, where you can actually dial some sharpness up in post-production, and it'll, actually look really pleasing, so the m50 is 4k, believe it or not, is very good if you're willing to deal with some caveats with it and one way to get around, that is to use a speed.

Booster, we've done a review on the speed booster with the m50 that basically gets rid of the crop and allows you to use lenses like the amazing Sigma 18 to 35 F 1.8 lens, and that lens with a speed booster on the m50 can actually create some really amazing results. You just going to have to shoot manual focus, and you have to buy a very expensive speed. Booster I'm, moving on to a portrait shot of myself again see I'm wearing a mask. It's very important these days to wear, masks and yeah I mean it looks very pleasing. I think this was shot at 17 millimeters on the m50, which is simulating the look of the 28 millimeter focal length on the iPhone, and this looks great I mean there is some blowing out going on in the background here, but overall, a pleasing image.

We got some nice both going on in the trees. This is what a normal camera looks like moving on to the iPhone here and very interesting results. Color wise. This does look a little better. In some cases, I think the skin tones are a little more vibrant.

The sky is certainly way more exposed here. You can see much more of the sky, that's because of the HDR effect, but the biggest difference here is, of course, the lack of depth-of-field. You just don't get that kind of beautiful. Look that you get with a proper camera. This looks like a real shot on a good camera versus this, which you can kind of tell a shot on an iPhone.

However, it is pleasing, and I think if you're just taking images of your family or friends, this can totally suffice. Now I wanted to try the new portrait mode on the iPhone SE and that's what we did next, we use the portrait mode using this new software based portrait effect. It's the same that you see on the iPhone XR or the 10r, whatever you want to call it where it's not using multiple lenses, it's actually doing software to figure out whose faces in this shot, and it cuts you out of the background in as this blur and I do think this was pretty successful. It doesn't seem to have any real flaws here and that's probably because my image is so clean, I don't have any gaps or holes in the image. My hat is keeping my hair from giving any weird effects, and overall it does it look pretty good I, think the portrait mode on the iPhone SE is right up there with any other camera company and when you compare them side by side with the m50 and the iPhone, the iPhone has much more vibrant colors.

It's holding all the highlights of the sky in there and the m50 isn't doing that. But again, the m50 does look a little more professional because we have true actual depth of field going on, and the image is a little cleaner overall. So this is just a close-up shot. This isn't really a great side by side comparison you'll see in a minute, because they're not perfect, but again. This is where a real camera comes in handy, because this looks like a real, proper close-up of an image using a great lens.

Obviously, the Lighting's great I love how you can see some sunlight hitting my hand here. It's giving a nice rim light and this depth of field effect that's going on. Is that something you can really simulate with the iPhone at least not, yet it's not looking as good on the iPhone. As you can see here, the close-up of the m50, it's just not as much depth of field the image looks kind of flat. The sharpness is good.

The m50 does look good and when you put something closer to the lens on the iPhone, it does look better because you are getting more blur, but it's really no comparison here. The m50 in this close-up shot definitely looks better something new that came with the iPhone. Se is a portrait selfie mode which is similar to the portrait shot. We saw earlier of me in the field, but it's actually using the front-facing camera on the iPhone, which is a first for an iPhone like this, because all the iPhones before it that have done a selfie mode have faced ID on them. The face ID sensor has the ability to determine depth which allows the portrait selfie to work very well, because it's able to see ok, the face is X amount, distance away from the camera, so everything beyond at that point should be blurred.

This is completely using software, it's detecting my face and then cutting me out around that and I think it's done a perfect job, the m50 again to me, it looks more pleasing. It has more information in the colors and I. Think it's a sharper image, but the portrait selfie mode is no slouch. It actually cut out my hand here you can see very well and around my hair. Furthermore, it looks pretty good.

However, right there, you can see that little sliver on my hair is not cut out perfectly and around the edges is a little blurry as compared to the m50. You can see everything looks the way it should. The things that are supposed to be in focus are in focus and the things that aren't are so still not there yet, but it is a huge improvement, and I'm glad that they incorporated this on the camera. So this next sequence of images is only taken on the iPhone and I started off. First with the selfie camera and I do think.

The just straight out of camera selfie looks pretty decent. It's very sharp, and I even got some cool kind of depth of field going on back there, but you'll see here as we move to the portrait mode, you actually get a pretty clean shot and again the ears are a little weird and my hair looks kind of strange for I was wearing a hat or if I had my hair back. Maybe this type of image would do better. My little curls don't do very well with portrait mode effects, but I think the blur and the both going on in the background, looks really cool, and I'm. Honestly, pretty surprised with this selfie portrait mode effect, I think it looks pretty decent and the selfie camera in general doesn't look too bad at all, but obviously, when you compare it to the main camera on the iPhone SE, it's really no comparison.

This is much sharper. I love the colors here, they're much more vibrant and the background especially is being held so much better with the HDR effect. I would honestly say that this shot here is the way to go, and if you are able to hold your phone and use the main camera when you're taking a selfie or a group shot. If you can actually get away with holding your phone in that way, I would highly recommend it I. Do it all the time people think I'm nuts, because I'm taking a group shot like this instead of like this, but you get a much better image like this.

I have done the three-second timer in the past, or you set the three-second timer hit go, and you just hold your phone out and then just hope that it got the image correctly. That's the best way to take a selfie shot or a group shot, because the image is just so much better than using the selfie camera it just always is, and then, of course, the new portrait mode with the main camera looks much better than the selfie mode portrait. Yeah, I mean it's just light years, better more blur going on there more dynamic range, a better shot. Overall. This was just another closeup test with some flowers here, and you can really see the difference between the time the dynamic range and also the depth of field difference between the two.

This is taken on the em-50 as close as I possibly could get with that lens, and this is taken with the iPhone and there's really no comparison here. I think now those two shots I tried to match, because that was as close as I could get with the m50, but this next shot here is me putting the iPhone as close as I possibly could get to the flower, and, as you can see, this looks way better. Much more pleasing you get way more depth of field again, as close as you can get to. The lens gives you more depth of field more blur behind the camera, and this looks much better. I could easily throw a filter on that put some disco on that with a little of grain, that image could actually look pretty decent on Instagram, and then I had to snap a photo of Leo.

My cat. You can see him laying down there. That's what the m50 everything looks nice and sharp, and then this is with the iPhone again. You can see the huge difference in depth of field and there's a side by side here where you can see how much blur is going on with the m50, that's because of the larger sensor and that 3.5 aperture on an APC size sensor versus even an F 1.8 on a lens like this, it's just not going to give you that depth of field, because the sensor is smaller than the nail on my pinky finger. So having a tiny sensor just gives you more depth of field, and you know it does look a little over sharp to me.

The m50 has more pleasing look overall, but both are able to get the shot and they both look sharp and decent. Now, here's an example of what the portrait mode effect looks like when you're not taking a picture of a person. I was a little sad to see that it doesn't recognize animals. It only works with people, and here you can see a screen recording of Leo standing there, and it's not able to detect him and give it a blur of any kind. Although, as I got closer to Leo, you can see actually, if I were to have taken that photo just a normal photo.

I got some nice blur going on background in the back, because again I'm getting super close to the subject. So that's you know if I took that photo right there that actually wouldn't wouldn't have been too bad, but as soon as I film, my son instantly recognizes the face and is already doing some computational blur effects right there and yeah. So the blur only works on people, not animals which gives the iPhone 11 and the 11pro quite an advantage, because you can actually use the portrait mode in all sorts of circumstances. You could use it to take a photo of this microphone. You can use it to take a photo of a camera.

Furthermore, you can use it to take images of animals. The portrait mode effect works on pretty much everything versus this, which is only on human faces. Now here's me going through all the lighting effects. The contour lighting looks pretty good stage lighting. These things have been around for a while their kind of gimmicks in a way.

I don't really see anybody using these effects, but it is cool how it works. You can see how it's even recognizing my hand from the background and keeping it cut out, which is pretty impressive overall, but it's not perfect by any means. One thing that I noticed, though, if I'm doing a selfie portrait is even if there's a subject ? behind me quite a distance away. Like my son here, I was seated up a little away from him and I wanted to see if there would be a blur between my face and his face, because if it were a real lens, and it was focused on my face- he would be in the background you can see here. If I take an image and the camera is able to recognize his face, both of our faces are totally sharp, which is completely incorrect.

This is not how photography works. You can actually see. I am sharp here and the couch is blurry in the background, then, once you come over here to his face now he's sharp and this couch is sharp, but then this area is blurry. It's just. This is wrong.

Now, I know why they've done this they've done this, because a lot of people probably were taking portrait selfies and the group of people in the background were blurry, and it was like. Why am IA sharp, but everybody behind me is blurry. I noticed that with the older software and I think they've probably changed that now, so that everybody who's in the shot stays sharp. But the problem is what, if my family was standing here and then this person, in the background, was just some random stranger at Disneyland or something and their face was sharp. Now I've got some weird stranger, that's in focus in the image, so I think this is a weird effect and once I obstructed his face, you can actually see.

This is how the blur is supposed to look. My face is sharp in the foreground. Everything in the foreground is sharp, and then it gets blurry. In the background. This is how it's supposed to look he's supposed to be blurry like that, because that's how a lens properly works so be aware of that when you're doing portrait selfies the difference between the two is pretty substantial and quite strange.

Now this is a quick low-light test. This is the m50 at an ISO of I. Think 1600 and the image overall does look pretty clean. The iPhone is doing some significant noise reduction here and unfortunately, the iPhone does not have the new night mode that is enabled on the iPhone 11 and the 11 Pro I was hoping to see that with the SE, but we don't get that here. We just get standard low-light performance and overall it does look good.

It is doing some crazy noise reduction. The m50 isn't doing as much noise reduction because it doesn't have to, and I've disabled that feature on the m50, and you also get a lot of depth of field here. You can see how blurry the background is on this and I phone everything is completely sharp. You can see all the noise reduction that's going on, but I think overall, the noise performance is pretty decent, and it's definitely a step-up from the iPhone 8, which this camera is coming from now, at the end of the day, both of these cameras are very different, and I wouldn't actually compare these two in any legitimate way, because this has a massive APC sensor with interchangeable lenses on it, and this is a phone with a very small sensor. Inside it.

However, it is interesting to see what you can get with a budget phone like this: a $3.99 phone compared it to a budget mirrorless camera, the m50, which is known for being one of the best budget, Canon mirrorless, is out there I think I paid $400 for this body here and the phone is $400, so apples to apples, I, guess they're, similar in price point, but you can't make a phone call. You can't go on Twitter or Instagram with this, and obviously, if this again is a phone with a camera, that's pretty good on it for most people, and I'm talking about people who don't actually care about having interchangeable lenses and just want something straight out of the box. It's gonna always look good. The iPhone SE is seriously a great option, especially with the video features. I was blown away with the 4k 60 foot edge coming off of this, it looks amazing and there's some incredible dynamic range stuff going on in the video settings that you just can't get with a mirrorless camera.

Now, of course, if you want to start a YouTube channel, maybe you want to have a dedicated camera with a nice flip screen like this, then the m50 is a much better tool for dedicated video shooting, because the best camera on this phone is the back facing camera and when you're filming yourself, you can't see yourself at all so obviously having a flip screen like this is very handy if you're wanting to film yourself, but if you are starting out on a YouTube channel, this still is going to be a great option. If you only have 400 or 500 dollars to spend when you buy a camera like this you're having to buy lighting, microphones tripods, all those types of things and with this all you're really looking at is a very small lightweight footprint tripod. Potentially a microphone like this that I'm you. This is the rode smart lav which cost like 50 bucks or even less, and you're, ready to go a tripod. A mic sit next to a window or buy a cheap light like the one I'm actually using right now that I bought off Amazon for I, think 20 or 30 bucks, and you can start your own YouTube channel and from this same device edit.

The entire thing uploads it do all that type of stuff with this device. So again, a mobile phone is coming in clutch compared to a normal camera, because again this just doesn't have any apps on it at all. Now the portrait mode effect on this is it any good? Does it compare to a DSLR, of course, not you're, getting a true actual real both with a DSLR or mirrorless camera like this, and you just can't compete with that. I would say that the iPhone 11 Pro probably is giving you much better portrait mode because it has multiple lenses. It's able to do a more advanced kind of algorithm.

To give you a more realistic looking blur, but the blur effect on this phone really is no slouch. I mean that one shot of me in the field with my hat on, looks spotless, but that's also kind of an ideal portrait mode shot. I had no hair sticking out to get messed up. My glasses were actually perfectly in front of my face, whereas if they were a little off to the side, because they're clear you might see some issues there, my arms weren't, even gapped out my arms were like into my chest here. So if there was a gap in between my armhole and the background, maybe that wouldn't be blurred I've seen that happen before.

But if you do have an ideal setup like that, then the portrait mode does look pretty realistic and pretty good, throw a disco filter on it, add a little of green, and it actually can sort of look halfway decent and then the thing that was actually most impressive to me was the selfie portrait mode, which seems to be working pretty well. Of course, in those shots, I wasn't wearing a hat, so you could see my hair kind of getting blurred on the sides and that wasn't very great. But overall the portrait mode, cutout effect, it did look perfect, and I'm pretty impressed by that, because on the iPhone, and I'm, actually really impressed by that, because on the other iPhone models, the iPhone 11 iPhone 10/10- are those phones have a little face, ID camera on it that actually can sense depth and that helps with the porch selfie function. On those cameras, this phone does not have that feature at all, because this is a touch ID phone overall, the selfie function with the portrait mode effect worked pretty well, except that kind of weird face recognition thing that you saw with my son now that is going to come in handy when you are taking group selfies, you want everybody's face to be in focus, but it just kind of looks a little weird because well maybe it's just because I know what a real camera lens looks like, and it just looks a little awkward, but I don't know. Let me know your thoughts down below in the comment section.

This was a quick video and if you want to see a more detailed comparison between these two cameras, let me know as well as a Google Pixel 3a vs iPhone SE to comparison. I really feel like the 3a versus the SE.2 is gonna, be the perfect comparison, because they're in the same price point and the cameras on both of them are very good. I have a feeling with the Pixel 3a photos are gonna, look better, but that's just what I'm guessing comment down below and if you are new here thanks for watching this video, would you please consider subscribing and turning on the notification bell, so you can see all the videos in the future with the new iPhone SE I've also made a playlist for you guys right here, that you can watch with all sorts of videos that are similar to this. That I think you guys might enjoy including a Canon m50 review. So let me know if you like those videos in the playlist as well once again I'm Dave Mays.

This is Kiyosaki, and we'll see you next time. I'd like to thank gr focus comm for sponsoring this video I actually got my m50 from gear focus for this review. The process was extremely simple: I found a buyer that was selling that the camera that I wanted, and I found the whole buying process just as easy as any other amazing online service. The thing that makes gear focus unique, however, compared to eBay, Craigslist or other places like offer up, where I unfortunately was robbed, is the fact that every purchase and every sale is backed by gear focuses guarantee that what they're selling and what you're buying is actually authentic and legit. Every seller that sets up their account has to verify that they are the real deal with the website before they can even start to sell something and because the entire site is designed specifically for photographers and filmmakers in mind.

All the products for sale are to the professional, audio video and photo fields. I always recommend that everybody buys it used and sells their equipment that they're not using because it's kind of a waste having tons of gear that you're just not using anymore when those items could be sold for hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, especially during this time when every dollar counts so get on gear focused calm, there's no fee for creating a listing and there's only a 3.5% cellar fee eBay, for example. If you were to sell a $1000 item, takes 10% of that sell for themselves. Three point: five percent is the lowest in the market and I highly recommend checking out gear focus. Calm I like to think your focus again for sponsoring this video and for providing the Canon m50.

For this comparison.

Source : KINOTIKA - Hosted By Zach Mayfield