iPhone 11 Pro Camera — A photographer's review By Joe Allam

Welcome to the outside road- oh, it is much nicer that case. Isn't it hey how's it going. Everyone welcome to magnetite Japan. So last week Apple announced the iPhone 11 Pro and, of course the iPhone 11, and I've had my hands on it for the past week or so, and I've been getting some shots of it. I even went to the event itself, but in this video I'm going to be talking about the photography modes and the camera specifically on the iPhone 11 Pro I've got the max version here, but it should be pretty much the same on the iPhone 11 Pro, the iPhone 11 is similar, but it has a few limitations and, of course, only shooting in some daytime scenarios, but I do have plans to do some nighttime photography in a future video when I return to Tokyo, because I think that's going to be a pretty cool setting for some night stuff, let's run through what's new with the iPhone and how it differs and all these incremental upgrades, because this is, as I said in my first impressions kind of like the 10s s, it's an incremental upgrade. It's not a huge massive increase on previous versions, however, depending on where you're upgrading from you may feel big improvements, but it may not be the full justification for the thousand dollars, plus that you would spend on this phone.

So with this being a device, that's been loaned to me as a pre-release device. I need to be very careful about showing it in public and stuff, so I'm not able to kind of flex my creative skills all that much, however, I can still hopefully show a lot of the details and their sort of functionality. The camera. These just may not be my best images, of course. So we've now got three cameras on the back to work with, all of which are 12 megapixels.

There is the main camera, which is the white in terms of a full-frame field of view. This is the equivalent of a twenty-six millimeters and has an F 1.8 aperture. It also has optical image, stabilization and 100% focus pixels across the whole sensor, there's also the tell lens, which we've known on previous models. This is now a 2.0 aperture and also has the optical image stabilization and the equivalent field of view of a 52 millimeter lens. Now, the new addition for this year is the ultra-wide.

This has the equivalent of a 13 millimeter and has an aperture of a 2.4. This, however, doesn't have optical image stabilization in terms of ultra-wide. The angle of view is a hundred and twenty degrees, so that is an extremely wide view. I personally, don't like shooting too white I like to control my distortion and maintain verticals correctly. So those are the three options on the back of the 11 Pro and 11 Pro max, but on the iPhone 11 we only have the two lenses, and that is the ultra-wide and the white, both of which will be the exact same hardware that we've gotten the 11 Pro.

So the camera quality for those two field of views will still be an identical so for iOS 13 on these new iPhones, we've got a new interface to work with in the camera app, so I'm talking predominately with the native camera app. Of course, you can use third-party apps, but unfortunately, because this is a pre-release model, you can't access the ultra-wide when using third-party apps. Just yet so. With this new interface, we've got what's kind of like a new rangefinder style, where you can actually compose your shot as standard, but using data from the ultra-wide lens we can actually see what's outside the frame. So this is when you're shooting in the wide mode and the tell.

So this is similar to what I have when I'm, using the optical viewfinder on my X 100 F or, if you're, using an old-style rangefinder, it's really great for street photography, because you can just see action happening just outside, and you can quickly work to it. If you don't like shooting in that mode, you can actually change it in your settings. Equally, if you shoot in the tell or the wide mode after you've actually taken your shot, you can go into your photos. You can edit and get extra data from that ultra-wide. This is pretty great again.

It can also do this I've actually disabled it, because I always want to have my compose shot as I took it. But if you like, you can have iOS do automatically, which is a nice feature for the general user. We've also got certain controls now, grouped together, such as the aspect ratio, the self-timer and other features they're, all hidden under a little sliding area. One of my favorite features is the new shutter design, so you can just tap to take a photo as normal in photo mode, or you can tap and hold. If you want to quickly do a video mode when you're holding you can slide to the right and that will lock it into a complete video mode, and then you just have a stop button, or you can just release, and it will just stop filming.

The other option is when you're holding. If you slide to the left, that will change it into a burst, photo mode. There's also a new night mode that I mentioned previously. I have taken some shots already in the nighttime, but I want to spend more time kind of exploring it and kind of experimenting around with it, especially with varying light in dark scenes. And what's nice with this- and this is so typical of Apple- is that it is an automatic on or off feature.

So you don't have to go into a separate mode. It just enables when you need it, you can always disable it if you want to, but, as is true with most Apple products, it is seamless as an experience so overall as a shooting experience on the iPhone 11 Pro. This has been fairly stable and pretty much the same experience that you've come to know in love with previous iPhones, with those incremental upgrades, but one of the features that I really love about this and it kind of explains why we've got this ugly sort of three lens system going on. Is that when you change between the camera modes, there is little to no color shift or change of exposure and white balance. As you zoom through those, you can get a really smooth experience.

I've used other phones, I actually have the Huawei p20 Pro, the 1 + 5 t, and I've even shot with the 1 + 7 and all of those have kind of had jarring experiences and just not quite in the same seamless way. The reason I mentioned the 3 way system is that all the lenses are equidistant from each other, and I'm sure the way the Apple have designed. It is so that when you are changing, there's no significant jump in sort of angle of view and whatever in your composition and the software does really well to make it a smooth experience. You can see a slight change if you do it slowly, but for the most part it is a smooth experience with this new three-way design. I have found myself kind of getting my fingers in the way.

Sometimes, so you do just need to change the way that you shoot. One of the extra features that I'm noticing on it is there's a metal ring around the lens, so I'm wondering if that's magnetic similar to the DJI Oslo pocket, so I'm hoping third-parties will be able to make some filters that you can magnetically stick on to there, because that is one thing that you can suffer with on smartphone when shooting in bright conditions such as this, so something I would love to see in the shooting experience within the native app is a built-in level, so the ability to just see when your shot is level. In particular. This would be so useful on the verticals, especially when shooting with that ultra-wide, because you do get some serious distortion. It takes a lot, a skill to be able to shoot correctly in ultra-wide now one thing that I am kind of worried about as a global phenomenon, because the iPhone is literally the most popular camera in the world.

How is this ultra-wide going to change trends within photography, the general user, that kind of going to be taking shots, that you know just fill groups or just get everything in frame and from a creative perspective. You may start to see very trendy, distorted images, or rather very popular images being distorted, and I'm. Just wondering how that's going to affect digital photography as this moment in history, because the iPhone is so popular. That being said, the variety of lenses is a huge bonus. It is amazing.

Creative control, because to zoom from the ultra-wide to the wide to the tell, is actually a significant difference. So I've got some examples that show how you can go between the three and how it really changes and the detail you can see in it is really impressive. Basic editing of the photos within the Photos app is adequate. It's good to kind of get you started. I personally prefer to use Lightroom, and again I use Lightroom Mobile, quite a lot when I'm shooting, equally I can use the Lightroom camera.

But, as I said, you can't use the ultra white currently on that. Likewise, it would be nice to have a filter on there that I could shoot in a flatter color profile, so that I can edit things further and the biggest thing that is an issue for me is there is no raw photo mode in the native camera. App I'm going to keep mentioning this because Apple and marketing this as a pro photography mode, and can you really call it pro photography mode if it doesn't have raw I? Don't think so? This is marketing at its kind of most obvious, but unfortunately it just doesn't hit the mark on its name. It's not to say that the phone can't do it, because third-party apps can shoot in RAW. There are API's for that, so the hardware is definitely capable.

You can do that. It's just it's nice to have that button on the home screen to go straight to the native app, and that brings me to my next thing, which is missing from this phone, which I do sorely miss, and that is the 3d touch. So there's no longer the 3d touch to tap that camera icon on the home screen. You don't have to do the new touch on here with the haptic feedback. It still works in the same way, but the response just isn't quite the same and I do miss that there have been some improvements to portrait modes so again, utilizing the new, a 13 Bionic chip and the new GPU, as well as a lot of machine learning, there's been a lot better processing for skin tones and more details and actually separating the way that lighting hits certain subjects within a frame in terms of overall speed.

I mean iPhones have always been fast for me. So, yes, this is faster, but am I really noticing it. I mean it's smooth, but can I really notice it in the same percentage difference that they're advertising I think it's beyond fast at this point, to really be able to spot that. One thing I have noticed, though, is that battery life definitely is significantly better, so using the max version, it's even better than just the regular iPhone, Pro and I guess, with the improvements to the processing and chip and the graphics and everything. This is great for the real-time processing.

This is what Apple are known for the fact that what you are composing through the viewfinder is what you see as the shot actually happens. There's one thing, I noticed with other smartphones, is that quite often what you're actually composing in the experience of what you're seeing isn't that similar to the end result, and it's kind of jarring to know if you've got the shot or not usually the end results are great, but it's that view finder experience that sometimes just has me questioning did I get the shot, did I, not the HDR in the photo seems natural and has a good, creative taste. Other manufacturers that I've See, who is a kind of blown up the shadows to reveal all the details, and sometimes it just looks a bit too over processed and just not to my taste, I generally like to work on my images and have a nice natural shadow, fall off and highlight roll off and I. Think that's where there's a difference in opinion between different smartphones for photography. Some people just like to see an image that looks great straight out of camera.

Other people like to see one this may be a little more natural, but, generally speaking, you should always shoot with the cameras that you feel most comfortable with it doesn't matter. You know which brand it is just shot with the one that makes you happy and that gets the results. You were expecting. One little surprised that Apple released was an improvement to the front-facing camera. They didn't really shout about this too much, but this is now a 12 megapixel that also shoots 4k in video mode.

Now, of course, there are some negative that I'm not enjoying about the new iPhone 11 and 11 Pro, the 12 megapixels are nice. I would say that 16 megapixels would probably be ideal. That would match the same. What we had on the Fuji film at 1 and AT 10, for example, they were more than adequate for most users. You don't want to go too high for such a small sensor, but equally 16 megapixels is kind of like the sweet spot in terms of if you want to print things in just extra detail on today's high resolution, displays the lack of 3d touch for the camera.

Icon isn't noticeable it's an it's a difference in experience, and I'm, not a fan with it. I've been shooting with it for about a week or so, and yeah still not got used to the fact that it's different I, sorely missed that I'm, not the biggest fan of the design of the lens arrangement on the back, but I do understand the theory behind it with the equidistant sort of design of it. I guess it's more noticeable on the colored version, so I've got the midnight green here and because the actual lenses themselves are black, it does stand out, whereas if you had the black device with the black backing, it's maybe less noticeable. That's just my opinion on it. It doesn't bother me too much, but you know it's.

It's not. The best. I will say, though, that when you look at the images it's a little jarring, but when you see it in person, it's less of a jarring experience, so that just about wraps up all of my thoughts for the photography experience on the new iPhone 11 Pro I'm going to be doing a future video. The filming experience, so I'm going to be heading back to Tokyo soon and making the video there, so I'm. Looking forward to that, if you enjoyed this video, please share it with other people who will also enjoy it post it on social media or on Reddit, or you know, wherever you like to share your things and if you're new to the community, then I invite you to subscribe and hit the bell notification.

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Source : Joe Allam