iPhone 12 vs iPhone 11 Detailed Camera Comparison By TecworkZ

Hey guys it’s Sagar from Tecworkz, and this video let us compare the cameras on the iPhone 12 with the ones on the iPhone 11. I included a few image and video samples from the iPhone 12 and iPhone 11 in the full review of these phones, but you guys wanted to see a full on Tecworkz style detailed camera comparison video. So here it is. Right before the iPhone 12 was launched, Apple reduced prices of the iPhone 11 in India. So there is a good Rs.25,000+ difference between the price of both these phones. In this video, let us try to find out that for the extra price, do the cameras on the iPhone 12 give us a noticeable improvement over the ones on iPhone 11 or not.

We have well over 90 image and video samples from both these phones to look at. But before we get to those, it is important to check out the cameras that we are working with. If you don’t find this information useful, you can skip ahead to the image and video samples, from the chapters in this videos timeline. But before that, if you are new to this channel, or if you haven’t subscribed to the channel yet, please make sure to hit the subscribe button and the bell icon next to it. Both phones get dual 12 megapixel cameras on their back.

iPhone 11 gets F/1.8 aperture, 26mm lens and OIS on the primary camera. And its secondary camera gets F/2.4 aperture and a 13mm ultra wide lens. primary camera on the iPhone 12 also gets a 26mm lens and OIS, but it gets a wider F/1.6 aperture, which lets in more light on the sensor. Secondary camera gets F/2.4 aperture and 13mm ultra wide lens, so it is same as the one on the iPhone 11. On both the phones, You can shoot 4k videos at 24,30 and 60fps and 1080p videos at 30,60,120 or 240fps.

Extended dynamic range for upto 4K 60fps. Now the iPhone 12 can also shoot 10 bit Dolby Vision HDR videos at upto 30fps. Both phones have 12 megapixel True Depth cameras at the front, with F/2.2 aperture and 23mm lens. And both can take videos at upto 4K 60fps. Camera specs on both these phones sound pretty much the same, but the wider aperture on the primary camera, and better image processing of the A14 chip on the iPhone 12, should help it perform slightly better.

With all of that out of the way, let us move on to comparing the image and video samples from both these phones. Starting with the ones that I took in daytime. Both the phones are capturing amazing looking images with the primary camera. If you look closer, images from the iPhone 12 are showing a bit richer looking colours. There is a pinkish hue towards the horizon, which is clearly visible in the 12’s image, but hard to make out in the image from the iPhone11.

In this set of images, we see the same thing, the sky looks better to my eyes in the image of the iPhone 12. The difference is subtle, and you will have to compare these images side by side to notice it. Other wise, images from both are looking so good. In these bright lighting conditions, both are capturing similar amount of details in these shots. Even as we zoom in, you won’t see much difference in the detail level.

I looked at these images on a bigger display, zoomed way in, and I still couldn’t find a major difference between them. So it is very unlikely that you will find the images form the iPhone 11 to be lacking behind the iPhone 12 in any way, in these kind of bright lighting conditions. Something that you can notice without zooming in, is that the images from the iPhone 12 show a bit richer looking colours. Both of them prioritise bringing up the shadows, so there isn’t too much contrast in these images. But if you look at the sky or the brown ceiling in this shot, or the green colour on the wall in this shot, its colours look better in the images from the iPhone 12.

iPhone 12 captures a bit more saturated colours compared to the iPhone 11. It’s overall colours are also a bit warmer compared to the iPhone 11, and I am starting to like it. If you are uploading these images to social media, you won’t have to edit them further to make the colours pop out. They look good, right out of the camera. This is what I feel about the colours that iPhone 12 is capturing, but everyone perceives colours in a different way, and what looks good to me, might not look the same to you.

So look at these images, and decide for yourself that which colours look better or more natural to your eyes. When it comes to high dynamic range situations, both these phones do a very good job. But thanks to the SmartHDR 3 on the iPhone 12, its images look a bit better. It brought up more details form the shadows in this shot. And in this one, while both seem to have don’t well with the bright sun in the shot, iPhone 11 added a lot of noise while bringing up the shadows in this part.

Whereas the the iPhone 12 has done a better job of keeping that noise down. In this shot, for some reason, the iPhone 11 doesn’t seem to have fired the HDR mode, but the iPhone 12 did, and look at how much better its image looks in comparison. In iPhone 11’s image, We can bring up the shows in editing, but it also bring in a lot of noise in the image, which doesn’t really look good. In this shot, sun was right behind these leaves, and here I think the iPhone 11 did a better job with the dynamic range. But while doing so, it couldn’t keep the focus locked on the flower.

Which makes he iPhone 12’s image look slightly better, because the flower in its image is in focus. This is one of my favourite shots, and I showed it in iPhone12’s individual camera review as well. Just like the 12, iPhone 11 has also done an excellent job with the dynamic range in this one. While taking close up shots, iPhone 12 is a hair faster at focusing than the iPhone 11, which is already very fast. You can also get a bit closer to the subject on the iPhone 12, and still be able to set the focus, compared to the 11.

Other than that, and the colours appearing a bit warmer in the images form the iPhone 12, close up shots from both these phones look very good. Subject closest tot the camera, or the one that you tap on is in perfect sharp focus, and the background gets a very nice optical blur. The aperture on the main camera of the iPhone 12 is a bit wider, so the background in its shots is blurred out a bit more. All the images till now were clicked with the main camera on both the phones. And now here are a few that I took with the wide cameras on both.

You can see how much more of the scene these wide lenses lets you capture, in each of these shots. This lens comes in handy when you want to show the scale of things, or when you want to get a larger scene in your shot, without having to move back. I mostly use this lens for taking images of buildings and other architecture. We see same things as we saw in the images from the main camera, I prefer the colours from the iPhone 12, and dynamic range is ever so slightly better in its images. Something that has changed on the iPhone 12, is that now it has lens correction for the wide lens.

So the faces or objects towards edge of these images are not as distorted. You can see this at work in this images. In the iPhone 11’s image, the building on the left starts to curve a bit, but in Phone 12’s image, thanks to lens correction, that building looks straight, as it actually is. Again in this wide shot, look at the tiles towards the bottom. They seem curved in the image from the iPhone 11, but lens correction on the iPhone 12 makes it look as it should.

Looking back at these images, you might have missed it, but both these phones do very well to match the white balance and colour temperature between the wide land the normal lens. Apple is one of the few companies which works on making the transition between these lenses look seamless. Now coming to the portrait mode. Which as most of you already know, is my favourite mode to shoot in on any smartphone. Both of them are doing a very good job with these shots.

Edge detection is a bit more accurate on the iPhone 12, but you have look very close to see any difference between the 2. iPhone 12 handles the hair in a better way, and there are also more details in the face of the main subject, in its portraits. Now the iPhone 11 is by no means bad at taking these shots, in fact, it is also doing a very impressive job. But to someone who is looking at every part of these images, portrait shots from the iPhone 12 will look slightly better. It is specially good when there is a bright background behind your subject, like in this shot.

iPhone 11 blew up the sky in the background, where as the iPhone 12 brought back the blue colour in it. And again you will have zoom in to see this, but the iPhone 12 is capturing more details in my t shirt, compared to the iPhone 11. Both continue taking good looking portraits in indoor and artificial lighting situations as well. The wider aperture on the iPhone 12’s main camera helps it capture more light and reduce the noise in these situations.12 again continues with its better edge detection. As you can see, the hair and shoulder are in focus in the image from the iPhone 12, whereas iPhone 11 blurs those parts out.

Again the difference is subtle and you need to know what you are looking for, but iPhone 12 is slightly better than the iPhone 11. You can take portraits of objects with both these phones. And just like portraits of people, these portrait shots also look really good from both of them. iPhone 12 is a bit faster at detecting the edges for these shots, but unless you are taking these images with both of them side by side, you won’t notice the difference in speed. Edge detection and details are again slightly better in the portraits from the iPhone12.

Now the iPhone 12 dent have a LIDAR sensor like the iPhone 12 Pro’s, but the better image processing on the A14 chip, helps it do everything better. We have seen close to 50 images by now, and we still haven’t seen the iPhone 12 take noticeably better images than the iPhone 11. Keep in mind, the iPhone 11 costs much less than the iPhone 12, So it is great to see it match the camera on the iPhone 12 in most of these situations. With that, let us move on to the images that I took in indoor, artificial and lower lighting situations. Both these phones have deep fusion mode on the main camera, which helps them take detailed sharper images with less noise in indoor and artificial lighting situations.

As you can see, all these shots from both phones are incredibly detailed, in these indoor situations. Only difference I am able to see, is the iPhone 12’s images have slightly better looking colours. When the light reduces further, iPhone 11’s images start showing some noise, but 12’s images are still noise free and sharp. Since 12’s main camera has a hair wider aperture, its shutter needs to remain open for less time to gather the same amount of light as the iPhone 11, and this reduces the chances of ending up with blurry looking shots. I really like the Deep Fusion mode, because prior to it, I never remember getting such sharp images with very low noise in artificial lighting conditions from an iPhone.

On the iPhone 12, this deep fusion mode is available on the wide lens as well, so you can take much sharper and detailed images with it in these lighting situations, compared to the iPhone 11. Look at the difference in the indoor wide images from both of them. When the light gets even lower, deep fusion mode stops working, and the night mode kicks in automatically. You have the option to use it, or turn it off. These low light images are without the night mode, and even then we can see iPhone 12 capturing sharper elements and less noise in its shots.

In this shot, iPhone 12 has captures lot more light than the iPhone 11. But with the night mode turned on, iPhone 11 comes back in the competition. Both phones have captured lot of noise, but iPhone 12’s images, still show more details in the entire image. Now these flares that you see in some of these images from both the phones are really annoying. They don’t show up in all low light shots, but when they do, they can be very distracting.

To reduce these glares to some extent, move the phone a bit, or try taking the shot a slightly different angle. Doing this seems to have helped some of my shot. In these shots, iPhone 12’s image is not only brighter, but you can see that it is also much sharper and has much less noise compared to iPhone 11’s image. Even with the night mode turned on, the 12 captures sharper image with less noise. But all of this is of-course only visible if you compared these images side by side, and zoom in on them.

If not, images from both the phones look equally good. Normally with the night mode turned on, both these phones handle the exposure from lights really wll, but in this shot, both of them over exposed the lights besides the side walk. As I said before, none of these have the LIDAR sensor, but they still managed to take decent looking portrait shot in such low light. I can only image, how good the portrait shots from the iPhone 12 Pro’s must be. Like the deep fusion mode, wide lens on the iPhone 12 also gets the night mode, and this is what the wide lens from both the phones can capture at the same time.

Night mode makes the scene look completely different. In some situations, images with the night mode from the primary camera of both the phones look a lot identical. Unless you zoom in on them, you won’t be able to tell that one from the iPhone 12 is ever so slightly sharper. But this is not the case with the images form the wide lens. When you look at these images side by side, you can straight away point that the brighter and sharper one is from the iPhone 12.

I am not someone who takes a lot of shots in low light, and even less with the wide lens, but if you are someone who takes or wants to take a lot of low light wide , iPhone 12 should be your obvious choice. Here are a few more low light shots, and you can see the same thing repeat in all of them. So you can see that in most of the low light shots, wider aperture and better image processing on the iPhone 12 makes its images look better than the ones from the iPhone 11. That brings us to the front facing cameras. Both these phones have the exact same front facing cameras, so any difference that you see in these images is purely because of the different processors and image signal processing pipeline they use.

Again, in bright daylight, it is hard to see any difference between these selfies. Colours and skin tones are also almost similar from both. In some of the shots, iPhone 12’s selfies appear a bit more detailed. This happens when the 12 fires up deep fusion mode, yes, the deep fusion and even night mode is available on the selfie camera of the iPhone 12 as well. You can see the difference that deep fusion makes as I zoom in on these indoor selfies.

One from the iPhone 11 looks so muddy, whereas the one from iPhone 12 is much sharper. Here is another set of indoor selfies. In this one again you can see a lot of noise in the one from 11, but the one from iPhone 12’s selfie camera is much sharp. You see an even bigger difference while taking images in even lower light, because this is when the night mode kicks in on the iPhone 12. Like with the rear camera, night mode images take longer to capture, and you will have to hold the phone steady the whole time.

But looking at these results, the wait is well worth it. You can take good looking selfies with the 12, in the places where the iPhone 11 can barely see anything. Both can take portrait selfies, and here, you can again see the iPhone 12 doing a better job. Both with edge detection, and detail level in your face. iPhone 12 does well to keep most of your hair, and shoulders in focus, while the iPhone 11 misses out on it.

Look at my hair in this shot, 12 has done well to keep them in focus, but the 11 failed to detect and keep them in focus.12 is also better at keeping multiple faces in focus, while to keep both of our faces in focus on the iPhone 11, I had to take this image 4 times. So although we did not get a new selfie camera on the iPhone 12, the image signal processing backed by the A14 Processor, gives us much needed bump in the existing cameras performance. Here is a video from the front facing camera of the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 11. You can see how both of them handle the overall colours of the scene, exposure and stabilisation when I am walking around with them. Both phones can take 4K 60fps videos with all 3 cameras.

iPhones have always been the best when it comes to shooting videos. With great stabilisation, iPhone 12 can now shoot 10bit dolby vision HDR videos at upto 30fps. If you don’t care about HDR video capabilities, you can go with the iPhone 11 and get almost same great video from it as the iPhone 12. Both can again take amazing 1080p slow motion videos. With a very powerful processor, I was expecting the iPhone 12 to get 4K 120fps or 1080p 480fps, but sadly we did not get it.

With that we have seen over 90 image and video samples from these 2 phones. In bright daylight, we barely see any difference between the images of these 2 phones. Some differences could be seen when the situation demands higher dynamic range, and few subtle differences are there while shooting portrait mode images. We see a bigger difference in indoor and lower lighting conditions, when the deep fusion mode and night mode come into play on all 3 cameras of the iPhone 12. Now you have to look at these shots, and decide for yourself that if this difference in these images, is worth the extra monty to you or not.

This time, there is just as big of a difference between the rear cameras on these phones, as there was between the iPhone XS and the iPhone 11, specially in lower light. I can easily tell you guys to go for the iPhone 12 because it gets a better camera. But I feel the choice is not that simple for everyone. Think about how much do you use the camera on your phone, and when you do, do you take most of your images in daytime, if yes, then you can go with the iPhone 11 and save yourself 25K rs. But if you take most of your images in low light and if you want to use the wide lens indoors or when the light goes down or if you take a lot of selfies, then you should consider getting the iPhone 12.

So these have been my thoughts about the cameras on the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 11. What do you guys think about them? let me know in the comments. If you plan on getting any of these iPhones, I will really appreciate if you get them from the affiliate links in the description section. That is it for this video guys. Please hit the like button if you enjoyed this video, and subscribe to the channel for more quality tech videos like this.

You can also check out some of the other videos from this channel. This has been Sagar, and I’ll catch you guys in the next video. Take care.

Source : TecworkZ