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If you saw Apple’s unveiling of the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro earlier this week, chances are you were overwhelmed by all the camera enhancements the company recited.
But fear not: we’ve analyzed all the photography updates coming to the next iPhones to highlight the ones that come out on top and will be the most important to everyday users as Apple vies for the title of best camera phone.
Of course, there is much more to share on this topic, as well as new features that will take longer to arrive or prove their worth, such as Apple’s new ProRAW image format and LiDAR sensors on more expensive models.
However, these are the innovations we are particularly excited about and they should make Cupertino’s latest hardware a pleasure to shoot in any conditions, whether you’re using the dual-lens iPhone 12 and 12 mini or the iPhone 12 Pro. triple lens. and Pro Max.
All-new 7-element lens with wider aperture
The camera with which you take most of your photographs is surely the main one, and this is where Apple focused most of its efforts. The main wide-angle shooter is the same on all iPhone 12 models (barring improvements to the sensors on the iPhone 12 Pro Max in particular, which we’ll cover a bit later). This new stack takes the form of a 7 element lens with a wider aperture of ƒ / 1.6. The underlying sensor is still a 12 megapixel design.
According to Apple, the larger aperture will allow 27% more light to reach the sensor than the ƒ / 1.8 lens on the iPhone 11 series. This will be more apparent in low- and medium-light shots, where light is scarcer. On the iPhone 12, these scenarios should produce less noisy and blurry results.
Smart HDR 3 and faster Deep Fusion
Smart HDR and Deep Fusion are the secret sauce that makes iPhone photography so impressive. Apple processing takes multiple exposures of various lengths and selectively chooses elements from each frame on a pixel-for-pixel level to deliver the most optimized result.
In essence, Smart HDR and Deep Fusion are two different channels for achieving detail in challenging lighting conditions, differing in the number of frames they capture and the way the final image is stitched together. Deep Fusion also targets darker photos, while Smart HDR comes into play in brighter settings.
While both systems were included in the iPhone 11 range, Smart HDR 3 is the next generation of that technology, and is unique to the iPhone 12 line. The main addition in Smart HDR 3 is an increased use of machine learning to identify scenes and adjust various parameters to get the best shot, depending on whether you are shooting, for example, a portrait of someone or a natural landscape.
Meanwhile, Deep Fusion, which required a second or two of extra processing on iPhone 11 devices with A13 Bionic technology, should be faster on iPhone 12, thanks to the power of Apple’s new A14 Bionic silicon.
Night mode on all cameras
Apple was a little late to the Night Mode party with the iPhone 11 last year, but the feature was well done and produced respectable results compared to the company’s rivals. For the iPhone 12, night mode is not only better thanks to the improved overall low-light performance and wider aperture of the new phones, but it can also be used on all cameras, both standard and professional. .
This is a small but important point of distinction between the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 series, because previous Apple phones could only use night mode on the main wide-angle optics, exclusively. Ultra wide night mode shots were not possible, to the detriment of anyone trying to capture a sprawling landscape or a cityscape under the stars.
What’s more, you can even capture night mode timelapses with the iPhone 12 lineup, which should excite the most creative photographers, and iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max owners in particular can combine Portrait and Night modes to achieve depth of field shots.
HDR video with Dolby Vision
Dolby Vision may not be familiar to most people in the market for a new phone, but you will love what the technology can do once you see it. It is an HDR format that dynamically alters the presence of content frame by frame for optimal presentation, going even further than the standard HDR10 + protocol.
Video captured with Dolby Vision will have more detail in highlights and shadows, with a finer and smoother color gradation. Those who have worked with the technology say that it produces astonishing results, perhaps even more impressive than the jump from Full HD to 4K resolution.
Fortunately, both the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro can take advantage of Dolby Vision when capturing video, although there is a distinction. The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini can only capture Dolby Vision images at 30 frames per second, while Pro devices double it at 60 frames per second. Either way, whatever you shoot with Dolby Vision will look amazing, whether it’s on your iPhone’s Super Retina XDR display or a 4K HDR TV.
The special sensor of the iPhone 12 Pro Max
Apple has done well to ensure relative parity between cameras on all iPhone 12 models. However, this year, the $ 1,099 iPhone 12 Pro Max is getting special treatment, which comes in the form of an extra image sensor. big behind the main camera comprising larger pixels, as well as a new technology that Apple borrowed from DSLRs called Sensor Shift.
First, though, that sleek new sensor. Larger image sensor pixels bring in more light; This is why every phone with an incredibly high megapixel sensor eventually ends up grouping those pixels together to make them as big as possible anyway. Therefore, a larger image sensor exhibits better sensitivity to light, producing a more detailed and colorful image without noise in low light conditions. The iPhone 12 Pro Max’s exclusive sensor pixels are 1.7 microns in size, notably larger than the 1.4-micron pixels in all other variants of the device, and Apple says this is good for an improvement from 87. % in low light video performance.
As for Sensor Shift, it is a new image stabilization technology never seen before on smartphones. Many phones use a conventional form of stabilization that physically moves the lens to compensate for vibration. The iPhone 12 Pro Max does this too. Anyway that further move the image sensor to counter movement at the same time. In DSLR cameras, this is typically called in-body image stabilization; In the case of the iPhone 12 Pro Max, Apple calls it Sensor Shift. Whatever you call it, it should help deliver even sharper images and smoother videos than any previous iPhone.
IPhone 12 cameras perspective
While the iPhone 12 series may appear to have made few measurable changes to camera hardware on paper, there are actually a plethora of updates on offer with these new devices that go beyond a simple megapixel increase. And since Apple has historically delivered some of the best camera phones on the market, we are inclined to think that the additions to the iPhone 12 lineup will be noticeable in practice.
Critics may lament the lack of certain features, such as perhaps 8K video recording, or a more powerful optical zoom that goes beyond 2.5x. In fact, visuals are one of the most rapidly evolving areas of the smartphone experience, so we look forward to seeing how the iPhone 12 propels the industry forward, as well as how companies like Samsung and Google respond with their own. improvements.
