when the original iPhone was announced the camera wasn't important at all
barely getting a mention from Steve Jobs in that legendary keynote you have a two
megapixel camera built in as I said What mattered at the time was that you could
pinch to zoom and so I can just move them further apart and stretch the image
that was amazing and yet over the 15
years since then the iPhone evolved from three devices in one
to four in that time we've seen many new
features and improvements leading us to the large 48 megapixel sensor found in
the iPhone 14 pro when I reviewed it last fall I noticed that photos taken in
raw are amazing now photos taken normally look kind of processed and so
it got me curious about the evolution of the iPhone camera Brandon Lee and I went
and took photos with every iPhone we could get our hands on my eyes are still
burning foreign
okay so I should first confess that this idea is actually the brainchild of
Brandon Lee he's had an Ever growing interest in capturing light so obviously
he's curious about the iPhone cameras you want so badly to have something in
your head work out in front of a camera and especially at the beginning it
doesn't that challenge of like okay Closer Closer Closer you get a little
bit better you learn one thing you get a little bit better and then I got
addicted to it over the last 15 years Apple has made 28 different versions of
their iPhone camera and that's not even counting all the software features they
add on top of it the iPhone is the most used camera in the world what has Apple
chosen to do in the evolution of this product to improve the camera and why
I want to know why though as Marcus Brownlee recently demonstrated in his
annual camera comparison the iPhone processing is letting it down compared
to the others so maybe we can see where and when this trend started I remember
the first camera phones people were like they put a camera on it was just amazing
that it had a camera to begin with that's crazy to think about to do this we assembled a wide history of 23
iPhones to take three different photos after a wet West Coast winter snowfall
they are a daytime photo of a building a nighttime picture of me working on a
frozen MacBook and a portrait of me with portrait mode
we're missing two phones because one was
mislabeled on eBay and the other is a diagnostics from an Apple Factory the
first photo we wanted to examine is of the Fort Langley Community Hall in
Langley ideal but boring at the same
time yeah yeah but I think this is like a very good flat nice flat photo
everything can be judged pretty easily
well let's take a look at it
I love how de-emphasize the cameras on this phone like it's just a little
because cameras weren't even common on phones at that point all right one two
three oh it's like looking you know in an
old-timey photo old tiny potato old tiny potato with color I don't even think
it's in Focus so you couldn't even it's probably a fixed Focus you couldn't pick
your focus I don't think anyone thought that the original iPhone was a good
camera okay so the first iPhone wasn't really about the camera so what about
the iPhone 3GS because it's having a bit of a moment which I'll tell you about
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Brandon sent me this amusing article from petapixel it's about a group of
social media influencers who love the aesthetic of this 13 year old phone
people 20 years younger using the iPhone
3GS for the aesthetic
which is bizarre to me
it was the first phone to have video it's also the aesthetic what do you
think about this aesthetic I'm not convinced Jonathan well it's
gonna you know it's got a rough charm yeah I want to go right I want to go
right in there really get in there I see
artifacting chromatic aberration like a rainbow
zero on detail
um moving on every time I put the four up I'm so
impressed by how much better it looks do you think it's the redness green or the
camera I mean it was a huge leap
from here yeah to here that's pretty
it's a big deal it was a big deal yeah because it went from 3.2 megapixels to
five I can also see this says Fort
Langley Community Hall 1931. so what happened next
whoa I've always been curious where in
the iPhone's lifespan did that happen and why did that happen and why did no
one else even stand a chance man that looks good too
I think that the iPhone 4S
hands down is the biggest jump in quality
in the iPhone's lifetime we already get into photos that are pretty respectable
even when we hit the 4S even compared to stuff now yes oh wow well because now
it's harder if you weren't a pro at photos you could look at this and it
would still hold up to some extent what about buying a 4S a 4S for the aesthetic
reasons as opposed to 3GS the imperfection is the aesthetic yeah is
this the generation they added the whole color filter thing the color filter
thing actually wasn't added with the 5S specifically it was added with iOS 7. oh
okay which I still uh can't forgive
so yeah what's going on here I really
don't like the 5S to be very clear this is my subjective opinion of this test
that we did there are obviously going to be situations where the 5S probably can
beat the 4S in terms of its detail or whatever but when I look at this photo
okay there's that and then here's the 4S
yeah it's way clearer the 5S should be technically a better photo with all
these with even all the specs on it but it somehow when I look at the 4S and the
5S I'm almost disappointed at the 5S because I would expect the 5S to be
better and this is why I think the 4S is the big jump the jump but do regular
people agree with Brandon let's let's ask a couple of people
okay no definitely the one on the right it's a lot more legible when I zoom in
you're noticing it's clear which one which one for probably the one on the
right what thank you Mark no that's great that's exactly the answer I wanted
oh the one on the left yeah what matters to you in that photo
then I think that the photo on the right is just a bit too bright it
it blurry without zooming in whereas the one on the left side I feel
like the entire photo kind of works a lot better
for the five I do honestly I think I prefer the one on the right I think you
look more natural the one on the left looks a little over processed I can't
really describe it but it looks maybe too sharp or too not natural looking I
guess just to verify you prefer the 5S yeah I think I do what's interesting
here is that Brandon and Mark are the photographers in the group whereas
Brandon and Sarah just take photos I
don't know how you tell these different I like do you know what this is do you
know what this is that's a 13 because I don't it's a 14 plus how do you know
that when we look at the 10 we see the 10r
yeah the crunchiness isn't really there
and then we move on
the 11 a little bit you start to see it because
of diffusion yeah move on
to the 12th and it's it's there it's
like a lie that's in your face I feel like it's gonna like come out and attack me here's the 13. oh interesting it's
less no it's very sharp but it's not as bright oh they paired it back here well
they paired the exposure back on that it makes you wonder where Apple has moved
their processing since then and the best way to see that is at night
this situation was really where I
noticed the trend in sharpness yeah it's like that is really coming out
significant like you really can see it most people
are gonna pick this one I think do I like this trend I don't know
I will say I've never really been impressed by my iPhone camera I hate
like artificial sharpness in photography
and the right side has a lot of that like I zoomed into the tree and it just
looks bad it's like a lot more manipulated by the software whereas with
the left side here yeah it feels a lot more like I'm actually staring at this
scene that's happening yeah you can definitely tell the one on the right
does feel a little bit more over sharpened I don't like it I like the one
on the left for that the left looks more smooth the right looks more sharp and I
don't like either of those the biggest difference I really see in this photo is
sharpness and uh texture the left one
just looks like it's better the color temperature and the colors and the dynamic range all look fairly similar I
think it looks a little unnatural on the tree but everything else I think looks
pretty good and like I said that my main issue with the iPhone sharpening from
what I've seen is usually when it's just like a close-up photo of someone in like
their family or their face or something I find it makes her face look really
unnatural if that makes sense I picked the newer phone every single time I
think so I guess Apple does their
research they're improving the camera for you yeah so the processing is
getting quite overt on the newer iPhones but with the last three Pro Models
that's not the end of the story
the last thing I want to touch on here yes with this particular 48 megapixels
Pro raw that is where I think Apple has really changed the
game that's much more natural looking and I will be that smile yeah look at
your jacket look at your face yeah the light here the range the like this is
not even this doesn't even look like a low light photo anymore no yeah we went
from it's been a long time ago yeah to
here man this looks really good Pro raw
plus the 48 megapixel is now where the iPhone shines the most
most people are gonna pick this one I think full of software gimmicks on the
iPhone the most photographic is portrait mode okay so what we're doing right now
is I'm sitting on Ice to try out uh portrait mode which is introduced on the
iPhone 7 plus and provides kind of a simulated shallow
depth of field which you would get in a DSLR camera with a much bigger sensor
so this clearly Sean on the Sony A9 Mark
II very expensive mirrorless camera this is the Baseline this is where you'd want
it to be to be ideal situation so with its introduction of the 10r they had the
main camera only but they wanted to give portrait mode a chance and so they
introduced an algorithmic-based portrait mode which reads that I'm a person tries
to figure out my outline and then apply
this you know bokeh effect around that
it uses the main wide camera which contradicts have portraits have been
traditionally taken with a more telephoto lens so it certainly has a
look because you have to move the camera closer and then you get Barrel Distortion which is unflattering to the
face how close does the iPhone get the
iPhone is capable of producing something
that could dupe somebody this is a very clear issue right here this is an
improvement still some trouble here that is a really it's just a very hard spot I
don't think any of them got it here yeah but the fall off on your hood is much
better because it was just like a vlog which is what makes you look Photoshop
this is portrait mode on the wide oh my
goodness so this is what I mean I place
the tripod down you we stood you in a spot and then you weren't close enough
the use case for it is slimmer because of the practicality you have to meet
Apple's parameters for the ideal shot yeah from what I pick I don't know the
left side just has a bit more of a blurred background on the right side
and then yeah on Zoom the right side is a bit sharper I'll say the right side
this time
not a lot like the right side is just a
bit cleaner do you use portrait mode uh sometimes
when I'm taking pictures of my dog very specifically I find portrait mode
looks very unnatural I would say initial Impressions I don't see a huge
difference it seems like the one on the right is doing better with the little
fur on your coat like it's sharp and then it goes to blurriness whereas the
one on the left it's just all the same amount of blurriness so you prefer the
one right yeah they look very similar so it's almost
like they tried to make it shallower depth of field on the one on the right
but then they have this transitional blur so that it doesn't look as like
immediate I like aspects about both of them yeah I would say the one on the
left but I do like what they're doing with the one on the right
a little bit I feel like the one on the right is the newer phone and the one on
the left is the older one would you ever use portrait mode
I had issues with the clunkiness of portrait mode in the app the quickness
of it I don't think will ever beat a new or normal camera and it doesn't inspire
a lot of confidence because I know that it can probably fail right and so that
probability would refrain me from using it regularly I think I just used my
normal camera
in terms of doing this whole experience what's been the biggest takeaway I think
to me they're trying to cement the belief
that you don't need anything else especially now with what you know about
the 14 pro would this be enough to make you switch back to iPhone
with my knowledge of how to use the portrait mode on top of it and the video
features and the pro raw and the fact that you could
color correct the image and manipulate it however you want because it is a raw
photo that you're getting I don't like iOS Jonathan what I'm still strongly
considering it because I do need to upgrade my phone soon even after all
this you would say uh if you if you care about pictures
fire real camera it is really cool to see the evolution
of a product like this because it is so historical you really do see that
between the seven plus and the 11 the
difference isn't that drastic and now we're at the 14 pro the 48 megapixels is
a big jump but then do they really make another big jump after that
we'll see we'll find out next year yeah thanks for comparing every single Mac
address video if you like looking at many photos give this video a like and
if you want to see more photos get taken you might as well subscribe now I'm
curious what iPhone camera did you find
the best is it always the latest one or was there an old iPhone camera you
really developed an affection for like those tick tockers