many of you criticized our coverage of the google pixel 4's camera when we
declared it to be on par with the iphone 11 pro and pro max and one of the
biggest critiques was our failure to address apple's deep fusion
computational photography feature which at the time was in beta so now that it's
out for real we are taking that opportunity to reopen the case of iphone
versus pixel 2019 edition and for good
measure we've thrown in both the note 10 and the mate 30 pro
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let's start off with a quick explanation of deep fusion and how it works
when the feature is active the iphone's camera is constantly buffering in the
background in the buffer the camera takes four standard exposure shots as
well as four short exposure shots with a final long exposure shot at the very end
once the shutter button is actually pressed the iphone then blends the best
elements of the short exposure shots making a reference frame then it blends
the standard exposure shots and the long exposure shot making a synthetic long
frame the reference frame and the synthetic long frame are then run through more
processing pixel by pixel to improve the
appearance of sky hair skin and textures like fabrics
all of this happens within about a second or two of pressing the shutter so
that is great that apple has managed to cram a bunch of processing steps into
just a couple seconds of a shutter press but does it really make that much of a
difference the answer is yes
some of the time so deep fusion adds
more detail and sharpness without the undesirable effects that we commonly
associate with normal image sharpening so check out this shot of a petro canada
gas station upon immediate inspection honestly the
two images don't look that different but check out these roof tiles in the
background our deep fusion shot clearly retains more detail here but without any
ugly noise or sharpening artifacts
as for the grilles here and the concrete segment lines in this nighttime boat
shot while the lines are both easily
resolvable even if we zoom way in on both of the images what's notable is
that there are no dark pixels that are out of line the line is much straighter
and much finer again here in this bentley parking lot
our deep fusion shot is better but this one the effect is definitely more subtle
and we can mostly see it here in the sign as for this night boat shot the
building in the background here is one of the best examples we've seen of deep
fusion working its magic it is so clearly so much better defined than the
non-deep fusion shot as a best-case scenario that one actually makes a lot
of sense deep fusion was designed for medium to low light so it hits nicely
right in the middle of smart HDR and apple's new night mode but the thing is
guys if you were expecting this technique to dramatically change the
quality of the photos you take on your iphone you probably haven't been paying
much attention to the multi-frame capture techniques that are widespread
in the industry even at apple already so
while the technique may be unlike what we've seen before the result is not that
different in most cases so let's change gears here and compare
the iphone with all of the weapons at its disposal to our other phones
this dim incandescent lit restaurant with afternoon daylight outside is an
extremely challenging situation and it's
one of the shots that actually made me doubt my conclusion about the pixel 4.
the window in the back here is completely blown out and the contrasty
look of the pixel is not doing our subject's face any favors the note 10
actually handled this shot the best in terms of skin tone with the iphone
winning out on overall dynamic range and detail thanks in part here to deep
fusion though i should note that in my opinion the iphone image makes our
subject's skin look a little bit too pasty due to the iphone's more lifted
look to skin now let's use this shot to talk about
the way that the iphone handles shadows on the face now to me the layperson this
image honestly looks wonderful and i would pick it first out of the lineup
every time but brandon has an understandable bone to pick with apple
about the way that they processed it now the pixel 4 image clearly has deeper
shadows under the chin and the eyes making our subject look more tired to my
eye i mean who would want that but given that this was shot under
overhead light the pixel's image is actually a lot
closer to how she actually looked at that time so apple is tinkering with the
image a lot here and when they get it right the subject ends up looking like a
doll which is great for posting to instagram
but when you tinker with lighting you can also end up losing a lot of the
perceived depth and the character of the shot as for samsung they're clearly
going after an apple-esque look so if you like that aesthetic then they did
great but the image comes out a bit softer than apple and the only nice
thing that i can say about huawei's effort is that their larger sensor seems
to be contributing to a really great natural bokeh in the background here
moving into a studio situation the iphone and mate 30 pro both had trouble
white balancing to our daylight balanced lighting here in the studio where the
pixel 4 and the note 10 both delivered a pleasing warm image
punching in even with deep fusion i would actually give the edge in detail
to the pixel 4 with the note 10 doing a pretty good job as well and that pattern
of the pixel 4 being sharper overall is
one that was actually quite consistent throughout our testing as you can see in
these images apple's team with or without deep fusion has clearly made the
choice of taking a less contrasty approach to their image sharpening
but a lot of the time people like a more neutral less contrasty image and the
thing is we're not bringing up google's
better sharpness as a way to prove that google's images
are better every time there's a lot more to image quality than the detail that
gets retained when you are super duper zoomed in
in this shot for example the iphone did an excellent job of delivering true to
life color the blue in this photo is the
blue of this car straight up the pixel on the other hand
ended up making our car look quite a bit duller the note 10 then does the same
thing while having less detail when punched in on the front of the vehicle
but i mean it's still overall a pretty good looking image and as for the mate
30 pro okay actually surprise surprise this is
a cooler overall look but huawei did a fairly good job here with noise color
and detail getting into some low light stuff just before apple's night mode would
activate deep fusion is definitely working its magic here the detail in
this car to go vehicle is significantly improved and the noise is also managed
better than the non-deep fusion image looking at the deep fusion shot versus
the other competitors i'd say it's close overall with the note 10 faring the
worst and struggling to capture much detail going through a bunch more low light
shots taken around downtown vancouver the iphone with deep fusion really
shines in managing detail with noise performance that in my opinion beat out
the pixel 4 a lot of the time in most cases the note 10 and the mate 30 pro
fell farther and farther behind as the lighting conditions worsened the mate 30
in particular has such an aggressive noise reduction in low light that it
just ends up smoothing everything over to the point where it looks almost
posterized in some cases in night mode the iphone has hugely improved this year
no doubt i wouldn't go as far as to say that it is better than google's night
sight on the pixel 4 but it's close enough that most people wouldn't be able
to notice the small differences that put google ever so slightly ahead images
from both phones show that they're at the top of their game when it comes to
nighttime photography now on to video
this is a situation where i think google ended up with a pass because we didn't
challenge the pixel 4's camera enough the iphone has long been the golden
standard when it comes to recording video on a mobile device and that is
still true today in daytime scenes all four phones in our test did a fairly
good job of judging exposure the mate 30 pro seems to like its color on the
warmer side more often than not the note 10 seems to struggle with its dynamic
range in the highlights depending on the scene and our pixel 4 suffered the most
in low light coming in as the noisiest of the bunch but honestly the thing that
stands out most about the iphone 11 pro series is the way that apple has managed
to handle sudden changes in the shooting conditions when we move inside with
dennis here notice how the note 10 clips
dennis's pants so there's no detail left in that light material and the pixel 4
ends up quite noisy until both of them have some time to adjust the iphone on
the other hand manages not just to avoid this pitfall but if we move over to this
walking shot of riley we actually find multiple situations where as the
lighting changes the iphone is the only device that manages to keep the color of
his jacket reasonably consistent throughout the entire clip
that ain't easy i mean if it were i'm sure huawei would
have done a better job of it so i have to take back what i said about
the pixel being as good there are some areas where it excels its slow motion is
still close and its stabilization is pretty damn good but in a wider variety
of situations the iphone is clearly going to end up flexing its muscles so
bottom line were we wrong
yes and also no it's obvious from looking at everything
today that under good conditions any modern cell phone camera can look
absolutely spectacular i mean look at all the praise the mate 30 pro gets
so were we wrong to say that the pixel 4
is as good as the iphone well for most people probably not since
most people view images like this not like this
and a lot of the differences do come down to aesthetic processing choices
these days rather than quality
however where the best get separated from
the rest caught it is when it comes to
consistency and this is where i feel like we let you guys down we failed to
identify the iphone 11 pro's greatness in the quick comparison that we made in
our pixel 4 review it may not take the best shot every time and especially in a
deeper round up like this we can absolutely find situations where it
falls behind one competitor or another
but between me and brandon we couldn't find a shot where it clearly came in
third once and as a consumer think about it
i mean i'd rather have the camera where i get at least a silver medal every time
versus the one where i you know win a few golds but
break my ankle from time to time so
then sorry guys i was wrong about the iphone 11 pro and pro max but
if it's any consolation for me at least i get to say i was right about
one thing huawei still makes the most overrated cell phone cameras on the
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so thanks for watching guys i hope you enjoyed watching me eat humble pie i
certainly did um
yeah if you enjoyed this video go check out uh my review of the uh galaxy fold i
didn't even talk about the camera who cares so cool without it
i actually didn't talk about the camera at all nobody even noticed there wasn't
a single comment that was like what about the camera Linus