Samsung S21 Ultra VS iphone 12pro max
three two one right now I'm probably holding the two best phone cameras on the planet the Samsung galaxy s21ultra and the iPhone 12 pro max so welcome to something a little different we've got 12 categories and then we're gonna crown one winner and I feel like I need to start by showing this this is Samsung's camera app versus apples and there's such a gap between them whilst every generation apple is just constantly thinking how do we keep this simple Samsung is just cramming features into every corner like portrait mode video super steady recording possibly the best pro video mode out there multiple camera shooting at the same time 8k video and the second version of their single-take feature which means that I can just tap the shutter once and get from that every type of photo and video in one go what does the iPhone have portrait modes-mo but like so does the Samsung and yes the main purpose of this video is to test core image quality but you can't ignore that disparity think that just by having this many options give Samsung a slightly higher starting
.jpg) |
if you'll know they've done something pretty clever with it they've made the ultrawide camera double as a close-up macro camera you just approach a subject and it will automatically switch and as you can probably tell it's good it's rare that you see disparities this massive when you're comparing two super high-end phones but look at it I mean these look like before and after photos to be clear I'm not saying that I think macro shots are anywhere near as important as shots from the main camera it's not like i've ever really had amoment using the iphone 12 pro max wherei thoughtah do you know what i really want to doi want to take a close-up shot of thetexture of this tablebut i can't stupid iphone but what i amsaying is thatsometimes it takes seeing how somethingcould be doneto realize how it should be done and nowhaving used samsung's macro camera andseen shots like thisgoing back to the iphone and a lot ofother phonessomething feels wrong i just kept movingfurther and further back from thesubject thinkingsurely it's going to focus now it wasn'tthis bad was it
.i do have to say though even withallitslense andtechandsoftwaremagicthere is one thing thatsamsung has notnailed on this phoneportrait mode I took portrait afterportrait after portraitand I just couldn't escape the same feeling that I had when I was using thes20 ultra last yearthat this looks fake and on one hand itis fake it's a phone what do I expectbut on the other hand the iphone couldmake you think otherwise you could handsomeone a portrait mode photo take on aniphoneand possibly convince them that it wasin fact took on a 1500dslr you couldn't get on this phone andmakes this more frustrating is thethat samsung has done portrait modejust fine before like take this twophotoswhich one do you prefer this one rightthere's less distortionand the background blur just looks alittle more natural wellthis photo is actually taken on the 2019base galaxy s10 a phone that you can nowget for like four hundred dollarsthis one is the 2021 ultra why wellthe important thing to remember is thatphotos of people and i would almostargue photos in generallook much more natural when taken oncameras and so i think at leastninety percent of the problem comes fromthe fact that since the s20 ultrasamsung has put such high magnificationzoom cameras on their phones thatthey've disabled using those zoomcamerasto take portraits but given that thisnew phone has not just a crazy 10 timesbut also a pretty normal three timesoptical zoom i think it would workyou just can't try it so this is why theiphone's portraits always look a littlebit more zoomed in than the samsung'sthe iphone is using its dedicated 2.5 xzoom lens andthe samsung is just using its normalmain camera and then for some reasondecides to digitally zoom in two timesi guess just to try and make it looksimilar but that's going to result ineven worse qualityand nothing makes it clearer that thisis the problem then the fact that whenyou take portrait mode on the frontcameraswhere both phones use a pretty similartype of lensthey look about the same there are someshots i would hand to the iphone thereare some i would hand to the samsungbut there isn't enough of a cohesivepattern for me to say oh this one takesbetter shots than this oneand that actually carries through tonormal selfies as wellit's more of a question really of do youprefer the iphone's flatter lookor do you want something that's a bitcontrastier then a sub to the channel would be[Music]good it's a very similar situation withvideo tooboth phones can record 4k on the frontwhich is fantasticand the biggest visual difference isjust that samsung is punchier.
I think on a technical level the iPhone's footage is actuallylightlybetterlike it seems to be losing a little bit less detail in the really dark areas and the stabilization does seem a little bit smoother but at the same time I did ask four other people what they thought about it and three of them picked the Samsung and this is an audio test so now you're listening to the microphone from the galaxy s21 ultra the car moving in the background now you're listening to the microphone on the iPhone.
let me know which one you prefer as far as I'm concerned audio is extremely good on both of these and it shouldn't be a reason to pick one over the other but now as we start to see some properdifferencesi spent a lot of my time with this phone taking night mode photos because for me at least that's a big category hence why we're representing it with a bigger sized dot but apple still wins with the iPhone 12pro max apple jumped from pretty good at night mode like kind of middle of the line for top tier flagships right at the very top and even with this s21 ultra.
I don't think samsung's topped it itsphotos do have a sort of a grunginess agrittiness that you might actually quitelikebut without fail just the fundamentalsof the night mode shotlike texture like the detail the iphone iswinningit's almost like samsung's become ultraaggressive all of a sudden with itsnoise reductionlike they're somehow afraid of therebeing even a single speck of grain intheir shotbut the result of that is it's just alittle bit softeri am pixel beeping, yes but you kind ofhave to when you've got two phones thatare just this consistently high-endi will give to samsung that it'snighttime zoom shots usually look betterit's nighttime ultrawide shots aresurprisingly crispy given the lack oflightits general ability to brighten is alsoa little bit greaterbut I do just want to stress that idon't think the quality of a night modephotoIt should be about how much day timeit can make things lookit really should be about embracingnight and makingthe night looks good and the iphone doesa better job of that it handles nightmode in a way thatdoesn't make you feel like you're usingsome sort of special mode and so thephotos that come out as a resultthey they don't feel needlessly editednot to mention thatnighttime portraits look better oniphone just because I guessportrait mode in general is better oniphone the color tones it manages tokeep them more realistic even as thelighting starts to get pretty abstractand sometimes even the zooms look betterjust thanks toan impressive resistance to blurring andsoftening sothis one's going to the iphone andso is video the entire categorytake a look at this nothing immediatelyseems off to start withbut as the phone gets further andfurther into this dark tunnelnow you're probably starting to see itor take a look at this onethis is shot in pretty low light andwith that in mind, you might look at thesamsung and thinkwow that's impressive but then you lookat the iphone and you're likeoh right yeah that's really impressivei realized I've never shown anyone medriving a car before but I've beentesting one for a few weeks nowand I'm just showing you this shotbecause this is the perfect example ofwhat I'm talking aboutand even this one was shot about anhour before it got properly darkand on the iphone you can't even tellthat the situation is not well lityou know the most interesting part ofthis though is the fact that thisdisparityhas nothing to do with the camerasthemselves like if both of these phonescameras were being pushed to theabsolute maximumsamsung would crush apple at every photoevery video it's just because apple hasjust about every major component custommadefor their iphone they can create thesethese really streamlined algorithms toprocess the feed from the camerait's a bit like having a really welloiled really efficientfour-cylindecarengine versus havingjust an incredibly tankyeight-cylinder one I do think thoughthat some part of this is just the factthat the s21 ultrais a new phone and it's also the firsttime ever that samsung is usingthis image sensor like it does seemunusually grainy soi would expect it to get better and i'vegot to give a big thumbs up to thestabilization on this phoneif you record with both phones at 4kresolution and you just trypacing it downwards you'll find thesamsung is slightly aheadyou can see the iphone's lens kind ofstruggles with the motion butthe real difference comes when you turnon super steady modei'm about to show you some footage thatwas effectively filmed while the phoneIt was actually going like thisand this is kind of an interesting onebecause it's perfectbut I don't think I'd ever use itbecause it severely limits the dynamic rangeand it caps the resolution at 1080pwhich in an age where we're recording 4kand 8k videois not good enough but this is just tosay that if you did want an extremelevel of stabilizationthis can do it and just before the finalshowdownboth of these phones can take slow-mowhen you're taking normal slo-moi would say the iphone is a head itmanages to make things look a littlebrightera little bit better defined but thensamsung has the option to go much slowerthan iphoneso on balance, i think it's roughly fairto call this one a drawokay it's time to talk about photos thefinal andprobably the most important categoryit's also actually probably the easiesti generally found that for the most parteven the galaxy s20 ultra could takebetter photos than the iphoneand so given that the s21 has a bettersensor a faster shutter time and a moreadvanced image signal processoryes I'm giving this section to samsungso one of the first things you'llprobably notice when you start takingphotos on itis the fact that because the sensor isstill big by today's standardsyou get an even more natural backgroundblur this lovely separation betweenforegroundand what's happening behind secondly thesamsungcan be more detailed and I wouldn't markthis is down as a huge plus becausefor the most part, you'll be shooting onauto and when you are shooting on autothey're about the same really but justbecause this is a 108-megapixel camerawhen you turn on 108-megapixel mode thenyesyou will capture more detail andthirdlydynamic rangein photos and in photos only it seemslike samsung's able to draw out just alittle bit more detail in the reallybright spotsit does also produce photos that youcould see are punchier butto be honest all this extra sharpnessand color and contrastyou could take it or leave it it cansometimes mean photos that lookslightly better when taken straight fromcamera I think the iphone's photos are alittle bit at risk of looking flatbut if you want the beauty you gottalive with the beastbecause with this scene optimizer turnedon every now and again this phone willjust pump out some of the mostdisgustingly oversaturated garbageyou've ever seenbut it is mostly good sowhere does that leave us becausesamsung's won five apples won threebut obviously not every category has thesame weight andnot every victory is by an equal amountsowhat I would say is this using these twocamerasfeels a bit like using yin and yang atthe same timeit almost feels like each failing of oneof these phonesis something that the other one isparticularly good at buti realize that it's not very usefuladvice to say screw the mortgage buybothso I'm giving this one to the samsungit's not just the more enjoyable camerato use but it's also the more versatileyou can get everything from five milezooms to two-centimeter close-upsand it also is just generally brilliantwhen it comes to photosbut I would just say that if you're notin any rush to buy it then I would hangonuntil you've seen they've announced somesort of a major update to videobecause I'm pretty sure it's coming butat the same time just in case it isn'ti don't think the video quality is that great right nowso that's it I realized that cameratests can be kind of boring and soi spent like the last year trying to figure out how to make them more funso if this was it then please do let meknow and I will try and make thisa thing thanks for watching my name isaaron this is mr who's the bossand I'll catch you in the next oneyou
Comments
Post a Comment