Transcript for:
Osmo Pocket 3 vs. iPhone 15 Pro - Camera Comparison

[Music] [Music] n [Music] hello oh I'm recording right now all right bye this is the osmo pocket Pro and this is the iPhone 15 wait no this is the osmo pocket 3 and this is the iPhone 15 Pro and I own and have shot extensively with both of them and put together close to 50 video comparison shots and a couple of Photography comparisons throughout this video so that you have a good understanding on how their images look the purpose of that little intro sequence is not only to show you what the little osmo pocket 3 can output but also to remind you that this is a phone which can call and text people so sometimes we get distracted and we forget that we even have a camera in our hands where the osmo pocket 3 forces you to recognize that you have a powerful dedicated camera in your hands I'm not saying that the iPhone 15 Pro is not a powerful camera it's just that it's a multi-use tool and sometimes we forget that we even have it but to really see the differences in both of these cameras we have to ask the right questions I'd love for you to tell me which one of these two cameras you like better and why a lot of people ask this question should I invest in a dedicated content creator camera like this or spend the extra money on a camera like this that can text and call [Music] people to answer that we will have to look at their differences from a real world usability standpoint if you're a video creator you want to get the highest image quality possible and if you're a beginner you want to get your image to look as best as you can straight out of the box I do not plan on diving deeply into the specs of both of these cameras because when you're out in the field filming with them specs no longer matter these cameras are great until you encounter their limitations I'm going to treat this comparison as more of an actual use case type video and focus on the image quality more than what they both look like on paper I could probably use both of these cameras for maybe say 90% of what I do content creation wise before I ever need to pull out one of my bigger DSL L cameras like the A7 S3 and a gimbal but before we get ahead of ourselves can you tell the difference between these shots that I'm about to show you on whether or not they were shot with the op3 or the iPhone 15 Pro and While You observe those shots I'll be sharing with you what we will be covering today we will be looking at the low light capabilities of both of these cameras and how they perform in Real World Evening shots at night and in the early morning we're going to get some 1080 60 shots and see how they look when we scale them up to 4K in post production we're going to do some product video shots as someone who makes product videos in a controlled lighting environment we're going to put both of these through some basic autofocus tests we're going to see how good both of their stabilization is when I'm walking the Vlog style shots with arm extended and maybe a slight Bend in the elbow we're going to see how much Distortion their wide angle shots produce we'll get some of those cinematic type shots in a uncontrolled lightting environment and we're going to shoot with the op3 and dlog M and the 15 Pro and apple Pro res log and we will be looking at both of those images together we're going to look at both of their normal color profiles and see how they compare to each other we're going to listen to their audio with their internal mics and when we hook them up to external wireless mics we're going to do some dynamic range tests we'll do some green screen work and while we're at it let's cover their charging times and file sizes so there's no way anyone's going to say you only touch the surface on this one before I tell you which shot was which let me tell you a little bit more about both of these cameras the osmo pocket 3 has a 1-in 9.4 megapixel sensor it can shoot in 4k up to 120 and it can shoot in 10bit dlog and weighs 6.3 Oz it comes with a fixed 20 mm lens with a set aperture at f2.0 and has an amazing builting gimbal which produces super smooth footage it's a very popular camera just in observing the fact that it's consistently backordered or out of stock at least a B&H Photo but that will change in the future and Best Buy seems to have stock availability just to keep that in mind but some people are concerned that it's too delicate and if you drop it you could break this little gimbal arm it's probably why DJI provides this little wriststrap to go with your op3 now let's talk about the iPhone 15 Pro it has a 48 megapixel sensor it can shoot up to 4K 60 it can shoot in prores log and it weighs 6.6 o it comes with fixed lenses with multiple focal lengths and has mind-blowing stabilization and it also has a flashlight and a GPS the op3 was released in October of 2023 starting at 500 $19 us body only and the iPhone 15 Pro was released in September of 2023 starting at $999 us as the base model when it comes to pricing both go up from there but that means that you can almost buy two op3 bodies for the price of one iPhone 15 Pro but the op3 also does not come with internal memory storage or an SD card so you'll have to tack on an extra $ 20 to $50 depending on what SD card you decide to go with if you want to shoot right out of the box with the op3 but as a side note make sure to get the right SD card because not just any SD card will work when I first put in a random SD card into the op3 when I first got it I got this dreaded message I'll leave links to the proper SD cards in the description but the iPhone does come with internal storage but don't just run out the door if you plan on shooting in a low light environment because your iPhone images will fall apart in low light trust me it has happened to me now the 15 Pro is a lot better than previous iPhone models but still that footage is not going to be good especially when you go to throw it on the big screen you'll see how noisy those Shadows are I'm interested in things like how much better is the op3 sensor when it comes to night/ low light shots and things that will directly affect content creators as they go out and create their content or better stated is the osmo pocket better than the iPhone 15 Pro the short answer in my opinion is yes in many situations but also it's not I'll explain as this video goes on but if you do own an op3 or plan on purchasing one I created a course on how I set mine up for cin itic shooting how I use it in different lighting environments and how to get the most out of it I will leave a link to that course in the description but for now we're going to be talking about my experience with both of these cameras and which camera is for whom I shot in both program Auto for some of my shots and manual exposure for others for a couple of shots on the iPhone 15 Pro I downloaded the Blackmagic camera app to give me more control over my exposure but I kept beginners in mind and that straight out of box process as well all right we have a lot to look over and there are big decisions decisions to be made so that's what we'll be covering today on the film Alliance if by the end of this video you're still undecided on which one of these two cameras is best for you I made a free camera quiz that may help you get on the right track and I'll leave a link to that quiz in the description now if you looked at those comparison shots in the beginning of the video and could correctly name the camera then you have a good eye my friend because I put this together I knew right away which one was which but the more I put those shots side by side the more I had to double check the file names because the names on the files dictate what camera it was and that was the only way that I was able to tell that's just to wet your appetites a little bit before we start jumping into things like user experience but before we do that if you like videos like this one make sure to like this video so I know to make more videos like this one all right use your experience I've owned the iPhone 15 Pro since it was released and I've owned the osmo pocket 1 since 2019 so when the op3 was released I was able to just pick it up go out and start shooting with it it almost reminded me of the good old days with the op1 it's just a little bit bigger and it had better features I shot in every single mode I dug through their settings I tried out all these different exposure experiments and I think I've come to a pretty good spot on how to expose both of these cameras to maximize their image quality I do believe both of these cameras can be used in different applications for different people it just depends on what you're doing for example if you're someone who shoots out in public then you may like to have the op3 over the iPhone because it won't attract as much attention and if you're a horizontal shooter you can hold the op3 vertical and still get that horizontal shot whereas with the iPhone 15 Pro you have to hold it like this if you want to get that horizontal shot unless you have the Blackmagic camera app also have you ever had that experience where everything's in frame it looks great you're about to get that perfect shot and all of a sudden your phone rings well then you just lost the shot you will never have that issue with the osmo pocket 3 which makes me lean more towards using dedicated cameras over your phone to get shots I prefer to have a standalone camera as it's a lot simpler to manage but if that's your choice now you have two devices instead of just one and it makes portability start to be compromised when it comes to handling I prefer to use actual buttons and joysticks on the op3 rather than touch the glass display on the 15 Pro or the op3 because when you start touching the glass it muddies up your screens and it makes it harder to see the display also I found that the op 3s display is not as touch sensitive as something like the iPhone 15 Pro so if you liked to touch screens instead of using joysticks and buttons you may want to go with the iPhone 15 Pro the 15 Pro doesn't have such controls as the joystick or the record button but you can toggle the bottom volume button to be recorded which means you won't have to touch the glass as much but when it comes to control the op3 allows you to manually Expose and I was able to have way more control over my exposure compared to the iPhone 15 Pro Pro which only allows Auto exposure unless I downloaded a third party app like the Blackmagic camera app I mentioned using the BMC app for the iPhone 15 Pro to get better exposure controls with the 15 Pro but I used the mimo app with the op3 in some instances to help me have better control over my exposure because it gave me an overexposure alert and a histogram unfortunately both of these cameras don't have the best exposure tools on screen so a lot of my shots I just had to eye it out and hope for the best there are workarounds and best practice ways to do this as I explained more in my course but in order to keep this video on topic the more control of exposure you have the better your video will look in most cases you can always use the memo app to edit your videos on top of helping you with your exposure which is great for on the-go creators but I'm not a big fan of connecting any app to my camera I mean you can edit your 15 Pro videos but you'd have to download an app like iMovie I set both of these cameras up as a default setting so that when I turned on the cameras they would default a 4K 60 this made it super simple when I was on the go in a fast moving environment to be able to turn them on and automatically have my resolution set but the op3 has a setting that automatically starts recording once you open it which is great for people who are in a fastpaced environment you don't have to Fumble around with trying to set your settings and then press record a huge advantage to the op3 over the iPhone5 Pro is the op3 has five preset options that you can create your own quick setup settings I show you all five that I set up for different lighting environments in my course but to give you an example I set one of my presets up as a low light option which I believe is better than the low light video option that you get as a video mode with the op3 either way the five preset options that you get gives you the ability to quickly toggle your settings for different lighting environments rather than what you get with the iPhone which is just open it up and start recording and hope that the program Auto Nails what you're trying to shoot but when it comes to Software updates or firmware updates the iPhone is super simple because you just have to touch or tap a couple of prompts and it will update automatically whereas the op3 you have to connect to an app and then download the firmware update or you have to connect it to your computer and download it from the DJI website which makes it a little bit more inconvenient to update your firmware with the op3 but one more thing that I found in my experience before we jump over to usability as if it happened to be raining outside or we would be in a wet environment then I couldn't use the op3 and I would have to use the iPhone because the op3 is not weather sealed all right let's jump into usability I purchased the op3 Creator combo kit which comes with a little wide-angle adapter and it takes the focal length from the op3 from 20 mm to 15 mm and when you go full wide with the iPhone 15 Pro it takes you to about 13 mm so you do get a little bit more width on the iPhone and to me both images look about the same as far as dist Distortion goes in the corners something to keep in mind though is if you have to attach a little wideangle lens like this as an accessory there's more of a chance that you might lose that little accessory in your bag forget it at home or when you're trying to put it on or take it off your fingers touch it and it gets greased up also you cannot leave this on the op3 when you try to shut it because it won't shut all the way so that might be a little bit of an oversight we're going to get into ND filters later in the video but this is something that you want to be concerned about whereas the iPhone has everything right here if you get a case like this you can protect its lenses you could throw this thing in your pocket and you don't have to worry about lint or dust getting on the lenses however I do notice if I go full wide to the 13 mm on the 15 Pro if I'm not conscious of where my hands or fingers are you'll see the fingers in the outside of the frame and it kind of just ruins the entire shot so you almost have to hold the iPhone on the edge while you're shooting wide just something to remember when it comes to the lens on the op3 this is really all you get you you can't get any more focal distance even if you tried you can only go wider with something like the wide angle lens you could also put ND filters on here to try to maintain your proper exposure settings when you're in highy environments now hold up on what ND filters you pick up for your op3 because a lot of them have been manufactured too wide just like that wide angle lens to where you cannot close the op3 without removing them thanks to some of you guys you did help me find a couple of companies that have created some thin enough ndes to be able to close the op3 and I'll leave those ND filters Linked In the description below you can however purchase thirdparty lens for the iPhone 15 Pro which will give you more creative freedom I made an entire video on the free wellin system for the 15 Pro and I'll leave that video in the description if you're interested but for now we're just going to use the native lenses on both of these cameras with no ND filters now just because the op3 only has one lens does not mean that you're limited in your creativity the gimbal on the op3 opens up a lot more creative options than you would get with a normal iPhone like the active track feature on the op3 for example this means that you can actively track a subject without having to worry about the panning or tilting or movement of the camera that makes the op3 a way better product video camera for those of you who do product videos for companies or your Niche topic but you can't get too close to your subject because the minimum Focus distance is about 8 in on the op3 so you won't be doing too much macro videography or photography unless you're scaling in and post whereas the iPhone can get as close to about an inch to a subject which makes the 15 Pro a lot better for macro Shooters however another awesome feature the op3 has over the iPhone 15 Pro is you can lock the camera in place by holding down the joystick which means you can stay set the way you have it and minimize the up and down rotation left and right movements if I try to do that same exact shot with the iPhone there's a slight chance that the horizon or the elevation would not be even unless I do a super ninja walk but if you're a vertical content creator then the op3 might be your option even though when you go vertical it downgrades to 3K you can always flip the op3 on its side and leave the display in landscape mode and still record in 4k 60 although you may get that little warning message that says Gimbal and points are reached whereas when you film vertical with the iPhone 15 Pro you will maintain that resolution and there's no workarounds needed both have fantastic portability and great image quality you could use both the op3 and the iPhone to do some high-risk stuff like put them on your bike or throw them upside down on a selfie stick to get some low angle shots in a fast moving environment or even run with either of them but if you use your phone to do this and you break it you can't call anyone to come pick you up so the osmo would be a great alternative I know people say that you can slip both of these cameras into your pocket and I don't know about you but anytime that I've ever done this I get dust and debris in the corners and the gaps of both of these cameras so I try not to slip either of them into my pocket if I'm actively using them to film it'd be better to slip either of these cameras into something like a camera bag rather than putting them in your pocket another point that I like to think about when it comes to portability is not only when you're out shooting with the camera but what about when you go back to your hotel room and you have to quickly offload your footage and get back out the door from an image transferring standpoint both of these cameras can hook up to your computer via USBC and you can transport the images that way but I find it way easier to do this with the op3 rather than having to go through image capture on a Mac or wait for my photos and videos to upload to the cloud just to get my videos and pictures to the editing software all right speaking about images let's talk about image quality the osmo pocket 1 has a 1-in centure which means you'll get a lot more dynamic range better color and better low light performance also the fact that you can manually white balance the op3 drastically helps with its image quality compared to the 15 Pro which does not have any type of white balance control unless you download a third party app white balance for me has been the biggest culprit when it comes to getting my images to look right or have realistic looking colors if the camera doesn't get the white balance right then your images won't look correct so the fact that you have control over your white balance with the op3 is yet another huge step up from the iPhone 15 Pro up until now I've been talking about the main camera lens on the 15 Pro which will give you the high highest image quality but you can zoom in with both of these cameras and when you start to zoom your image quality will fall apart the op3 will do a digital zoom and the iPhone will switch cameras which will have less megapixels whether you zoom or go wider so I would not pick up either of these cameras if the zoom function is what you're hoping for with that said though at the end of the day the zoom on the 15 Pro is a lot better than the op3 in my opinion so we have to ask ourselves which camera produces more realistic looking color in the normal color profile I got all these shots in every single type of environment that I could think of in every single different situation that I was in to see how both of these cameras would react and capture the colors and I believe that the osmo pocket 3 does outdo the iPhone in most cases I believe that's because of the 1-in sensor the osmo Pocket houses and the fact that it can gather more information because of it but as you can tell both cameras produce great image quality and someone might be more concerned about stabilization than image quality all right let's talk about about [Music] stabilization the osmo pocket does not crop in on stabilization because it's a mechanical gimbal arm whereas most cameras that I've shot with in the past that have image stabilization do all of my Sony cameras crop in sometimes 1.5 times when you turn on active stabilization in a weird plot twist when you turn active stabilization on the iPhone or action mode it does a negative crop so your image actually gets wider if you know why this is please let me know know in the comments because I would love to know but when you use action mode on the 15 Pro you also need to introduce more light and it doesn't shoot in 4k anymore whereas the osmo pocket 3 there is no stabilization modes which means you don't have anything funny going on in camera with any of your resolutions but the advantage of the digital stabilization is that it will be able to stabilize your y- AIS or your up and down whereas the osmo pocket 3 will only stabilize your x and z axis which is the side by side and rotational now to a lot of people they might look at these stabilization tests and they think eh it looks about the same to me and they don't really care whether it's digital or mechanical and they're more concerned about how these cameras perform in low light let's talk about low light straight up the lp3 wins in this category but the 15 Pro does okay and certainly better than previous models like my iPhone SE which I couldn't even use at the start of golden hour without getting tons of noise in the image also the flares around the lights when you're using the op 3 are way more realistic looking and more cinematic than what you get with the 15 Pro when you turn the low light mode on on the osmo pocket you lose the ability to shoot and dlog which I think would help to even push better images out when you're shooting in low light with the op3 but it's unfortunate that we lose out on that that is why I keep it in the regular video mode and I set up a preset that's my own low light video preset I did an entire module on low light in my course in case you're interested or you want to dive deeper in how to set up the op3 for low light shooting to get an optimal video setting but I do find when I shoot in prores log in low light I get way better results than when I shoot in the normal color profile out of the 15 Pro and that brings us to [Music] log when you film in prores with the iPhone 15 Pro the file sizes are so much larger than the dlog footage out of the osmo pocket 3 so you almost have to hook up an external recorder on the iPhone to make the sizes more manageable however if you download the Blackmagic camera app and you shoot in proes log in h.265 the file sizes will be much smaller and easier to edit on your editing ranks as someone who color grades video every week I can say the dlog m is easier to grade but you have less room to grade it whereas the prores log footage out of the 15 Pro is bigger in file size but you do have more room to push and pull the colors if you get the Creator combo kit for the op3 you'll get an extra battery which will help last you way longer than the 15 Pros battery will last last you although the 15 PR battery is probably the best battery out of a phone that I've ever used or experienced but when it comes to charge times with the op3 it way outdid the 15 Pro using the same exact charging cable hooked up to the same exact USBC [Music] Cube both cameras had fixed apertures but the op3 has a product showcase mode this is also important for those of you who like to do product video or overhead shooting by focusing on whatever's in front of your face rather than having the camera automat automatically lock onto your face and what's in the background I believe Sony was the first one to introduce this feature into cameras and when they released it I found it super helpful especially when I was doing videos like this one but I have heard that the product showcase mode in the op3 focus pumps a bunch it didn't happen to me maybe that's because I updated the firmware if you get the Creator combo kit for the L3 it will also come with the DJI mic too and before I show you what that sounds like compared to if you were to use a laugh mic for the iPhone let me show you what the native audio sounds like out of both of these cameras and here's what the audio sounds like without the DJI mic to set up to the osmo pocket 3 so you can get a good idea of what it sounds like in this ambient environment we got little bit of Breeze going on there's some stuff going on in the background and the osmo pocket 3 is about 4T 5 ft away from me and this is what the sound sounds like if you didn't have one of those external mics hooked up with the iPhone 15 Pro just so you can get a good idea of the audio situation that you have going on with the iPhone when you're out in this area like this little bit of Breeze a lot of ambient noise in the background now let's take a listen to what both of these cameras sound like when you hook up wireless mic systems to them for the osmo pocket 3 it's the DJI mic 2 which will automatically connect to it once I turn it on and for the iPhone 15 Pro I have the SEL AWS 24g which costs about 200 bucks and I'll leave this one in the description in case you already own an iPhone and you want better audio now here's a shot with the OS pocket 3 and I'm using the DJI mic 2 that came in the Creator's combo kit just to kind of give us an idea of what the audio sounds like I'm using this little SEL AWS 24g which would be equivalent to the DJI mic 2 on the osmo pocket 3 one thing to note is when you have the DJI Mike 2 hooked up to the op3 you will get audio levels on the screen of the op3 which is super nice because then you can see if anything's peeking also it's cool how the op3 has a built-in receiver whereas I have to hook up the receiver to the outside of the the 15 Pro to get that external audio the DJI mik 2 also records internally in case your audio feed going to your op3 has a hissy noise or it has something wrong with the audio feed I did a review where I covered a lot more stuff about the DGI Mike 2 and I'll leave that video in the description in case you're interested to dive a little bit deeper but now that we've covered audio I think it's a good time to cover [Music] vlogging if you're a vlogger the big difference is going to be the fact that the camera on the op3 flips around and you can actually see the display as you're filming whereas with the iPhone 15 Pro if you're using the front-facing camera you will not be able to see the display this will really only affect people who are filming themselves but if you're filming someone else or something else this won't be an issue I have heard some people say that you can buy an Apple Watch to monitor yourself using the rear-facing camera on the iPhone 15 Pro but I don't want to buy an Apple Watch and if I'm blindly filming myself not only will I have to make sure that the frame is correct but I also have to make sure sure that my finger doesn't touch the display and then all of a sudden I'm out of focus those are all stressors content creators do not want to have to deal with if they don't have to all right let's talk about photography I'm not a photographer but I did take some shots with both of these cameras and I think they both do great now I'm not going to do a deep dive into photography because I mainly shoot video but I wanted to include this into the comparison for those of you who do do photography I know the megapixel out of the iPhone is about 48 megapixels whereas the osmo pocket is about 9 or so so once we start to scale in that's when you're really going to see your images start to fall [Music] apart I would have loved if the op3 came out when I first started because this definitely would have been my first camera not to mention the image quality out of it is so much better than anything that I've ever used is in this form factor like the op1 it would have been fantastic I do wish I could unlock the gimbal so I'm not stuck getting super super smooth buttery looking footage it would be nice to be able to get that handheld look every once in a while while I'm using this camera I have not done much hlg shooting with the op3 mainly due to this exact reason a lot of people do not have hlg monitors they have SD monitors so if I was to film a bunch of hlg footage on the op3 and then edit it and upload it to YouTube if a person has an SD monitor all that footage is going to look Overexposed so if your final output is going to be for an hlg monitor or an HG monitor then you could film an hlg and have no worries that the person who's watching it wouldn't be Overexposed I don't think hlg videos are created for YouTube although I do know YouTube can pick up whether it's an SD or an hlg video now and they can give you that toggle but I don't know I'm just old school although the op3 is half the price of the iPhone 15 Pro one might need to consider picking up the op2 because it's half the price of the op3 and that's if they can't afford to pick up the op3 at this point in time but I think the osmo pocket series of cameras are fantastic for beginners or someone like me who needs a bcam I believe that the op3 is way better than the iPhone 15 Pro in the normal color profile Department mainly due to its mechanical setting without messing around with any of the camera settings like the iPhone 15 Pro does the op3 encourages me to go out and have fun and just to go shoot with it whereas the phone just sits in my pocket and it's there in case I need to capture a memory not to mention the image quality out of the op3 is so fantastic and unbelievable it just makes me want to go shoot so to answer your initial question should I invest in a dedicated content creator camera like this or spend the extra money on a camera like this that can text or call people I'd say invest in a dedicated camera like this and just go pick up a flip phone the only reason that I decided to pick up the osmo pocket 3 is not only for YouTube but also because of its stabilization its image quality and its ability to capture behind the scenes maybe do some bcam work or when I'm out in the field teaching one of my courses you could always get them both and use them for completely different uses I'd say if you're planning on doing anything more than just capturing memory type videos then go ahead and pick up the op3 and once you get this camera you get a bug that makes you just want to go out and learn and build in your craft and if you want to do some fun hobby work and just have something available to pull out of your pocket to capture memories then go with the 15 Pro all right I told you that was a lot of information and I hope we C everything if I missed anything please let me know I'm Joe with the film Alliance see you on the next video