Let's be honest, the most significant updates with the iPhone 13 and 13 Pro, and probably why you clicked on this video, are the cameras. And more specifically, the video capabilities. We've got cinematic mode, we've got ProRes, and we've got the standard cameras that this already comes with.
And since you loved last year's video with the iPhone 12 so much, we thought we would do it again, but comparing it to Sony's latest edition, the A7IV, because why not? Exactly. Disclaimer. This comparison is not to prove that one camera is better or equal to the other, it's merely to show you what they look like side-by-side.
Let's start with the easiest and most common video shooting scenario on the iPhone and that's the standard 4k video built into the camera app. For all these tests in this video I'll be shooting at 4k 24 frames per second. First we're shooting with the standard lens on this camera and just so you guys can see this is right off the bat how the computer in this phone is exposing the shot but I may add some of my own tweaks to the exposure because that is something that's available to us in this mode.
So you do that just by tapping on the subject. It actually looks pretty much the same in this case but as you can see if you tap somewhere else it does change the exposure slightly. This shot is taken with the normal wide lens on the iPhone.
which is equivalent to a 26mm lens on a full-frame camera. When shooting, I felt like the shot was a bit shaky, but when I played it back, the iPhone applied a really nice level of stabilization to the footage. This is the same shot, but taken with the a7 IV at 26mm. For all the Sony tests, we had the stabilization set to standard, because active stabilization applies a crop, which wouldn't provide us with an accurate composition. We also shot these Sony clips with no picture profile to show you the difference in color science between these two cameras.
Next, we tested the ultra-wide-angle lens, which has an equivalent focal length of 13mm. Right off the bat, I can tell that this lens is the least sharp out of the three. It also has a considerable amount of noise in all parts of the footage, but especially the shadows. Like with most iPhone footage, the best scenario to shoot in would be with a ton of light. But we live in Canada, and it was pouring rain outside, so here we are.
The same shot taken with the Sony a7 IV is much sharper all around. and doesn't seem to have nearly as much noise in any parts of the frame. The telephoto lens is probably my least used lens on the iPhone, which is ironic because it's probably my favorite focal range on my Sony.
The iPhone footage was quite soft all around, which is one of the main reasons why I don't often shoot with it for video. The only time I pull out the telephoto lens is to take a photo of something really far away, but definitely not for artistic sake. So far this is not my favourite look.
I will say, however, for this shot to be a 77mm equivalent, and for me to be shooting handheld, I was thoroughly impressed with the stabilisation on the iPhone. This is supposed to be like the telephoto on the iPhone. It's roughly at 77 millimeters, which should be the same as the iPhone. So let's see what happens. It's going to be very shaky, probably.
The Sony shot is much sharper and offered much more depth behind Maya. This is typically what you and I would think of when we think telephoto. This video was made possible by the lovely people over at Canva.
I've actually used Canva for quite some time, even before they reached out to me to partner on this video. I originally used Canva to make some of my YouTube thumbnails, and since then, they've developed tons more features. If you're not familiar with Canva, Canva is an all-in-one platform to edit your social media posts, posters, newsletters, videos, presentations, proposals, and even help you plan your next big project. Canva Pro has everything you need in one place no matter what you're creating or sharing.
So what's most important for me because I'm always going back and forth between Instagram and YouTube and that's their content planner. So that helps me stay organized and keep track of all of my designs between my different platforms. It has unlimited folders and up to 100 gigabytes of storage so you will never misplace a design again. My favorite feature though has to be the brand kit because it just makes easy access of my brand colors, fonts, and logos when I'm designing something.
I've used Canva Pro for everything from my Instagram stories, both photo and video, proposals, YouTube thumbnails, you name it. Because their templates are super easy to use. And they look amazing, so why wouldn't I?
They actually recently launched a video editing feature, so they've made all of these different short video edits that you can just slot your footage into, customize, change the colors, and here's what it looks like with some of the footage we shot today. And if you're working with a team of up to five people, just pay $12.95 a month and you can unlock everything that Canva Pro has to offer. Or you can use this link right here to get a free 45-day extended trial of Canva Pro. The most, shall we say, forward-thinking idea that Apple put into the new iPhones is cinematic mode.
Think of this as a portrait mode, but for video. So the cool thing about cinematic mode is when I look at Maya, It automatically focuses on her and when I look back at you, it then changes the focus to me. And no one has to put in any effort to do this whatsoever.
My biggest beef with this mode and the biggest difference between the iPhone and the A7IV is that it is completely driven by the computer inside this phone. AKA there is nothing optically happening to cause the blur effect or the bokeh like in the A7IV. Unlike the iPhone, this rack focus requires effort. So Josh is behind the camera and he will manually pull focus.
So right now, camera's on me. Now as I turn to Maya, Josh will pull focus to her. And probably the only good thing about using a camera for this, I mean, it's a little annoying that we have to do it by hand, but... we're going to get a much cleaner effect because there are no artifacts around the edges of the vases or anything like that because we're using a real lens. There is real focus on me right now with an actual lens and an actual camera.
It's not computer generated. My other biggest beef with this mode is it's limited up to 1080p at 30 frames per second. Why would Apple do such a thing?
Honestly, I have no idea. So if anyone knows the reason, please let me know in the comments down below. So right away when I've switched to cinematic mode, It usually auto-selects my f-stop to be f2.8, but I'm actually going to bring it to 5.6 just because I feel like that makes the depth or the blurriness in the background look a little more natural and it's not quite so harsh between my subject and the blur.
For all the examples in this video, I had the f-stop set between 4.5 and 5.6. You can see that on the edges on my subject, there are definitely some artifacts and imperfections that are caused by the computer. I mean, camera. Trying to distinguish where the subject is and what to focus on. On a camera like the Sony a7 IV, we don't have this problem because, again, the bokeh is optical and not electronic.
So I'm noticing that as we move around her there's almost this weird, like it looks like her face goes out of focus but I really think it's just the computer and the phone kind of glitching trying to find where her face is and trying to figure out where to apply the blur in the background. All that being said, I could really see cinematic mode becoming something like portrait mode over the next few years where we see upgrades and improvements to the technology through the next iterations of the iPhone. What I'm noticing is that the results you get with cinematic mode are very situation dependent.
More light tends to help the camera with focusing, but you're still always going to notice that the phone is hunting for focus. You can pretty much always tell that it's digital bokeh. Except in this shot of Maya where we had the f-stop at f5.6 and there wasn't any camera movement. I can totally see cinematic mode being a great option for a talking headshot, but of course you are still limited to 1080p at 30 frames per second.
This is the feature I'm always looking for. most excited for. Now we're doing a ProRes test.
We've picked a corner of the room that's nice and bright for some even exposure on Maya. We're not getting her to walk around the room or do anything crazy. We have a locked off shot because this is just going to be to test what this footage looks like colored and, you know, how far we can get with it. And again, with the a7 IV, but this is just for science. ProRes is a video codec that is widely used in film as an industry standard.
If you don't know how ProRes works or even what a video codec is, don't worry. All you need to know is that shooting ProRes video is kind of like shooting raw photos over JPEG. ProRes video will capture a ton more information than shooting regular video, which allows for much more flexibility in post-production.
It's also friendly to your editing software, so scrubbing through footage and coloring it should be a breeze. To shoot in ProRes, you need to navigate over to your phone settings and switch on ProRes for video. If you have a 128GB iPhone 13 Pro, you'll be limited to 1080p at 30 frames per second. But if you have a 256GB or above, you'll be able to capture up to 4K 30 frames per second. The A7IV can't shoot ProRes, so I'll set it to the highest possible video codec, which is 10-bit 422, just for comparison's sake.
Now what I'm looking for in these shots is how good the dynamic range is. Are the highlights completely blown out and unsavable? Are the shadows crushed so much that we can't retrieve them? While a lot of the magic with ProRes will happen in the editing stage, I can already tell a difference between the standard, unedited footage and the ProRes unedited footage.
One thing I noticed right off the bat with the ProRes footage is that it appears to be sharper or higher quality as compared to the regular footage on the iPhone. When it comes to colouring, honestly both Both the regular iPhone footage and ProRes held up really well, but the ProRes definitely held up better when doing more extreme color grades. This is because with ProRes, you have a lot more data in the footage to play with. When comparing the ProRes footage to the Sony a7IV footage, I'm not looking at things like bokeh depth.
I'm more so focusing on the dynamic range of the footage. To be honest, the iPhone ProRes looks really darn good, and there's very little loss of quality or data in the shadows or highlights from what I can see, and I'm truly impressed by that. Keep in mind that this test is being done without a picture profile on the A7 IV, because we felt like adding one would be an unfair comparison since the Sony already has a leg up by being a, well, full-frame camera.
Well there you have it folks. You've seen the capabilities of the iPhone 13 Pro compared to Sony's A7 IV. Maybe there's one you like better, maybe there's one that you don't. But that's completely up to you.
I just gave you the tools to look at them both. Thank you so much for watching today's video. If you liked it, please give it a like down below, subscribe if you're not already, and hit the notification bell to get notified for all future videos. Big thanks to Maya for volunteering her time today, and we'll see you in the next one.