iPhone 14 Pro vs. $20k in “PROFESSIONAL” Cameras

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T934_KcjNlw

by mikece • 4 years ago

5 6 4 years ago

oropolo• 4 years ago

Jared Polen (FroKnowsPhoto) is an acquired taste and not everyone likes the way he presents things but he's extremely thorough on his reviews.

jerojero3• 4 years ago

Kind of a shame he never talks about the lenses on these cameras. The sony has a 12-24mm f2.8 which is a good lens but you could go much, much further with a prime lens (though ofc, you lose versatility).

In reality, he never really pushed any of the cameras... he kind of just took very regular pictures which for most people is enough but that's definitely not the usage you'd give to these cameras.

I think a much more fair comparison is getting a sony a6000 for what, 200, 300 bucks? couple it with one of the very good new prime (or zoom) APC lenses from sony or sigma (for example the sigma 18-55 f2.8, which goes for about 400 dollars) and you have a much better camera than what the iphone can give you for a lot more situations. The sigma lens is wide enough and fast enough to give you incomparable night photography against the iphone. It'll offer much better portraits as well at that 55mm f2.8. Yes, the iphone is more compact and offers a million other fuctions; but then... what's really the point of these comparisons?

I thought this video was kind of dumb and pointless? 48 megapixels is nice but that's really not what makes these professional cameras what they are. Could you capture a cheetah running at 120km/h from hundreds of meters away with the iphone? No, but that's kind of the reason why you'd get one of these expensive cameras (you'd also need a super expensive zoom lens). When he goes to studio photography, would you really use that f2.8 24mm to take pictures? In a studio? Absolutely not, you'd go with a prime portrait lens or a prime wide lens with f1.4 or f1.8 apertures which would give you insane bookeh that's simply impossible to get on the iphone.

So I guess my point is just that... I kind of feel like this video is simply content for the sake of content; it's very clickbaity and portraits the iphone as being "comparable" to these cameras and it is but just in the sense that you can easily dumb-down these machines to be at the level of the iphone. Again, I think a much more realistic comparison is getting a cheap a6000 plus the sigma 18-55 f2.8 and compare them in all kinds of scenarios because then you have a set up that's sort of similar in price (~800) to the iphone but you would really get to see how much good optics affect photography. Anyway, I guess some people just want to make money and entertain.

Arnt2• 4 years ago

Do you think you could explain why big cameras are better outside the "regular photo" domain? What does "55mm f2.8" do?

I ask because I have a DSLR camera with sizable lenses, and also a smartphone with a supposedly good camera. The smartphone is a decade newer and has lots more megapixels, but I generally like the photos from the camera better and don't understand why.

jerojero3• 4 years ago

Yes of course.

There are different sensor sizes in cameras, roughly speaking you have 2 different sizes that are popular (there are others): Full-frame and Cropped sensor. Full frame cameras (like the ones in the video) will let in much more light than cropped sensors. A smartphone sensor is smaller than even the cropped sensor size.

The more light the sensor can capture the faster it can take a photograph, the better the bokeh it produces will be. Mega-pixels are not necessarily related to sensor size but to sensor density. A bigger sensor will still capture significantly more light and so images will come out much sharper in the same amount of time. Also, with cameras you can modify all the parameters required to take a picture (mainly aperture and shutter time) so you have more flexibility to take good pictures. There are two ways of letting more light into the sensor one is to simply open up the lens more (lower the `f` value) and the other is to let the sensor be exposed to light for longer (increase shutter time).

Also 55mm f2.8 means is the lens, lenses have a length, a short focal length (like 11mm for example) will take very wide photos and a large focal length (85mm) will take close ups or "zoomed in" pictures. For wild life photography it's not unusual to see lenses that are like 300mm. The `f` factor is how wide the lens will open and the lower the number the more light it will let in. So for example an 11mm f1.8 will let in much more light in than an 11mm f3.5. The more light the lens lets in the faster you can take a picture and still have it be sharp.

Phone cameras are extremely limited in what they can do with optics, there are many optical tricks you can implement to have different focal lengths on a phone, for example, having 3 lenses: a "zoom" one, a "wide" one and the "regular" one. But ultimately a 11mm f1.8 on a camera will be incredibly better quality than whatever a phone can accomplish in such reduce size.

I hope that explains things a little better :)

iPhone 14 Pro vs. $20k in “PROFESSIONAL” Cameras

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