Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “iPhone 13 Pro vs Pixel 6 Pro: 2000 Photos Later | Full Frame Ep. 5”.
Hey bud. Welcome back okay, so it’s the end of tech season, which means it is the full frame that i know you’ve been looking for. Today we are taking arguably the best camera systems you can get in a smartphone and we’re putting them head to head. I took a thousand photos with the pixel 6 pro and another thousand photos with the iphone 13 pro to figure out which one of these cameras is actually the best and, with a little help from you, i think, we’ve gotten to the bottom of it. This is full frame buds, let’s get into it. The pixel 6 pro’s main camera is a 50 megapixel sensor with an optically stabilized, f 1.85 lens that is hard-coded to produce 12.5 megapixel images, which means you can’t actually capture 50 megapixel images with this camera.
There’S also a 12 megapixel ultra wide at f 2.2 and a 48 megapixel telephoto at f 3.5. The iphone 13 pro rocks a 12 megapixel camera system across the board, with an f 2.8 telephoto, an f 1.5 main lens and an f 1.8 ultra wide enough of the numbers. Let’S get looking at photos and i want to start with the tele, because there is almost no competition here.
Google’S 48 megapixel tele provides 4x optical zoom and it is very sharp it flattens. The image out, much like a larger telephoto lens would and its focus fall off, is really sleek and when you put it side by side with the iphone’s 12 megapixel 3x tele, the iphone photos begin to look muddled, especially when you punch in. I was really surprised at just how much detail the pixel can capture in punching into this photo. You can practically read the newspaper right here.
The next three photos were taken with night mode which, on the pixel, unfortunately can take up to five seconds on the iphone. It maxes out at three seconds and some real bonus points go to the pixel for how it spreads these headlights. This photo is digitally zoomed as far as each camera would allow me on the pixel, that’s 20x and on the iphone, that’s 15x.
The clear winner of the telephoto competition is the pixel. I had such a good time taking photos with this telephoto lens and i almost want to stop the entire review there, but we have to talk about the ultra wide on the pixel at a 0.7 crop or 114 degree field of view. The pixel’s ultrawide is just barely wider than the 82 degree main lens.
The iphone’s ultrawide is a 0.5 crop or 120 degree field of view, and it’s just a lot sharper now, although the iphone warps the image much more, that effect makes for a much more dramatic image that sells me on the grandiose nature of the buildings or monument. I was mostly shooting with it. The ultraride is where you also see a little bit too much of that hdr. Look that the pixel loves shadows are just completely brightened up, and i much prefer the contrast that the iphone provides again. It adds to the epic nature of a wide-angle photo. The iphone wins.
The ultrawide contest on the front of the pixel is an 11.1 megapixel camera and on the iphone there is a 12 megapixel true depth. Camera both are great in perfect lighting and capture. A nice amount of detail now, i’m gon na call this a tie because it was 50 50 on which images i liked more. For example, i really like how i look in this photo on the pixel.
I like the color blue behind me, and i like that. My skin tone isn’t as washed out, although in low light, i found that the iphone held onto my skin tones just a bit better and when there was no light well, neither of these cameras performed well alright, so it looks like it comes down to the main Lens – and this is where things get a little tougher – i, like the amount of contrast that the iphone has in this photo, but then the focus fall off on objects that are close to the camera. Look much better on the pixel yeah. It gets a little funky in this back row of flowers, but i prefer it over the iphone, keeping all the flowers in focus and then there’s photos like this, where, yes, you can barely see my hand but on the pixel photo. It’S just way too blue and i think that my hand looks much more the color that it should be on the iphone. The color of the sky, and the iphone here is much more realistic. Pixel went way too magenta.
The street scene looks a lot better with a bit more magenta and those bluer tones in the pixel than it does with the warm tones of the iphone at night. The pixel definitely takes longer to take photos and you can see that in the way that these people are blurry in the pixels photo. But i do really enjoy the blue sky that the pixel preserved, whereas the iphone made all of this just black and then, of course, there are those light reflections that the iphone is famous for and yes, the pixel has them too, but a lot less of them And again, this photo took a lot longer to take on the pixel, but i really appreciate how much detail it kept in the buildings, whereas on the iphone, it just looks like a black and white mess back here. This one drives the point home quite well. The contrast of the pixel kept in the trees is really nice, but i prefer the contrast that the iphone kept on the people and this ledge right in front.
Okay, i’m coming close to who, i think i’d pick as the winner. But i wanted to give all of you a chance to choose as well, so i made a poll i posted on my twitter and a whole lot of you took it and we’ll get to those results in a bit. But first i want to talk about how it feels to use these cameras, because you can’t talk about a camera system without talking about its hardware and its ui, let’s head outside, for that. When people ask me if they should buy a pixel 6 pro, i asked them what they think of big phones, because this phone is absolutely massive, the pixel’s incredibly slippery back also.
Does it no favors, it weighs 210 grams and has a 6.7 inch screen that makes the iphone 13 pro feel mini at 204 grams, with a 6.1 inch screen and to be clear, i used to think that the 13 pro was way too big, but now that I’Ve used the pixel 6. This thing feels mini all right, but now, let’s talk about camera software, because both of these phones are missing. One large feature, if you ask me, let’s talk apple first, as dieter noted in his iphone 13 pro review. There is this horrible small icon in the camera’s ui.
This is yet another button on apple’s camera app, which is getting increasingly complicated and has an almost fractally expanding set of different kinds of shooting states. So what deter is referring to? Is this little button right up here? The small arrow the arrow button brings a whole new set of controls to the bottom panel, replacing existing controls, and it actually took me a few days to even realize this was a button at all, not to mention you can bring up the same controls by swiping On the screen on the pixel, it also has a downward arrow up top, but it has a little settings wheel right next to it, so it brings up a box that covers the camera’s screen and that’s where most of your settings are housed. Each of these phones also have some fun features built in so on the iphone. You have a macro mode that uses the ultra wide lens and is quite stunning.
Then there’s a cinematic video mode that is kind of hit or miss, but it’s really great when it hits and it provides a great deal of depth of field and slower focus pulling to emulate cinematic cameras. Then there’s also photographic styles that allow you to tune your camera’s, color and contrast settings to fit your style, and then, however, you tune it, it will stay on the main camera and always shoot that way. Now, google’s camera promises that no face will be blurry with its face. Humbler feature that uses machine learning and multiple images, so that no face is ever blurry, no matter how quickly a photo is taken or a subject is moving. It works most of the time, although in low light, it kind of all goes out. The window there’s also a motion mode that can add motion to cars or trains or fast moving objects for a more professional looking shot and a magic eraser tool that allows you to erase unwanted distractions. In the back of your photos, i’ve used magic eraser as a bar trick for the last two weeks, and it totally blows people away and when it works, it really works. It’S amazing that you can do this on a phone and, as many reviewers have said, if an iphone had this people would be going.
Absolutely nuts, though i will say when it misses it, it does miss now. What i think that both of these systems are missing is a pro mode where i can manually adjust aperture shutter speed iso without having to download another app to do so. As someone who shoots film on my galaxy s10, i’m in pro mode, often because i can preview the shot i’m about to take, if you got pro in the name, seems like you should uh, you should have it in the camera system too.
Okay, but there is one more feature of the pixel 6 camera that i think is really important. Google claims the pixel 6 camera system is better at exposing for diverse skin tones. They call this feature real tone and google did this by diversifying their image. Data sets, and by working with a panel of photography experts to better train its photo algorithms, but to figure out. If any of that is true, i hit up someone here at the verge who takes a lot of photos.
This is mario abdulkoff she’s, a senior video producer here at the verge she’s, also our in-house paparazzi. Those are some facts. So today we took the iphone 13 pro and the pixel 6 pro around the office and outside and tested them in different lighting situations to see how well they would take a photo of me. I just really do have a preference towards the pixel, because it is actually getting more detail in my face yeah.
The true tone isn’t like the true tone of my face. However, it is more accurate than the iphone overall, this last shot of mario, oh my gosh, but let’s talk video. Both of these devices can shoot at 4k, 60 frames per second, the iphone holds onto that same video.
We have come to love with decent stabilization and balanced colors and the added bonus of being able to shoot in prores. It’S not afraid to blow out the highlights or keep the shadows dark, but there are still loads of reflections at night that cause those all too famous dancing dots. The pixel has four stabilization modes, but with each jump and stabilization comes more jitter to the image, especially at night, the color is incredibly punchy.
This camera absolutely loves the color blue, which looks great when viewing on a small phone screen, but some may find this to be a bit too much hdr. I also fundamentally hate that you can’t shoot at 4k 24 frames per second on the pixel and lastly, when zooming in or out there are jarring jumps between lenses instead of smooth transitions, even with a bit more distracting light reflections at night. The iphone winds at videos because it performs more consistently across different lighting conditions, but the good news is the field is definitely narrowing.
I also recorded on both of these phones at 4k 30 frames per second, with both phones at full brightness from a full charge to a dead battery, and although there has been some debate about battery life on these devices, both of these cameras died at just about The same time, which was right around that three hour and fifty minute marker, okay, okay, becca cut to the chase, who won, who has the best camera, we’re getting there we’re getting there. So a thousand two hundred and eight of you responded to my poll. Thank you very much. If you are one of them, i appreciate you bud and well. The results are almost perfectly split. You really dug the contrast at night from the pixel in this photo, but the colors in this photo of some koi fish had your heart swimming with the iphone. You sided with the cooler tones. The pixel chose on the brooklyn bridge at night and then you again chose the cooler tones, but the ones from the iphone when capturing this photo of my plants. You much like me pick the iphone 50 of the time and the pixel the other 50 of the time when looking at photos from the main sensor.
Looking at the other lenses, if you love a telephoto, the pixel wins hands down if you’re a sucker for an ultra wide. The iphone will make your heart sing with a slightly larger field of view for pro res and less contrast, iphone’s video takes the prize, but if high contrast and punchy colors of your jam well, the pixel will turn the volume up to 100 on that. Every time these are both impressive camera systems. This competition ultimately comes down to the size of phone that you can tolerate and well ios versus android. We need to stop pretending that a camera could possibly pull an iphone user over to an android phone.
Let’S go to a buzz, we are at 400 photos we’re at like 550 photos we’re almost at 600., we’re at uh 700 photos 850 photos. I feel like i’ve been at this, my entire life breaking news, buzz. We hit 1000 and a thousand photos later. The pixel 6 pro is one of the best cameras you can get in android, but the iphone 13 pro has a camera that is equally as good and will keep this competition tied when it comes to photos from that main sensor, and one last thing that my Poll proved was that every single one of you wildly disagrees on how warm a photo should be, how saturated it should be, how bright it should be so down in the description. There’S a link to an iphone 13 pro gallery and a pixel 6 pro gallery, and it has 100 photos 100 of my favorite matching photos for you to decide who’s the real winner of this competition.
I want all the nitty gritty pixel peeping details you got down in the comments. I’M excited to see you down. There be well buds. Every time i told someone i was doing this like thousand photo project. They’D be like.
Oh, that’s so easy, but i live alone. I have no pets, i have no babies, i really only have plants, they don’t really move or change much every day. This was hard.
This was hard. I don’t know if i’ll ever do this again. .