Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Is The Pixel 3 Better Than A Real Camera?”.
What’S up folks how’s it going, this is waj hope you guys are all doing well and today we’re going to be talking about the google pixel 3 camera now, certainly in terms of comparing it to other smartphones, we’ve pretty much encountered that it’s the best smartphone ever Made in terms of the camera capabilities and with the new night side feature it kind of takes things even forward in terms of a low light photography. Now, what we’re interested in specifically in this article is: how does it compare against a full-fledged dedicated camera like the panasonic gh5? What’S kind of interesting? Is we’re going to do a semi-blind comparison, so you’re going to see an a-clip and a b-clip and then yeah? You go ahead and put it in the comments which one you think is which and then later on we’re going to reveal the identity of those clips. So, if you’re interested, let’s get right into it, okay, so now we’re back and all the clips labeled a were the pixel 3 xl and the b clips were the panasonic gh5. Let’S talk about the results that we’re getting out of both cameras.
Now, if you take a look at this example, you can see that the pixel 3 likes to overexpose a little bit now we’re still getting all the details and the highlights uh, no problem, which is the main thing, but in terms of clarity and sharpness. In some situations you can see that the pixel 3 looks a little bit more sharper and a little bit more crisper than the examples coming out of the panasonic, but keep in mind on the gh5. We used a very neutral picture profile added, no sharpening and post really didn’t touch anything in terms of post-production you’re, getting the raw photos out of both situations over here, but in terms of the sheer crispness and the overall sharpness. Yes, it looks like the pixel 3. Actually looks a little bit sharper in some of those examples, but it’s mostly that post-production and that’s we’re not actually seeing any more detail, that’s not being exhibited out of the gh5.
Now, in my opinion, i think the gh5 looks a little bit more true to life. Looks a little bit more neutral, but i still have to say that the pixel is really killing it in terms of all that crispy detail. Now, let’s talk about the portrait mode on the pixel 3 as it tries to replicate the whole shallow depth of field. Look that you get from a large uh sensor camera coupled with a wide open, aperture lens.
Now the panasonic gh5 is a micro, four thirds size sensor. We also have a speed booster in there, coupled with an 18 to 35 millimeter lens. That’S uh open up to f 1.8. So, with this combination, we almost have a super 35 millimeter uh sensor with a fairly wide open lens, and you can see from this example.
The actual area, that’s in focus on the panasonic is a lot more shallower and narrower than what we encounter with the pixel 3, which captures the subject almost entirely in focus and then there’s a gradual fall off of the focus point as it fades into the background And it looks fairly nice, but if you take a look at the actual out of focus elements or the bokeh effect that you’re getting out of the pixel it more or less looks like a blurred background, not a whole lot of complexity there versus on the panasonic. You can see that on the lights, the out-of-focus elements or the blur effect is more circular in nature, which is a natural optical effect created by the aperture opening inside the lens itself. And at this point to simulate the full spectrum of the optical properties. Of a specific lens, like the one that we have coupled with the gh5, is still beyond the capabilities of the pixel 3..
Now, in terms of low-light photography in the standard mode, the pixel 3 is actually fairly lackluster and nothing special. But it’s not until you enable the night sight mode. Where you see this thing in true action and google realized that, basically to shoot the best low-light photography possible, you don’t want to actually increase the iso sensitivity that will just introduce more noise. What you want to do is actually increase the exposure time to shoot long exposure photos. The problem with this is keeping the things stabilized in time to make sure that there’s no motion blur but uh thanks to predictive image, stabilization technology and a whole bunch of other things that they came up with the camera, actually actively moves and adjusts constantly to your Hand position as you’re shooting that long exposure in order to eliminate any kind of motion blur and the results, as you see from the before and after are really really impressive. Now one thing i notice on the nightside mode is that the white balance is a tad bit off compared to what we encounter with the gh5 and even the standard mode.
The room that this photo was taken in was lit by a single small incandescent light bulb that had a rating of a 3200 degree kelvin and uh. The photo capture with the night side mode is a little bit. Cooler has a more bluish hue now. Obviously this is correctable in post, but it is a tendency that i found with the nightside mode nonetheless, and uh, certainly with a dedicated camera or one that you have control over the white balance, you’re not going to have that problem right out of the gate.
Now, moving forward, let’s talk about the 4k video performance in most circumstances, when you’re looking at just pure sharpness and clarity, i think the pixel 3 is super super close in terms of delivering a lot of fine detail and you’re going to be hard-pressed to see which One is actually clear unless you’re going to do some serious pixel peeping, which in most situations with compressed video on the internet, is really not going to happen now. Technically, the gh5 is far superior in terms of its video capabilities. It can capture color depth at 10. Bit 422: the uh bitrate of the video itself is a maximum at 150 megabits per second versus the pixel. 3 is 8-bit color at 420, and the maximum bit rate is around 50 megabits per second, so we’re getting a lot more color information captured as well as three times uh the uh bit rate on the video on the uh gh5. So obviously, when it comes to an editing, post-production standpoint, uh there’s definitely no comparison.
The gh5 will give you a lot more versatility in terms of color grading and correcting things in posts where we simply don’t have enough bandwidth on the pixel 3, which is understandable because it is a smartphone nonetheless, now logically, there’s some serious limitations to the 4k video Mode compared to a dedicated camera, firstly, in terms of low light performance, there is no night sight mode on the pixel 3 for video, so you’re going to notice a lot of noise, a lot of detail loss when things are not optimal in terms of a lighting Condition and secondly, there’s no portrait photography mode for video mode, so you’re never going to get that shallow depth of field. Look when you’re shooting 4k video, like you, do in the stills mode, so as a stills camera they’re, very, very close, but in terms of video capturing capabilities. Besides just the sheer clarity they get from the pixel.
There is a significant difference and really the underlining reason. Why anybody would still go with a dedicated camera is obviously, if you’re doing something at a professional level or semi-professional level or as a hobby. You want control control over your lenses control over your exposure, whether that be iso, shutter, speed, aperture settings, a whole bunch of other factors, and that’s still a really big component of why dedicated cameras are still going to pretty much flourish. Now. A different story is the compact camera world.
I think the pixel 3 really eliminates the use of those small compact cameras. Even a high-end compact camera, like the rx100 from sony, is being really threatened by the capabilities of the pixel 3. and lastly, i kind of say this every year, but the gap between a dedicated, uh, dslr, camera or mirrorless camera is becoming a very, very small uh. Compared to a phone so next year, perhaps i might even have to throw out the gh5 and get the pixel 4 for all my video recording needs and heck.
The phone can pretty much do everything so might not even need a computer and all the tech. I would need would be coming out of one device which could be cool but kind of scary at the same time, but really on that guys, that’s really it! Hopefully you enjoyed this video and hopefully gave you some sort of perspective and understanding of what the pixel 3 can and cannot do. And if you have any specific questions, let me know give us a thumbs up. If you like this video and we’ll see you real soon take care. .