iPhone 17_ Photographer s Reaction

Tech Nerd

1 week ago

Transcript

00:00I just spent the day at the iPhone event at Apple headquarters and then I spent the evening

00:09researching all the things they didn't mention in the keynote. So I'm going to break down

00:13everything that's important for photographers, filmmakers, because I use the iPhone in my

00:17professional workflow all the time. So we're going to go through a lot of the details here.

00:21And what was different this year, hasn't happened in a while, is we got a lot of hands-on time

00:26testing the cameras. And I was actually able to take sample photos that I'm going to be able to show

00:31you. So stick around to the end of the video and we're going to dig into them. Now, if you really

00:35care about photo and video, you're probably most interested in the new iPhone 17 Pro, which I'll

00:40talk about the most towards the end. But let's start off with some of the announcements that

00:43affect everything, including the new iPhone 17 and the completely new form factor of the iPhone Air.

00:50First, some great news for everybody, not just photographers, but the base storage has been

00:54bumped up from 128 gigabytes to 256. And ceramic shield, which is what Apple calls the protective

01:01layer on top of the screen, has been updated. And I really hope this delivers on its promise

01:05because on my iPhone 16, that screen is so scratched that it almost makes my photos look

01:11less in focus. Like it really took a beating in a way that older iPhones didn't. And they say that

01:16this new ceramic shield has three times better scratch protection. I really hope that's the case

01:22because as your screen starts to wear out, it just feels like your photography isn't quite as crisp.

01:27So I was thinking about putting a screen protector on for the first few months, at least to keep

01:31things clean. We'll see. I know there's trade-offs between being more shatterproof and scratch proof.

01:37Hopefully this is both. Looking at the main camera, the One X, there have not been significant

01:42upgrades. So across the whole line, basically expect the same results there. But the big one,

01:48the thing I did not see coming, it was not leaked, is the selfie camera now has a square sensor.

01:55And if you don't follow me on here or threads or Twitter, you may not know. I've been asking for

01:59square sensors for a long time now, like years and years. The big advantage, which Apple fully

02:05understood here, is now you can shoot in vertical or horizontal orientation without turning your phone.

02:11So probably the most common use case is you'll hold your iPhone in a vertical orientation,

02:15and it'll just fit everybody in there. It can do it automatically using center stage

02:20AI features where it's detecting people and expanding the frame to make sure that they're

02:25there, because this is a very wide lens. And this center stage branding for cameras is something

02:30they've been adding to a lot of Apple products, like the Macs. And I don't really like the way

02:35they've been implemented there, like on the studio display or the MacBook Pro. It's an ultra wide

02:40lens, but with a really small sensor. So you're usually cropping into it. And the image quality

02:45is not great. This is still called center stage, but they did it differently. They did it right here.

02:50They made the sensor over 50% larger than the old selfie camera. So now we have this big,

02:57beautiful sensor, which makes a huge difference in image quality. And that's what they're slightly

03:02cropping into. But you can also still use the whole thing edge to edge. One weird feature I

03:07discovered when I was testing this hands on is you can't actually take a square image with it,

03:12which is sort of strange to me because it is a square sensor. Maybe third party apps can take

03:16advantage of that. But you can take either wide or tall photos that are going to be able to fit you

03:21and everybody you want in the background. And a feature that snuck by me, I didn't see this until

03:26I watched the keynote again, is that they're applying the same technology as action mode to that selfie

03:30camera. So it is super stabilized. If you're, let's say, running and recording a selfie, something like that,

03:36it should be very stable. I'm going to test that later. They also added dual capture to the camera

03:41app. This is something iPhone hardware has been able to do for a while. So third party apps could

03:45do this, but now it's built in. So you could have your reaction and whatever it is you're looking at.

03:50I think this is really smart for quick and simple content creation, but it doesn't record two separate

03:56video tracks. So you're not able to edit both of them later. It actually records the little thumbnail

04:02of you over top of the original video. And that's how it's saved. It's going to stay that way.

04:07So very useful for really quick non edits where you don't want to put any work into it,

04:11but you're still going to want those third party apps. If you want to dig deeper,

04:14the entire iPhone lineup now has 120 Hertz promotion display just means smoother playback with

04:20everything. Most of all, the interface doesn't really affect your images that much, but it's good

04:24that it's there. More importantly to me, they're all also 3000 nits of maximum output. That brightness

04:32is amazing. When it comes to like professional video monitors, you pay a lot more to get 3000 nits.

04:38So when you're outside means you're going to see your screen a little better. I did notice this while

04:43I was in the hands-on area comparing it to my iPhone 16 pro. I can actually see that difference from

04:47the old 2000 nits up to 3000. Now it was visible. Another quick one they snuck in was the N1 chip. Now

04:54this is a networking chip. So it's meant to improve reliability with like wifi seven and Bluetooth

04:58six. But what was really exciting for photographers is they also said it's going to improve reliability

05:04of airdrop. I've asked for this so many times, like my number one complaint a lot of years is I

05:09just want airdrop to work 100% of the time. Cause when it works, I rely on it. Like I use it constantly,

05:15but it doesn't always work. So I'm really hoping that having this dedicated chip really gets it to

05:21like a hundred percent functionality. Apple's updated their photonic engine, which is just

05:26their way of saying the image processing pipeline. And they do this every year. There's little nudges

05:30and sometimes they've gone into more detail than they did now. So I'm not sure how big of a change

05:34there will be. The one thing I found on the website is there's a new photographic style. It's called

05:38bright. I haven't seen it yet, but they didn't mention in the keynote. I want to try it out, but I am a

05:44little disappointed that we didn't see photographic styles come to video modes. Would have been nice

05:48because it sort of turns down some of the image processing. I'd like to see that on video as well.

05:53And while we're turning down processing, can we also turn down the sharpening a bit? I want to dial

05:57for that. I was really glad to see that Apple still hasn't added any kind of generative AI to the camera

06:02app. If you want to edit your photos like that, which I do, like I mess around with generative fill

06:06all the time, do it in another app, take the photo and know that it's representing reality and then

06:12edit it somewhere else. Google has gone the other way, right? Like with the pixel 10,

06:16it's making stuff up if you zoom in too far, but that's fun. I don't mind there being competition

06:22between the two companies, but something Google also did is they added C2PA, which is basically

06:27authentication to have some level of verification to how much the image has been edited with AI.

06:34And I really want Apple to be doing this. In fact, they should be leading the way. I think we'd all

06:38like to have a little more confidence in knowing whether an image is edited or not. And so if Apple's going

06:43to be selling the most popular camera in the world, I'd love to see them take the lead on this. And

06:47they haven't so far. And just before we get to the 17 Pro, I want to mention AirPods Pro 3, which they

06:53were announced at this event. This is my favorite accessory of all time. I love my AirPods. I use them

06:58for everything. And I just want to raise a little flag here that if you remember back at WWDC, Apple did

07:04announce there's a bunch of new features coming to many of the AirPods, including AirPods Pro 2, AirPods 4,

07:10that are going to enable a bunch of creator tools. So you're going to be able to use the AirPods to

07:15trigger recording on your iPhone. And even more importantly, use it as a microphone because right

07:21now it doesn't transmit the high quality audio from the mic. The mics are good, but the transmission

07:27is not. So usually the audio sounds terrible coming out of the AirPods and it doesn't even send the

07:32signal to the camera app. So you can't record out of them, but they kind of announced that that's

07:36what's coming without a lot of clarity or storytelling around it, where I think this could

07:40be a big deal. Like, you know, I use things like the DJI wireless mics all the time. And if casual

07:47users that already have AirPods can now have a high quality mic just by wearing them, that could be a

07:52really big creator story to me. I want to follow up on it. Like, is that the new mic we could all be

07:57using? Or am I just confusing the feature here? Anyway, they didn't talk about it more, but I want to know

08:02more. And on to the 17 Pro and Pro Max, which come in the most colorful color that the pros have ever

08:10offered. These are clearly the phones to go for if you really care about photo and video production.

08:15Let's start with something you probably haven't heard about yet. It wasn't in the keynote.

08:19Version 2.0, a final cut camera was announced at the same time as everything else via press release.

08:25But there's all these cool little details that were hidden in there. So for example, ProRes RAW,

08:30that was announced at the keynote, which is an insane feature to be available inside of the

08:35iPhone. But when you dig deeper, you see that also enables open gate, meaning you can use

08:40the full, taller sensor of the phone while you're recording. This is a very powerful tool.

08:46Traditionally, it was used so filmmakers could have better frame coverage with their anamorphic lenses.

08:51But now it's great because let's say you're shooting vertical and horizontal at the same time,

08:55you've got a little bit more room to crop on the top and bottom if you want to use the same footage

08:59for both. And after all of that, Blackmagic announced that now DaVinci is going to support

09:04ProRes RAW, which is fantastic because that is the gold standard for color grading and it has not

09:10supported ProRes RAW until now. So this is actually really big news. But just so you know, if you want

09:15to do ProRes RAW, it does have to record to an external SSD. You can't shoot into the internal memory

09:21of the iPhone. By the way, that memory now can go up to two terabytes on the iPhone Pro Max,

09:27only the Max, not the regular Pro. Speaking of Blackmagic, they updated the Blackmagic camera

09:32app, which they work very closely with Apple. So you're going to find all of these features in

09:36both Final Cut Camera 2 and in Blackmagic. But along with that, they also announced the Pro Dock,

09:43which is a piece of hardware that enables features like Genlock. That's a very professional feature,

09:47but it lets you sync up a whole bunch of phones perfectly, like at Hollywood levels. And this is what

09:53they're doing in movies like 28 years later, or you do it for multicam. Very powerful. And this

09:58looks like a cool piece of hardware. And then I noticed references to Apple Log 2. If you watched

10:04my channel before, Apple Log is the game changer that happened back on the iPhone 15 Pro. It's

10:10really what let us have professional video quality out of the iPhone. So the fact that they're already

10:15redesigning that log profile to some extent is really interesting. We don't know what those changes

10:20are yet. Looks like there's probably going to be a different color gamut, probably Aces. I don't

10:26know. We got to see, but I'm going to test this out as soon as I get my hands on it. And that does mean

10:30I'm going to have to design a whole new version of my LUTs, which I've been working on, but now I'm

10:34going to have to take another look at them and make sure that they are up to par. Now getting into the

10:38meat of the updates here, the cameras are now all 48 megapixels. Great news. This kind of should

10:44happen a while ago. We've been waiting a long time. So the ultrawide, the main, and the telephoto.

10:49And all the updates here really center around that telephoto lens. That is the most exciting piece.

10:54If you made the mistake of looking at rumors, which were hard to avoid this year, everybody was saying

10:58there's going to be an eight times optical zoom lens. If you remember last year, I was complaining

11:03that five times is too much. Like the jump between 2x and 8x is enormous. You know, that is impractical.

11:13So I was very relieved that this is actually a four times zoom lens. That is the optical lens they

11:19decided to add, which is perfect for me. It's a step back from five. And importantly, the sensor

11:24got a lot bigger, 56% bigger, according to Apple. So that means that if you crop in to that four times,

11:31you also get a nice eight times zoom. This is the way to do it. I'm so glad that Apple took the

11:36approach that I was hoping for. I'd say that normal people that aren't into photography like

11:42that extended reach because they're usually just trying to read a sign from across the street.

11:46But photographers, people that have a background with nicer cameras, generally don't want that

11:51much zoom most of the time because something like 100 millimeters, which is what the 4x is,

11:57is a much more sensible like portrait lens. It's more useful more of the time. Both models have

12:03larger batteries. They say the largest ever in an iPhone. So hopefully that also means the longest

12:08battery life ever. And they've also added fast charging for MagSafe, which just makes MagSafe a lot

12:13more useful if you can actually keep up with plugged in speeds for charging. And this is helpful

12:18for filmmaking. If you need to charge while you have accessories plugged in, you can keep it all

12:23going at once. But that brings us to overheating, which I've had a lot of problems with. Like the

12:27iPhone 16 Pro overheats all the time for me. And it's terrible when it does because all of a sudden

12:33your screen goes dark. Like if you're outside and it's hot out, sometimes you're looking at a screen

12:37that is so dim, it's basically unusable. You can't see it anymore and you got to wait for it to cool

12:42down. So they have addressed this. One of the ways is with the aluminum unibody design, which is

12:47supposed to disperse heat more. And they've brought some of those components into the new larger plateau

12:52of the screen. Looking at it hands-on, that is bigger. It's taller, more proud than on the 16 Pro.

12:59They're saying the new A19 Pro chip should be 40% more efficient at sustained processes. That should

13:04help with overheating. But maybe most importantly, they added a dedicated vapor chamber that is going to

13:10take a lot of that heat away from the main A19 processor. I really hope this works because it

13:16needs to get substantially better. Like if it's just twice as long, that doesn't help. I need it to

13:21not overheat for like 10 times as long and that's when it'll solve my problem. Now as promised, I've

13:26got some image samples. Let's take a quick look. I had a limited amount of time to play with these

13:29phones, but it was exciting to be able to airdrop myself some of the photos. So let's just look at a few

13:35samples that I think are interesting. So this is on the main camera, but we're looking at one of the

13:39all-time great tech YouTubers, Dave2D. I think you can agree that he's looking good here. Again,

13:44there wasn't a huge change on the main camera, so I wouldn't expect to see much different here.

13:50A more interesting example is right here. So these were shot on the 16 and the 17 Pro. And ignore the

13:58streaks in the corner because those are just because my screen is dirty. And instead, let's zoom in on

14:05something more interesting. So starting with the 16 Pro, just take a look at the kind of noise

14:11pattern behind me. We're going to zoom in all the way to 400%. We're not like looking at resolution

14:16necessarily. This is sort of like what happens after the noise is removed. Here are the artifacts

14:21left over. And switching over to that area of the same image, it looks so much cleaner. Like there is

14:27both more sharpness, more detail, and less of those artifacts. A much cleaner image. And it is

14:34actually cropped in on the sensor. Like we're not using the full square sensor, like we mentioned

14:39before. It's a wider lens as well. And it still feels kind of like less distorted. Everything

14:45is a lot better. More clean colors, less aggressive processing. To a lot of people, these new selfie

14:51cameras are going to be enough reason to upgrade on their own. And reminder, they are in all of the

14:55new iPhones, 17 Air and 17 Pro. Now let's take a look at the whole zoom range so we can kind of see

15:00how far this can go. And keep your eyes on this orange dot here in the center. So this is the

15:05ultra wide, the 0.5 lens. This is the 1x main camera. This is cropped in two times to give you that

15:132x artificial camera. This is a digital crop. And now we're at the four times lens. This is 100

15:20millimeter equivalent. And cropped into that is the 8x 200 millimeter effective lens. I got a quick

15:27comparison between the five times iPhone 16 Pro lens on the left and the four times iPhone 17 Pro lens

15:33on the right. And one thing to note here is that color difference is partly due to having a photographic

15:40style applied to the iPhone 16 that I didn't sync them up. So not a great comparison. Don't look at the

15:45colors. Instead, let's zoom in and look at the overall sort of sharpness and tonal profile here.

15:52I just see a lot less artificial sharpening and more real detail on this 4x lens. Maybe the best

16:00example I'm seeing is under my collar here where it is starting to break apart a little bit on the 16 Pro

16:05and it has more of a smooth gradient here on the 17. I don't want to read into this too much. I've got

16:10to shoot way more tests, but I just want to give you a taste of it. And here's that four times lens

16:14focusing as close as it can. So all of that bokeh you can see in the background that is real. There's

16:19nothing digital about it. That is optical lens bokeh. And here is another example of it. We can

16:24flip back and forth. There is Apple Park in focus in the background compared to the flowers. Again,

16:29this is the real separation you get with a long lens like that. And of course, this gives you so many

16:34creative opportunities to have this real depth of field because of the larger sensor. I can't wait to

16:40play around with this more. I would say that a few years ago, camera performance started to plateau

16:43for average day-to-day users. Like it's just good enough for most people most of the time,

16:48but the pro features, they just keep marching on. And I appreciate so many of the little details here.

16:55If you upgrade every year, which nobody does, it may feel incremental, but those increments add up a lot.

17:01So if you're upgrading from an older phone, I feel like this could be a nice bump. Obviously I'll be

17:07testing them out more thoroughly. So stay tuned. I'll see you guys in the next video.

17:13I'll see you guys in the next video.

17:18Bye.

17:19Bye.

iPhone 17_ Photographer s Reaction

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