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00:00i should probably put my glasses on for this video should we test some cameras
00:07wait let me put it in uh fast mode
00:16my sunglasses are in the back of the car though
00:20it's just a little video stabilization test we've got the new iphone 24 ultra and the pixel
00:27the big three some would say and we're actually on our way to bristol now
00:32to do a little camera comparison
00:43so in front of me here i've got my timeline that's an hour and 45 minutes long i promise
00:47this video won't be that long but i'm just gonna go through all the photos and videos or a bunch
00:51of them that i've taken to see how they compare and of course this is just my opinion and to help
00:56make the photos and videos a little bit more consistent between the three i've put them in
00:59this little makeshift trident i've built here which actually does a really good job it's actually
01:05mounted on insta360 stick and it means i can quickly take a photo on each although you do
01:10get a few looks in public walking around with one of these and if you go to a house party and say
01:14can everyone just stop what they're doing and pose for three different photos in night mode
01:18well they may laugh at you a little bit anyway we'll come back to low light and night time stuff
01:22a bit later on a couple of housekeeping points to start with firstly the 16 pro and pro max share
01:26the exact same camera system now there is no more 3x zoom option on the smaller one ios 18 also
01:32brings some updates including a pause video recording button for the iphone finally as well
01:37as a cleanup tool in the photos app again now catching up with android although this does
01:41require apple intelligence so you may have to wait a little bit longer and the results currently are
01:47well there's room for improvement other big upgrades for the new iphone 16s include the
01:51revamped photography mode which is actually very good now when i found myself using it
01:55another feature exclusive to the new iphone 16s is audio mix we've got 4k 120 here is a delicious
02:01slow motion pizza although of course don't forget that samsung can also shoot in 4k 120 via the pro
02:07video mode although it's not actually as good but we'll come back to that a bit later on the 16 pros
02:12also have a new 48 megapixel ultra wide up from 12 megapixels and the main sensor is also faster
02:18so you've got a quicker shot to shot especially when taking pro raw on pro max photos you can see
02:23here it's taking almost twice as many photos in the same period as the iphone 15 pro max and they
02:28also said that they've added a new anti-glare coating to all the lenses on both 16s and 16 pros
02:34however putting it against the 15 pro max here well firstly the quality doesn't seem that much
02:38different at all just generally but also i'm still very much seeing that little green ghost
02:44uh follow me around so anyway here are the full specs of the new iphone 16 pros which i'm focusing
02:50on this video compared to the pixel 9 pro xl both of which have three lenses but then of course we've
02:56got the s24 ultra with its 200 megapixel main camera and four lenses you've got the 3x and the
03:025x but let's start this video with a bit of a blind test which do you think took which photo
03:07and also do you immediately have a preference is your eye drawn to one and which one say would you
03:12post to instagram straight away i'm immediately drawn to the left it's brighter it's punchier
03:17it's not necessarily the most natural looking especially compared to the other two anyway let
03:21me put you out of your misery here are the three you've got the s24 on the left iphone in the
03:25middle pixel on the right did you guess correctly so over the past week or so i've taken over i
03:31think a thousand photos on each of these phones which firstly was an absolute nightmare to compile
03:35into a timeline these videos always take ages to make so if you do enjoy it and find it useful then
03:40a like and subscribe would be fantastic but don't forget there is a massive subjective factor to
03:44this as well you may prefer the look of one over the other and that's absolutely fine so zooming
03:49in all the way to 25 times i say all the way that is as far as the iphone will go the s24 can go up
03:54to 100 times although that becomes a bit of a watercolor painting then but certainly even
03:58though they all have 5x zooms the samsung is way out in front in terms of zoom quality i'll talk
04:05about portraits this was shot with the 5x portrait on the samsung and the iphone although with a
04:11pixel you can only zoom in to a 3x for a portrait mode shot which actually is a bit frustrating a
04:16big win for the iphone is the fact that you can turn a portrait not into a portrait and vice versa
04:22introduced with last year's 15s when you take a photo it captures the depth information as well
04:26so in the app you can literally turn portrait on or off adjust the strength of the bokeh by changing
04:31the f-stop neither the samsung or the pixel have this option you can reduce the blur all the way
04:36down to zero but it is still a quote-unquote portrait shot so it's not as clean and also the
04:41ability to add blur is artificial it's not using real depth data however i do quite like that both
04:47the pixel and samsung let you have this kind of portrait light that you can move around the scene
04:51and it changes the brightness of your subject so i'm sat on a bench here completely candid photos
04:55i'm sure you can imagine and there is a significant difference in the colors between them the samsung
05:01consistently what we've seen so far is a lot more vibrant the iphone looks kind of dark and muted and
05:06have to say i've never been that impressed by the iphone's telephoto camera and i think the pixel
05:11offers a kind of nice halfway house between them and then at the other end of the spectrum we've
05:14got a 0.5 or 0.6 times ultra wide and i'm leaning towards preferring the pixel here the iphone looks
05:20a little bit over sharpened the galaxy is quite punchy but is just a bit oversaturated a bit too
05:25bright i like the ultra wide on the pixel here now with these guys playing cards on the grass
05:30look at the sky look at the color difference between them again the iphone's actually a little
05:34bit muted uh we've got the different skin tones of the ladies playing cards they're quite different
05:40photos actually which team are you leaning towards preferring apple samsung or pixel and then moving
05:46up to a 3x portrait shot which is as i say as far as the pixel could go and we get to utilize the
05:51s24's first optical zoom before we go up to the 5x and the samsung and the pixel definitely
05:56brighten the faces which i think makes it a more pleasing image although in my testing particularly
06:01with video the pixel can go a little overboard trying to compensate for the brighter background
06:07and therefore brightening up your face the colors completely drained out of me there but going back
06:11to the girls in the park you can see a significant difference in skin tones particularly with darker
06:16complexions in terms of what's true to life i would say it's closer to the iphone although the
06:20image could do with being brightened up a little bit i literally have like 500 photos in this
06:24timeline the difficulty with making these comparison videos is that a you can cherry
06:28pick or someone can cherry pick the best results from each because sometimes they just take a bad
06:32shot what is really important to do is make sure you tap on the same subject to adjust that exposure
06:37also the bigger question of what is a photo you can make so many changes in the edit afterwards
06:42and particularly with the revamped photography modes we have on iphone you can actually get
06:46away from that kind of traditional iphone look and save a preset that you really really like so
06:51as i say i'm just testing these on standard modes at the moment and we'll dive into the
06:55photography mode stuff in a second but there is an element of what photos you choose are you having
06:59to zoom in and pixel peep to see the differences and also just the subjectivity of it all but have
07:04a look at this banksy here in bristol and more specifically that um graffiti below it but what
07:09i'm finding both in bright and low light is that the iphone's white balance is very aggressive and
07:14it can often turn colors away from their natural tones uh whiter essentially although i must admit
07:20with this banksy example i really don't like the pixel as much it's uh really brought up the
07:25shadows we've lost a lot of contrast and actually the iphone and samsung with the 1x with the
07:29regular main camera are quite similar here before we start testing in low light let's have a little
07:44look at the video this is shot at 4k 60 on all cameras actually remarkably similar i would say
07:50although the samsung on the left look at my pink jumper there it's very pink and also look how dark
07:57that shadow is on my shoulder compared to the other two and as i get right up close to the camera
08:02perhaps a little bit too close for comfort i'm definitely leaning towards preferring the iphone
08:07terms of video quality
08:11in terms of stabilization all the main and telephoto lenses across the three phones here
08:16have optical image stabilization or some form of it and actually they're all remarkably smooth even
08:22walking down these steps all three phones offer some variety of hdr video for the purpose of this
08:28video because i'm not mastering it in hdr these are just shot in regular video mode at 4k 60
08:34and in this very tricky lighting scenario we've got the bright sun the pixel looks significantly
08:39noisier now of course i could have shot this in video boost mode where i'd have uploaded to the
08:43cloud afterwards and i could have downloaded it and that would improve the quality but for this
08:47i'm just really testing what you get straight out of the camera and also generally you'll get better
08:52low light performance if you shoot at 4k 30 as opposed to 4k 60. i'm also going to give points
08:58to the iphone for still offering the smoothest transition between lenses the other two aren't
09:02far behind it's much closer than it used to be but for zooming in particularly if you're
09:07going to use that camera control button on the iphone it is smoother on the iphone however
09:11the video stabilization using the 5x telephoto does appear to be less smooth on the iphone
09:33blur cinematic portrait 4k 30 4k 30 1080p pixel is the lowest resolution of the three
09:40i do quite like the cinematic mode on iphone for me it's always been the best ones
09:47in terms of color how on fake the blur looks behind you
09:54what do you think
09:55i did kind of hope that they would improve the cinematic 4k 60 on the iphone 16 but
10:00they left it the same i suppose for slo-mo obviously got 4k 120 but no change to cinematic mode
10:07but there we are
10:12let's switch over to some low light shots and this is another example of where that iphone
10:17is aggressively compensating for colors in the scene so in this first shot i am actually looking
10:23so in this first shot i am actually looking at a blue screen on my phone and the iphone's quite
10:27aggressive white balance is compensating and giving me a kind of whitey purple face as opposed
10:32to the more true to life blue that we get on the others i think samsung's done the best job here
10:37not just on myself although i will say that my face looks very over sharpened but the general
10:42color even in the back of the frame the wood fence the grass the pathway although i think the iphone
10:46does do a better job here where i have a more white screen in front of me and it has a really
10:51kind of moody cinematic feel to it which i do quite like this is officially tech chap after
10:56hours come on in the studio uh late at night this is where i'm filming right now this is where i do
11:01all my work and as i switch between the ultra wide the main and the telephoto lenses quite
11:07significant differences between them you may recognize sylvie the cat if you're a regular on
11:13the channel i think the pixels coming across the most naturally the iphone just looks like someone's
11:17dragged the texture and sharpness slider in lightroom all the way to 100 and it's a similar
11:22story here i mean look at the texture of the brick wall on the iphone i mean at first glance perhaps
11:27it does look more detailed but actually it's just over sharpened it looks kind of unnatural i'm
11:32definitely leaning towards the pixel and the samsung the pixel in particular especially with
11:37how it handles the tech chap neon sign at the top right and again here look how over sharpened the
11:42iphone photo is i just don't understand what's happening and this is the case whether you're
11:46shooting in jpeg or the heic file format there isn't a significant difference but particular
11:52credit to the samsung's exposure here how it's been able to handle the laptop and the screen and
11:56also the rest of the lighting in the room although back outside you can see on the samsung that the
12:00sky is actually quite noisy for me i'm definitely leaning towards the pixel in terms of low light
12:06photography but let's finish up this low light comparison going back to that group shot from
12:13the start and what a difference i mean firstly the colors on the samsung i don't know why it's
12:18green the iphone looks like it's taken the clarity slider to 100 and aged everyone 20 years it's kind
12:23of horrible actually the pixel is a little soft but on balance i think it's produced the best
12:28low light group photo here but how about some super low light video well i can tell you there
12:34is a cat here but you don't even know that really from the iphone and maybe the pixel
12:38this is also being shot at 4k 30 not 60 because for low light you kind of want to avoid that and
12:43i think the samsung's probably in last place here it's the darkest outside and also it's very noisy
12:48and it gets even worse when we switch to the ultra wide i definitely think the iphone
12:53is out in front here but then switching to the front camera for a quick low light selfie the
13:03latest pixels do come with a much improved selfie and in this particular case it is wildly better
13:09all three phones also give you a couple of different options for the field of view of the
13:13selfie so you can punch out a little further and the pixel has the widest field of view so you can
13:17get the most in the frame and just in terms of quality dynamic range colors in both good and
13:22low light the pixel has the best selfie camera but what's about selfie video well here we are
13:28shooting 4k 60 on all three with the front camera obviously there's a little bit of a
13:34difference in the placement because of how i'm holding this little trident rig it's never going
13:39to be perfect for every phone but we're doing the best we can now i'm also going to be jumping
13:42between the audio again with the microphone so we can test that out got the stabilization just
13:47looking at the actual phones though i can see that the pixel definitely has the widest field of view
13:53i'm holding this at arm's length quite a bit more in the frame actually
13:58and if i spin around got a little bit of lighting going on this is bristol harbor
14:04it's also worth looking at how it handles my face when i go in and out of light the pixel
14:11often sort of lightens the face when you've got a high contrast or a dark area
14:19it's hard to see with these sunglasses i'm looking at the screens
14:23but are there any exclusive features of each phone that maybe are enough to convince you
14:28to go for one over the other we'll start with the iphone as i mentioned a couple times before
14:32that ability to turn a photo into a portrait really really like that i also maintain that
14:36the iphone is still the best for video both in terms of social media apps uploading at
14:41the highest quality in terms of being able to shoot pro res and log especially with a
14:45new file cut camera app the iphone 16 pros have introduced 4k 120 which you can then
14:50very easily slow down to a half quarter or fifth speed in the app
14:53which is pretty cool if you're a creator and you want some super sexy slo-mo
15:08but still 4k 120 pro res log fantastic stabilization so i would still say iphone
15:14is king for video but now we also have photography modes now this was actually
15:17introduced a few years ago actually but i can't say i've ever used it and the difference here as
15:22opposed to using a filter is well they call it like semantic understanding it's not just
15:27flatly laying a filter over an image it's understanding the skin tones what's on screen
15:32it's a smart filter if you will and to some extent it makes these camera comparisons a
15:36little bit pointless now because you can change fundamentally how the picture looks the shadows
15:41the tones the saturation the brightness the exposure you can of course edit your photos
15:46in lightroom afterwards and have a lot of these effects but you're doing it in post these
15:50photography styles are much earlier in as apple like to say the image pipeline so it's also
15:55non-destructive you can remove the photo style afterwards you can add it you can edit and then
15:59when you've made a preset you like you can save it and just always take that kind of photo so we're
16:04getting away from that traditional iphone look it's a really big selling point for the iphone
16:09even if let's say out of the box it's not my favorite photography camera and we also have
16:13the new camera control button on all the new iphone 16s which is fine i've i found it a little
16:18bit frustrating sometimes i've actually had to change in the settings so a double press opens
16:22the camera because i was accidentally opening it so yeah it's nice to have a shutter button
16:26option there something the other phones don't have but you could always just use the volume down
16:30so yeah it's a nice extra i don't think it's a game changer but i actually think one of the
16:35more underrated features is audio mix this is coming to all iphone 16s although the pros do
16:40get the upgraded studio mics but this allows you to significantly improve the audio of your videos
16:46so now by default the iphones capture spatial audio so then you can go into the photos app
16:51afterwards edit your video and then change the sound from standard mode to in frame which
16:56prioritizes what you're well framing in the scene to studio which i think i probably use most often
17:01it can capture perhaps voices around the camera including maybe a interviewer behind it there's
17:06a cinematic mode which is applied by default if you do shoot in the cinematic video mode and you
17:11can also just turn this off or not use it completely if you prefer but it does a pretty good
17:14job at cutting out wind noise background sounds it's kind of like the audio eraser that we get
17:20on the pixel phone and it basically will make your iphone videos sound an awful lot better
17:25even just using the inbuilt mics in terms of the pixel well you've got like a billion different
17:30features to play around with in the google photos app you've got admi which is new for this year
17:35where you can take a picture of a group and then they take a picture of you as you get in the frame
17:40and it kind of splices it together it works reasonably well it's not flawless we also have
17:45zoom enhance which kind of just a little bit up scales and over sharpens a long range zoom photo
17:51and perhaps improves an image 10 a couple of examples of taylor swift here it's not exactly
17:57a game changer but it can slightly enhance your long range shots and also i still think the pixels
18:02offer the best astrophotography mode and also like the samsung we can actually shoot in 8k well
18:09not natively when you tap 8k that enables video boost and if you have video boost enabled you
18:14actually get kind of a low quality preview version on your phone but then it uploads it to the cloud
18:19google's wizardry with their ai and their cloud servers up scales it either to 8k or just improves
18:25motion or improves low light but it can significantly improve the quality of your video assuming you're
18:30happy to jump through those hoops as for samsung well clearly one of its unique features is that it
18:35has an extra lens you've got the one the three the five and the ultra wide we've also got galaxy ai
18:41which can do a good amount of what you can do in the google photos app and actually speaking of
18:46which quite a few of google's tools can be used on any phone if you just open it within the google
18:51photos app not all of them of course uh we also have the s pen on the s24 ultra if you want to do
18:55doodling and more precise sketching around areas you want to erase but also you can use gen ai to
19:02fill in the gaps i also love the fact on samsung phones that if you hold the screen while playing
19:06a video you've shot it actually will slow it down and interlace frames between it to make it pretty
19:12smooth actually and then you can save that essentially you can make any video slo-mo you
19:16do have a ton of features you've got director's view you've got dual recording you can switch
19:20between the rear and the selfie cameras while recording on the samsung you can't on the other
19:24ones you can also shoot in 4k 120 although the stabilization is then rubbish uh you've got 8k
19:29similar problem as well but you have those options you've also got expert raw you can download as a
19:34separate app which also then goes into the more tab of the camera and samsung offer a good amount
19:39of photo editing tools afterwards and of course with galaxy ai you can play around with image
19:43generation so you have a cat on your shoulder and breathe that was a lot to take in i think
19:50the pixel wins in terms of photography and also the selfie camera i think the iphone wins in terms
19:55of video and also some of the extra features that i'm personally most likely to use i also think the
19:59photography modes the new implementation of it is a bit of a game changer together with portraits
20:04but i think in terms of versatility just the number of options you have and also playing
20:08around with a little bit with galaxy ai i think for versatility the samsung wins but what do you
20:12reckon which one won let me know in the comments below if you enjoyed the video a like and
20:15subscribe would be lovely and i'll see you next time right here on the tech chat