iPhone 13 Review // Best Camera System On Any Smartphone

If you missed the video go check the last video, where we just show all of the footage that we shot, including all of that fpv, goodness Music. I had a little bit of issues there, but we got it done uh incredible time here at the hinter house. Here are my thoughts on the new iphone 13. this year, its a lot more clear what the differences are between the iphone 13 mini the 13, the 13 pro and the 13 pro max. But overall, the biggest updates, i would say, would be the battery life. The displays and, of course, the cameras, the battery life on the 13s is incredible. I went through the whole last year on the 12 mini and typically i could go through the whole day on just one charge and id have about 10. At the end of the day, now some people use their phones a lot more and they have to charge their phone throughout the day if theyre using the mini. Now we get 1.5 hours more of real use time. That could be the difference for a lot of people who are kind of on the edge and thinking i cant deal with the 12 mini battery life. Now you might have the option to go with the 13 mini. The 13 got 2.5 more hours of battery life, and that equates to about 17 hours of video playback on the 13 mini and 19 hours of video playback on the 13.

and interestingly, the 13 pro will get 22 hours of video playback and the pro max gets 28 hours insane battery life and what makes that interesting is that the pros have the new display. The 13 pros now have a 120 hertz display, which basically means that the screen can refresh at 120 frames per second, which means youre gon na get a lot cleaner and smoother animations when youre swiping through and that sort of stuff. The downside is thats gon na use a lot more battery life and the speculation was that the 13 pro would have worse battery life than the 13 because of 120 hertz, but apple big brained it and they decided to go with a variable refresh rate, which means That it can go up to 120 hertz 120 frames per second for us filmmaker people, but when you dont need it, it can actually go all the way down to 10 hertz. So if youre just reading a text message, for example, you dont need the screen to be refreshing at 120 frames per second 120 hertz. So you can go all the way down to 10 and save battery life, whereas the 13 mini and the 13 cant go down. They only stay at that 60 hertz the whole time so thats pretty interesting. Not only are you getting a better display but youre also getting a more efficient display, so youre getting kind of the best of both worlds? Now is the 120 hertz that big of a deal? Ah? Not really.

I would i wasnt asking for it. I dont think its like. You can definitely see the difference. Dont get me wrong. You can definitely see the difference, but its not gon na be like uh wow. I could never go back to 60 hertz ever again and those are great new features, but the biggest new stuff is in the cameras which is perfect for us filmmakers content creators photographers and more than ever. I think the cameras make sense right now. The 13 and 13 mini have the exact same camera setup and the pro and pro max have the exact same camera setups new sensors on every single camera, and that means that all of the cameras are quite gigantic. These 12s, all of a sudden look tiny. The 13s that is the new normal and they do stick out quite a bit more and theyre theyre, almost a little like sharp, like you could just like chop some vegetables, maybe with them the white camera, got a boost on the 13 mini and the 13, the Pixels are now 1.7 microns, and that means youre gon na get about 47 percent, more light gathering, and we now have the new sensor shift stabilization that we had on the 12 pro max. We now have it on all of the 13s. All the wide cameras – and i got ta, say its its ridiculous. How stable the footage is its literally gimbal like i, i cant state more, how good that stabilization is the aperture on the 1313 mini for the wide camera is now 1.

6, which is great and for the ultra wide its 2.4, and this is where it gets interesting. On the 13 pro and pro max, we get even bigger pixels at 1.9 microns youre, getting about 2.2 more light gathering and the apertures are quite a bit better. So for the wide cameras its now 1.5 and for the ultra wide, its 1.8 versus on the 13, 13 mini 2.4 thats, quite a big difference, and that means youre getting about 92 percent, more light gathering, which is a big deal because on the ultra wide we All know that it starts to fall apart, pretty quickly and gets kind of mushy all over the place. If you dont have enough light and of course we get that third camera on the pros. The telephoto zoom, which is now three times zoom, which is nice, but again, i think for me its the weakest of the three cameras and its the one that i use the least and lastly, all of the ultra wides now can focus. I actually didnt realize this before that the 12 iphone 12s ultra wide camera never actually did any sort of focusing. But now we have auto focus on the ultra wide camera and that enables the new macro mode, which works really. Well, i would say, but its one of those things that youre probably gon na try out a bunch when you first get the 13 and then youre kind of gon na forget about it, but i could see there being times where, like oh, this is great that I can take this macro shot and it is a little bit weird that it in photo mode.

If you go close to something when youre in the one time zoom the wide angle, it actually automatically switches to the ultra wide to do that macro shot and you cant control that theres no way of just like forcing it into the wide angle. It will automatically do it for you theres a few times where i was trying to get like a shot where there was something in the foreground, and it was just like force, switching it to the macro mode, even though i wanted to stay on the wide, but Other than that there werent that many times was actually annoying me, but it is a little bit interesting, a little bit of a quirk that it automatically switches and theres no way to control that okay, cool scientific information. Can you actually see a difference? I would say on the wide camera i wasnt really noticing any crazy differences uh. The best part is that sensor shift stabilization, which already had in the 12 pro max. But now we have it on all of the 13s, which is really great, but on the ultra wide you definitely notice the difference. I talked about it already a little bit as soon as you dont have enough light on the 12 on the ultra wide. It just starts to get really mushy really fast. You lose all detail and theres just so much going on now. You can definitely shoot with less light on the ultra wides on the 13s and not have it fall apart right away and for me thats really great.

The ultra wide camera is by far my favorite camera on the iphones, its the one that i can legit mix into my vlogs or pretty much any video and most of the time i dont think people are even realizing that im using an iphone its so handy When i dont want to lug around a big camera like this and its falling down right now, im on a run or biking somewhere or jet skiing im not going to carry around this big camera. I can just pull out my iphone film a clip and it looks great. It looks so good, so i love the updated ultra wide camera and because of the better aperture on the pros, more light gathering, which means less mushiness im thinking about maybe ditching, the 12 mini im, not gon na go 13 mini and im going to try the 13 pro, i think, lets see all year, ive just been waiting for an update on that ultra white camera, and now we have it. So if you like, using the ultrawide as much as i do, i think youre gon na, like the 13 pros a lot and just the 13s in general too then lets talk cinematic mode, the last frontier of computational photography. I call it the last pillar of computational photography and using ai to make these tiny sensors look more like this massive full frame, big sensor, that im using right now. Is it good yes, and no, are we all going to be selling our big cameras and fancy lenses? No, is it a gimmick? No am i gon na be filming everything in cinematic mode? No, so cinematic mode at times looks incredible.

It im im absolutely blown away by how good it works in certain situations, and actually my expectations were a lot lower than what cinematic mode is right now already in version one. No, it doesnt get the blur perfectly everywhere. You know if youre holding lets say a phone like this and theres like this triangle space here, its probably gon na miss that and thats totally fine. I think, if youre really focusing on where you should be, for example, the faces – usually youre – probably never gon na notice that stuff at all, only if youre really pixel peeping, then youre like oh, oh yeah. It made a mistake there and you and i youre, probably a little bit more attuned to that stuff, whereas most people would probably never even see it. They might notice that it has a bit of a different look to it, but they probably couldnt even put their finger on. Why theyre saying that and thats kind of my theory here is that it might even be that computational photography, the shallow depth of field that we can get using software is just a different look, it wont, be the exact same itll be similar, but its going to Be a different look, and that might be just something that we get used to and that kind of becomes the new normal now with objects. I find that cinematic mode doesnt really work as well right now, its probably a lot harder for the ai to do it, but for people, and especially when theres separation between the person and the background or its a little bit more easy for it to distinguish, which Is which it works really well and its? It is really impressive and its really nice that you can change the focus afterwards.

You dont have to be this. Like focus guru super good at focusing uh, you can kind of let the ai do its thing and then, if you need you can just change it in post now there are some issues also right now in cinematic mode. You can only film in the wide angle and the telephoto on the pros and its stuck in 30 frames per second and its only 1080, which that ones pretty reasonable. I think 4k is probably just so much data to go through and do this with. I think we do need 24 frames per second, though, that that should be completely doable and probably just added in a firmware update. But i also noticed – and i could be wrong on this one, but i dont think that the hdr kicks in in cinematic mode. It looks like theres, less dynamic range in cinematic mode, or maybe its just, not quite as good as using the normal video modes and that ones that ones a bit of an issue. For me, i love the look of the iphone cameras in terms of dynamic range theres. Just so much you get more than on these big fancy cameras, but then with cinematic mode youre not getting as much so im sure thats, just like a problem of way too much going on and crazy processing power, but uh yeah, thats thats, probably the biggest downside. I think of cinematic mode right now, so you can get that last pillar of computational photography get that shallow depth of field, but then you have to give up hdr that better dynamic range.

So i i think im still gon na use cinematic mode at times. I think its a really cool feature. Am i gon na use it all the time? No definitely not. Im, probably still gon na revert mostly to the ultra wide, especially because it looks better now, oh getting old, my knees hurt so bad. Oh side note that stabilization in cinematic mode, though sensor shift so so good and the last big update for cameras and video, especially, is the addition of prores, which we dont have yet. But it is supposed to be coming on the 13s and im really excited to see how that changes the game in terms of the quality of the video, but also how we edit that iphone footage. It might become way faster and way easier, which again just plays into the convenience of using a smartphone your iphone as your filmmaking tool, depo thoughts on uh, the new iphone 13. As you were editing the photos – videos i already put my camera for sale, no need. I just have one of these. I cant tell if their iphone or dslr. I think the photos are just mine, its actually crazy. You were saying too that, like youre, like oh, i took off the portrait mode and i was still getting like. Okay, its incredible and the video that cinematic blur or the wide it looks just like a dslr there you go so i did mention already in a previous video that um these big fancy, expensive cameras that are harder to use, might be going obsolete because of the New iphone 13 cinematic mode, all of that stuff computational photography.

But let me clarify im im, not saying that you or i are now going to go and sell our sony a7s or your canon r6, but the people that are starting out right now with filmmaking getting into it photography this the quality is starting to get so Good theyre going to start off with this because its the easiest, its convenient its got a.i all of this stuff, and they might stick with it. They might never really graduate to the big boy cameras, especially as this technology develops and gets better and better. They might just stick with this this. This might be the new tool, and these big fancy, cameras and lenses might be like just a thing of the past. Now its probably going to be for a long time still that these are going to be great and i cant see them going away completely. But it might turn into more of like a special use that you would use a big fancy. Mirrorless camera, like the sony, a7s three and most people are just gon na iphone. Only coming back. I keep saying canon sony all of the camera companies they to start playing around with computational photography more, and i honestly cant wait to see what that does to these already great cameras that have incredible images and are capable of so much. I want to see what computational photography can do with these things that uh yeah it might get a little crazy.

So the question is: should you upgrade to the iphone 13 and i would say if you use your iphone cameras, all the time photo video then? Yes heck. Yes, this is a great update. If you dont really use the cameras as much well, you got some better battery life. The displays are better, but i dont think id be switching for just that reason. I think the main reason to switch is those cameras and, if youre like me – and you use them quite a bit in your workflow for making your videos and just taking pictures and photos of your family or friends or just your life in general yeah. I think its a great upgrade. I think there was really noticeable differences between the cameras and then it becomes a question of, should you go 1313 mini or the pro pro max, and i think it comes down to a few things. If you need the telephoto lens, then its an easy choice, if you want the absolute best wide and ultra wide, then again, youre gon na have to go with the pros other than that theyre all really great. Overall, i got ta say i very much like the iphone 13, but i am a little bit torn. I dont know whether to go with a mini again or get the best cameras and go with the pro. I think its going to go down to the 13 minion 13 pro. For me, those are my personal preferences i want to know which one are you guys most interested in, which one would you get? Which one did you order right now and why? Okay, its been good hinter house has treated us very well thanks, so much guys for having us here, uh howd, you guys like those fpv shots that was still the most stressful stuff, ive done it in so long hope.

You guys uh enjoyed those crashes and hopefully well come here again.