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I used to have to manually under-expose every single iPhone photo I took in harsh light or against the sky. Yet, the iPhone’s smart HDR has gotten better and better at handling harsh light circumstances. I love low light, light patterns, and backlight, and none of those are easy to expose for with any camera. The iPhone has long handled taking photos in good and even lighting very well, but the scenes I’m often interested in photographing test the limits. Yes, I can use the 1x portrait mode distance instead, but even moving closer to my subject while using that focal length, it changes the lens compression enough that I notice, and my image loses that portrait feeling magic. When I had a 2x zoom portrait mode, I could move my body a touch closer with portrait mode if I wanted a 2.5x look, but I can’t do the reverse now to go from the 2.5x back to a 2x because I have to stay close enough to my subject so portrait mode works. When I use portrait mode, I try to tell more of the story in a scene and not crop out limbs as much as possible, so now more of my story is cut out with a tighter crop.
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I almost never use zoom in regular shooting mode - I still tend to zoom with my feet - but where I notice the change and really don’t like it is with portrait mode. I know a lot of people love the new 2.5x focal length instead of the old 2x, but I don’t. There is one major thing I don’t like about the 12 Pro Max. I’ve continued to see noticeably superior portrait mode images with this new phone. Neither phone did an excellent job applying portrait mode around the bottom of my oldest daughter’s hair (the one in the red dress), but the 12 Pro Max looks like it tried more than just blurring it completely out. In both situations there is some blur, as they were not quite still, but the 12 Pro Max is still sharper, even though there was actually a bit more movement in their interaction at that moment. The details in their faces are better with the 12 Pro Max. Aside from the visible difference in focal length, the 12 Pro Max’s image is a lot clearer, less noisy, less fuzzy, less grainy, and sharper. The only edits were color and light adjustments, no sharpening, smoothing, or spot edits were applied. The above images were taken 8 seconds apart - the first with iPhone 11 Pro using portrait mode, and the second with iPhone 12 Pro Max using portrait mode. I still had my 11 Pro because I hadn’t yet handed it in, so I took some quick shots side by side using both to try and see if I could tell a difference. So, when my new phone arrived and I got it set up, the first thing I did was test the camera out on my favorite subjects: my kids. I also don’t like how long the night mode exposure time is, and since I mainly photograph kids who don’t sit still, I usually turn night mode off. Additionally, night mode is mostly the same for me, and even available using portrait mode now however, it brightens things up too much for my taste, especially when I want my photo to actually look like nighttime. I know the new zoom is factually better, but I don’t use it enough to speak about it. As far as the other camera features like wide angle or zoom, I rarely use either and don’t notice major differences with this phone when I do tap on those choices. It’s also nice to have an even bigger screen when composing and taking my shots.Īs a portrait photographer, I will tell you the thing I care most about on this phone is Portrait Mode. Yet, to my surprise, I love it! It’s a great screen size to edit photos on, and because I frequently opt to edit on my phone in Lightroom mobile, this works well for me. I thought I would dislike that about it, but I was willing to live with the size in exchange for the camera. Let me explain, but first I want to address the phone in the room. So, is it a much better camera than my 11 Pro? Yes, and also no. It’s that time of year again: I’ve traded in my iPhone for the newest version, played with it, and now I’m here to tell you what I think of the camera on iPhone 12 Pro Max.