R10 vs iPhone 13 Pro on Video

Lots of discussions about R10 lack of native bright wide lenses.
Just for fun, not having the time to do a more rigorous test I'm posting these 4 samples so others have a rough idea of what can be expected of the R10 video quality indoors, low light compared to an iPhone.

All samples were taken at 16mm focal length nominal which happens to be close to iPhone's 13 Pro main camera field of view when shooting video.
All shot SS 1/30 sec with ISO in Auto at their maximum aperture, 4K 30fps.
None of these videos were processed, resized nor have noise reduction applied, except for the iPhone, since I used the default photo app.

The contenders are iPhone 13 Pro Max main camera f1.5.
And the R10 with the following lenses.

Canon EF-S 10-18
Canon RF 16
Tokina ATX-i 11-20 CF f2.8
Which one you like the best ?

BobKnDP wrote:

Is the banding that I see on the Caucasian doll's face representative of the iPhone?

Nope it looks better on the iPhone display, the issue here seems to do do with HDR-SDR conversion, the  iPhone Photo App recorded this video in Dolby Vison, which is the equivalent to Canon's HDR PQ.
But the app I used to extract this frame is not HDR aware hence the banding or posterized look on the Caucasian doll's face.
I should have recorded this iPhone video with the Filmic Pro App in Apple Prores 422 to show the best it can do.

Thanks for this comparison.

iPhone is doing very well here considering its sensor and optics tiny size. Yet it falls clearly behind R10 in terms of dynamic range, highlights range, detail rendering, sharpness and the natural feel from the scene.

Between the three lenses it is hard to guess since each of them seems to be focused a bit differently. But I like the Tokina the most, then RF, then EF-S. But different scene might give different results.

Canon_Guy wrote:

Thanks for this comparison.

iPhone is doing very well here considering its sensor and optics tiny size. Yet it falls clearly behind R10 in terms of dynamic range, highlights range, detail rendering, sharpness and the natural feel from the scene.

The iPhone 13 Pro is able to capture a good deal of dynamic range.
The issue here was that when this video frame was extracted, the app did not interpreted the Dolby Vision video as HDR, but SDR.
The major difference I see here is in regards to Depth of Field, with the Smartphone tiny sensor plus the crop it uses for video mode, obviously the R10 has a superior DOF control but only if you use a bright lens.

I'm surprised the iPhone was this good and it can be better. I might do it again tonight using a different App to bypass the HDR format for a better comparison.
The iPhone UWA camera was trash in low light since it uses an even smaller sensor.

Between the three lenses it is hard to guess since each of them seems to be focused a bit differently. But I like the Tokina the most, then RF, then EF-S. But different scene might give different results.

Agree, another surprise was the Tokina, this lens is as sharp as the RF16 and it only cost $50 more, a bargain for a zoom lens but is much heavier and bulky.
The EF-S 10-18 lens on the other hand narrow apertures produces too much noise, making the iPhone a better tool for low light interior scenes and little, if any DOF advantage.

And how does iPhone do zooming in on a subject and holding focus? Or tracking focus of moving objects? Or controlling the exposure or focus points? Or choosing between deep and shallow depth of field?

MarshallG wrote:

And how does iPhone do zooming in on a subject and holding focus? Or tracking focus of moving objects? Or controlling the exposure or focus points? Or choosing between deep and shallow depth of field?

Latest iPhones have a subject tracking and recognition as good or better than Canon.
You can control exposure with video dedicated apps like Filmic Pro.
In fact you can dislodge the exposure and focus spots unlike Canon ILC's

DOF control is where iPhones can't compete with dedicated cameras, among other aspects.

The R10 can do much better, but need brighter, affordable, native lenses.
Is up to Canon to decide if they want to compete or concede more market share to Smartphones.

Photato wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

And how does iPhone do zooming in on a subject and holding focus? Or tracking focus of moving objects? Or controlling the exposure or focus points? Or choosing between deep and shallow depth of field?

Latest iPhones have a subject tracking and recognition as good or better than Canon.
You can control exposure with video dedicated apps like Filmic Pro.
In fact you can dislodge the exposure and focus spots unlike Canon ILC's

DOF control is where iPhones can't compete with dedicated cameras, among other aspects.

The R10 can do much better, but need brighter, affordable, native lenses.
Is up to Canon to decide if they want to compete or concede more market share to Smartphones.

In truth, the Canon is a much better $999 camera than the iPhone.

i mean, the r10 is clearly superior.

MarshallG wrote:

Photato wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

And how does iPhone do zooming in on a subject and holding focus? Or tracking focus of moving objects? Or controlling the exposure or focus points? Or choosing between deep and shallow depth of field?

Latest iPhones have a subject tracking and recognition as good or better than Canon.
You can control exposure with video dedicated apps like Filmic Pro.
In fact you can dislodge the exposure and focus spots unlike Canon ILC's

DOF control is where iPhones can't compete with dedicated cameras, among other aspects.

The R10 can do much better, but need brighter, affordable, native lenses.
Is up to Canon to decide if they want to compete or concede more market share to Smartphones.

In truth, the Canon is a much better $999 camera than the iPhone.

With a high quality lens yes, but with cheap lenses it is a match, however this is only limited to 24-28mm FL Eqv.

I won't be selling my R10 any time soon.
When paired with the RF100-400 lens, a 50mm or 85mm any Smartphone becomes a joke now and in the short term future.

But there is not denying the value that a high end smartphone brings if you can live within that limited focal range or have it doing the odd niche stuff that only an Smartphone can do.

It is just another tool in the arsenal of photo/videography.

Photato wrote:

Canon_Guy wrote:

Thanks for this comparison.

iPhone is doing very well here considering its sensor and optics tiny size. Yet it falls clearly behind R10 in terms of dynamic range, highlights range, detail rendering, sharpness and the natural feel from the scene.

The iPhone 13 Pro is able to capture a good deal of dynamic range.
The issue here was that when this video frame was extracted, the app did not interpreted the Dolby Vision video as HDR, but SDR.
The major difference I see here is in regards to Depth of Field,

Another major difference which I see is the lack of the fine details and textures due to the big amounts of de-noising applied in the iPhone. Look at the Caucasian doll's head which looks like being from a porcelain, completely washed-out, while on the R10 it looks naturally. The bear's nose lacking much of its texture. Etc.

with the Smartphone tiny sensor plus the crop it uses for video mode, obviously the R10 has a superior DOF control but only if you use a bright lens.

I'm surprised the iPhone was this good

This good for a phone. Fully agree. This good for a given sensor size. But in overall comparison it falls way behind the most basic ML R camera.

and it can be better. I might do it again tonight using a different App to bypass the HDR format for a better comparison.
The iPhone UWA camera was trash in low light since it uses an even smaller sensor.

Between the three lenses it is hard to guess since each of them seems to be focused a bit differently. But I like the Tokina the most, then RF, then EF-S. But different scene might give different results.

Agree, another surprise was the Tokina, this lens is as sharp as the RF16 and it only cost $50 more, a bargain for a zoom lens but is much heavier and bulky.
The EF-S 10-18 lens on the other hand narrow apertures produces too much noise, making the iPhone a better tool for low light interior scenes and little, if any DOF advantage.

Even with the noise and ancient basic lens the image from R10 is notably sharper with much more fine details and textures. Not speaking about the DR and color accuracy which is way off on the iPhone shot.

Google also answered me that the max video bitrate of iP 13 Pro is 95 Mb/s for 4k60. R10 has 230 Mb/s for 4k60 (340 Mb/s for 10-bit). It describes the amount of details being capable of tranfer.

Photato wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

Photato wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

And how does iPhone do zooming in on a subject and holding focus? Or tracking focus of moving objects? Or controlling the exposure or focus points? Or choosing between deep and shallow depth of field?

Latest iPhones have a subject tracking and recognition as good or better than Canon.
You can control exposure with video dedicated apps like Filmic Pro.
In fact you can dislodge the exposure and focus spots unlike Canon ILC's

DOF control is where iPhones can't compete with dedicated cameras, among other aspects.

The R10 can do much better, but need brighter, affordable, native lenses.
Is up to Canon to decide if they want to compete or concede more market share to Smartphones.

In truth, the Canon is a much better $999 camera than the iPhone.

With a high quality lens yes, but with cheap lenses it is a match, however this is only limited to 24-28mm FL Eqv.

I won't be selling my R10 any time soon.
When paired with the RF100-400 lens, a 50mm or 85mm any Smartphone becomes a joke now and in the short term future.

But there is not denying the value that a high end smartphone brings if you can live within that limited focal range or have it doing the odd niche stuff that only an Smartphone can do.

It is just another tool in the arsenal of photo/videography.

No, with the kit lens the Canon is still superior.  But when you use all of Apple’s advanced image processing against an unprocessed Canon image and you scale down the resolution of both, you’re putting things  in Apple’s favor.

If your comparison is snapshots without post processing for displaying on 5” screens, the iPhone is just as good and maybe better.

Update.

Ok this time I used the Filmic Pro app to bypass some of the iOS Photo app processing.
Now, the Caucasian doll's face looks more realistic and the highlights are not truncated.
This was shot at ISO40 SS 1/30 hence the low noise, but I'm sure NR has been applied somewhere which is not different than Canon's NR even on Raw files !

Also noticed that video taken with the iOS Photo App has the Image Stabilization activated so it records a narrower FOV than with the FilmicPro app where you can deactivate IS.

Here the ColorChecker text looks sharper.

iPhone 13 Pro Max frame grab from Prores video format. SS1/30 ISO40

MarshallG wrote:

Photato wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

Photato wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

And how does iPhone do zooming in on a subject and holding focus? Or tracking focus of moving objects? Or controlling the exposure or focus points? Or choosing between deep and shallow depth of field?

Latest iPhones have a subject tracking and recognition as good or better than Canon.
You can control exposure with video dedicated apps like Filmic Pro.
In fact you can dislodge the exposure and focus spots unlike Canon ILC's

DOF control is where iPhones can't compete with dedicated cameras, among other aspects.

The R10 can do much better, but need brighter, affordable, native lenses.
Is up to Canon to decide if they want to compete or concede more market share to Smartphones.

In truth, the Canon is a much better $999 camera than the iPhone.

With a high quality lens yes, but with cheap lenses it is a match, however this is only limited to 24-28mm FL Eqv.

I won't be selling my R10 any time soon.
When paired with the RF100-400 lens, a 50mm or 85mm any Smartphone becomes a joke now and in the short term future.

But there is not denying the value that a high end smartphone brings if you can live within that limited focal range or have it doing the odd niche stuff that only an Smartphone can do.

It is just another tool in the arsenal of photo/videography.

No, with the kit lens the Canon is still superior. But when you use all of Apple’s advanced image processing against an unprocessed Canon image and you scale down the resolution of both, you’re putting things in Apple’s favor.

In low light situations the kit lens will show more noise vs the iPhone f1.5 aperture and low ISO 40 as shown here. Older Canon Digic 8 based cameras can't shoot HDR 10bit video like this iPhone can, so it has that superiority off the shelf.

If your comparison is snapshots without post processing for displaying on 5” screens, the iPhone is just as good and maybe better.

Most of the time, the Canon camera images will be superior, but not always. There are certain scenarios where the iPhone could match it or even surpass it.
Regardless of image quality differences the iPhone is unbeatable in portability, that is why it has more opportunities to take pictures vs no pictures or videos at all from a full fledge dedicated camera left at home.

tkbslc wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

And how does iPhone do zooming in on a subject and holding focus?

iphones have great autofocus actually. PDAF for many years now.

Zooming in on a subject while recording makes for horrible video, don't do that. iPhone can do it, but you get digital zoom with lots of artifacts.

Zooming before recording works but stick with the 3 native focal lengths for good results.

Or tracking focus of moving objects?

again, very well

Or controlling the exposure or focus points?

both are available with a tap

Or choosing between deep and shallow depth of field?

Cinematic mode with fake blur is pretty decent if you background isn't too complex.

But let’s be honest, APS-C with a wide angle lens isn't going to have shallow DOF either. iPhone 13 pro lens is equivalent to f3.75 lens on 1.6x crop for DOF equivalence.

Ok, take some photos or videos of hummingbirds or bald eagles with an iPhone and let us know how it works out.

I love iPhone and I ordered the 14Pro, but I don’t have illusions that it can outperform my R5.

jwilliams wrote:

MarshallG wrote:

In truth, the Canon is a much better $999 camera than the iPhone.

And the iPhone is infinitely better at phone calls, texting, email, web browsing etc., etc., etc. Oh, and it works with my Apple Watch which is the best piece of tech ever invented. My R cameras can't do that.

So comparing just on the camera/video functionality is silly really.

I've got a complete set of FF L lenses and R cameras and while not doubt they can beat my iPhone 13 on ultimate quality, the iPhone does so much more and for many photo/video tasks is perfectly suitable.

I'm not really much of a video person, but I've decided all my videos will be shot on my iPhone. Mind you I'm not trying to shoot the next Gone With The Wind, but it works for my meager uses. Photo duty will be split between the phone and dedicated cameras.

A side point - the camera makers really need to make their cameras connect to users phones seamlessly. Since starting to use my iPhone for more phot stuff, I've realized just how useful having location data for each photo is. Most cameras can do this in some form but many aren't convenient. Canon actually does better than the Olympus, Panasonic and Sony cameras I have, but there's room for improvement.

Good grief. It is juvenile to change the subject in order to try to make someone seem wrong

Yes, we all know what the iPhone can do.  And it’s a very good camera. But its image quality simply is not better than a quality dedicated camera. It’s much more convenient, so when it’s good enough, great. But that doesn’t mean it can meet any kind of professional video production standard. It simply cannot.

But if it meets your needs and you like it… GREAT! Nothing wrong with that at all. My wife and I use our iPhones all the time. Everybody does. Nothing wrong with that.