After listening to the latest ATP episode, I had a few thoughts on the latest iPhones, especially w/r/t photography.
For comparison, since I never mentioned it, I currently have an 11 Pro Max. I got that, because I've always been a pretty heavy user of my "telephoto" lens. However, I do wonder, since I've never looked, how much the phone has been changing my "x2" photos to use the "normal" sensor/lens, with cropping.
Anyway, there were a couple things I had some feelings about, on the newer phone. First, I do like that the "telephoto" changed to 65mm equivalent. While that's still pretty short - most of my recent photography has been short-field soccer, where 70mm is my shortest, and I'm mostly in the 120-300mm range - it certainly is an improvement. In fact, more generally, when using my "real cameras" (Nikon D4 and D850, mostly with pro-quality lenses), as ATP terms them, I shoot almost nothing between 35mm and 70mm; it's kind of a dead zone, I guess. However, losing 1/4 stop or so, going from f/2.0 to f/2.2 is a significant regression.
And the fact that the drop-off in f-stop from the normal to the telephoto is now about a full stop... not sure I'll ever use the telephoto in low light anymore. I guess, if I get one (I generally upgrade every 1-2 years), I'll need to see what the Night Mode output looks like. The interpolation it does might compensate for the f-stop, although the bigger sensor on the main camera should improve everything there.
That bigger sensor is actually my biggest excitement on the 12 Pro. That'll improve light sensitivity, and the stabilization should help with shake.
The ATP crew was speculating about why the HDR video performance was better on the Pro; I wonder if that sensor might be the reason for that. Perhaps it can shuffle data off the sensor faster (I don't know about here, but I know with bigger camera sensors, that can be an issue). That would explain some of the price difference, if so.
My main reason for writing this, however, was to talk about ProRAW. On my big cameras, I always use RAW. Just the ability to shift white balance losslessly was enough for me to switch over.
But on the phone, I suspect I will rarely use it. I do have a camera app on my current phone that can do RAW, but I've only used it a couple of times. Unless it's an on-screen switch on the 12, I'll basically never use it. The iPhone rarely gets white-balance wrong, although I did see a bunch of people complaining about it with the California fires. And I do worry about the effect of using ProRAW on the normal computational enhancement, like John was discussing. But mostly it's just too big a hassle to deal with, unless I know I need it. Even if there aren't computational issues, the workflow involved is way more of a hassle. Well, if I use Lightroom, as I generally do with my "real" cameras; perhaps, on-phone, it won't be that bad.
Finally, two other notes on the 12s. We got no information on battery life for them. My big concern, there, is that the MagSafe will be a sizable drain on the battery. I mentioned, above, getting the 11 Pro Max; the reason for going to the Max was all about battery life. I generally get 2-3 days of life out of it, and I'd hate for that to drop. I guess we'll see.
