Phone cameras are getting better every year, but no matter how much they improve, they always fall short compared to professional cameras. This year is different.
Last year I did a fun comparison between my Canon R5 and the iPhone 13 Pro. Those results were pretty impressive, so much so that I ended up printing the images from that test to see how far we could push the iPhone 13 Pro image. While I was happy with the results, at no point did I review the images and feel comfortable saying I could shoot with the iPhone instead of my Canon R5 given the two options. I was expecting the same results this year, and in the middle of editing my pictures, I realized something was different.
During these tests, I shot in raw on the Canon R5 and iPhone 14 Pro. I’ve only been using the built-in camera app on the iPhone, and like last year, I had issues with third-party apps so close to release. This is also the most realistic in practice as it is built directly into iOS. I only tested the new “main” camera (24mm/1x) because it got a new 48mp sensor, while the telephoto and wide-angle lenses didn’t get significant enough upgrades to warrant comparisons this year. All photos were taken on a tripod and I will provide the resulting settings that the iPhone automatically used. All photos on the Canon R5 were taken in combination with the custom Canon EF 16-35mm f/4L at various settings that you will find throughout the article.
All images edited using Lightroom Classic only. I find the most decent way to do this comparison is to edit my Canon R5 images first, as if I were editing them for my portfolio. I would then edit the iPhone 14 Pro images to best match the Canon images. Throughout this article, I will present images from “Camera A” and “Camera B.” They will be mixed up during the test, but I challenge you to go through the images and see if you can guess which image was taken from each camera. The answer will be found behind the article gallery.
The first sunrise
I remember being very surprised last year that the iPhone could capture the full range of light during sunrise, and this year it’s even better with the iPhone 14 Pro. This scene was not covered by clouds, so the light quickly became harsh, resulting in a scene with a huge dynamic range, something that existed during many of these tests.
Camera settings:
- Canon R5: f/11, 1/40s, ISO 100
- iPhone 14 Pro: f/1.8, 1/1000s, ISO 100
Note the areas in shadow compared to the snow-covered peaks that are hit by strong direct light. Both cameras were able to capture this amount of dynamic range without much trouble, which is a significant improvement over last year for the iPhone. That’s where things get interesting and what totally blew me away when editing photos. Zooming has always been where the iPhone image fell apart to instantly reveal which camera took which image. Prepare yourself.
Zooming both images to 100%, do you see what I see? I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. If you want to download this raw content yourself, you can find the updated link in the video above.
Blue hour
Low light is where all small sensors struggle, and phone sensors are the smallest of the bunch. Every review you read will constantly mention that low light performance is directly related to sensor size. This was the toughest test in this year’s comparison for the iPhone 14 Pro.
Camera settings:
- Canon R5: f/8, 1/4s, ISO 100
- iPhone 14 Pro: f/1.8, 1/115 s, ISO 125
Still, the results, especially at lower resolutions, are nothing short of amazing. I struggled to match the iPhone image to the R5, but not necessarily because the data doesn’t exist for that. This is in large part because this was the image I edited the most. Artistically, this was the most pleasing scene in the whole comparison, so I pushed the Canon R5 image as far as it could go. Trying to achieve similar lights, detail and color science between the two cameras was challenging, so you can definitely see some of that at play here.
Zooming in at 100%, you’ll notice a slight difference in quality between the two cameras. After taking these pictures and getting to know the iPhone 14 Pro’s strengths and weaknesses, shadow recovery in low-light scenes like this one will have degraded quality. That said, I’m still under the impression of the final image. I’m also very curious how this scene would have turned out if I had used an app like Halide to set the ISO and shutter speed. If you are interested in further such tests, please let me know in the comments.
This is how the picture started, straight from the iPhone. Keeping in mind that almost any raw iPhone photo looks like a black hole in scenes like this. This should provide some context as to how much the image was moved in the edit.
Another sunrise
Another blue sky sunrise with great dynamic range, so much in fact that many photographers around me were shooting bursts, but I still managed to capture everything in one exposure with both cameras.
Camera settings:
- Canon R5: f/8, 1/30s, ISO 100
- iPhone 14 Pro: f/1.8, 1/580 s, ISO 80
As someone who rarely shoots blue sky sunrises or sunsets, I decided to edit this image a little differently than my usual style. Many of you reading this could very easily take an image like this and try to make it look “cinematic”, or you could really boost the contrast to create a high key image, or you could even replace the sky if your heart desired. So I tried a different editing style to see how the iPhone 14 Pro handled such editing.
Zooming in at 100%, you’ll see a loss of detail in the shadows, just like in our hour-long blue shot. I notice that the details in the shadows are lost a bit, while all the areas that had enough light retain the information a little better.
Details
In this final image, we’re testing a more realistic weather for those of you who don’t wake up before sunrise or stay out until sunset. This was taken a few hours before sunset, giving us long shadows, tons of contrast, and most of all testing how much detail the iPhone 14 Pro can capture in a busy scene.
Camera settings:
- Canon R5: f/5.6, 1/40s, ISO 100
- iPhone 14 Pro: f/1.8, 1/640 s, ISO 100
This was another absolutely impressive image for the iPhone 14 Pro. A scene with a lot of light to work with gives us a huge amount of detail in both images. I’d be surprised if you could tell the difference between these two images without cropping.
Zooming to 100% left me speechless. Not only is the image absolutely packed with detail, there’s also retention of light and shadow. This isn’t something I was able to show you last year, where zooming in would lose too much detail in a scene like this. It was this shot that made me literally step away from Lightroom to walk around how impressed I was with the results.
Conclusion and gallery
During that walk, I had a fleeting thought: “Am I seeing this right?” “Did I accidentally edit two Canon R5 pictures?” “This is wrong.” I’m not using hyperbole lightly when I say that I could feasibly see myself taking photos with the iPhone 14 Pro that end up in my portfolio or for sale on my print website. This is not a camera replacement. It should be obvious that there are many limitations. However, if I’m about to pack a bag and climb a mountain and something magical happens without a camera next to me and I snap a few photos with the iPhone 14 Pro, I’d be professionally satisfied with the results in the right circumstances.
Another revelation in this year’s test was using the ApplePro Raw profile in Lightroom which didn’t give me the best results. I accidentally found that it was easier for me to match iPhone images to Canon using the built-in Apple profile. Above you’ll see a side-by-side of the same image where I couldn’t get the highlights to look right using ApplePro Raw. I would love to know your experience below if you have edited these images. If you want to see more pixel views, my thoughts, and a little more about editing these images, be sure to check out the video included in the article.
Below is a gallery of all the images during this comparison so you can zoom in a bit more. Also included are a few images straight from the iPhone 14 Pro camera, which are comically bad compared to their raw counterparts. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, as this was an eye-opening experience for me.
iPhone is: ABAB