iPhone 15 Pro Detailed Camera Review 📸 | 6 Months Later
Hey guys it’s Sagar and in this video we will take a detailed look at the cameras on this iPhone 15 Pro. Over the last month I travelled over 3000kms with this phone, so I was able to take a ton of images in various conditions. Now I have a
ton of image and video samples to show you, but before we get to those, lets check out the camera that we are working with. Just like the iPhone 14 Pro, The primary camera on this 15 Pro again gets a 48 megapixel camera. But the image sensor is now
even bigger. It gets F/1.8 aperture and 24mm lens. Next sensor and lens combo is carried forward from the previous iPhone, which means it retains the 12 megapixel sensor and gets F/2.2 aperture and 13mm ultra wide lens. Unlike the 15 Pro Max, this one just gets a 77mm or
3x optical zoom lens and not a 120mm or 5x tetra prism one, and that is actually one of the reasons I went with this phone and not the Pro Max. I feel like I won’t be in a lot of situations where I would need a 5x zoom lens,
but that’s just me. With that, let us dive into the image samples. Now as mentioned earlier, I travelled a lot with this phone, and during that time I got
the main camera can capture these kind of details when it was raining. Even as I zoom in, you can see there is a ton of information in this shot. Fortunately the overcast conditions and the rain did not last for all that long, and I got to see how
the camera performed in well lit conditions. As you might expect, the 48 megapixel sensor behind the main camera captures a ton of details when the lighing conditons are this good. You might know it by now, that althouth this images are being shot with the 48 megapixel sensor, the
resulting images have a binned 24 megapxiel resolution. Apple says they have done this so the images have great details and amazing dynamic range at the same time. Coming to the dynamic range. I have been a bit critical about the dynamic range on iPhones for the last couple of
years, because I think Apple didn’t really improved it much ever since SmartHDR 2. Fortunately that has changes this year with the iPhone 15 series. SmartHDR 5 brings along some much needed improvements. You can see for yourself how good these shots turned out. Everything in this shot look so
good. The brighter parts of the structure are not overexposed, and at the same time there is a lot of information in the shadowed part, which makes the overall shot look so good. I feel like its been ages since I saw an iPhone take a shot like this. Monika
was standing in a shadow and the Taj Mahal behind her was lit by really harsh sun, but the Smart HDR 5 on this new iPhone 15 Pro worked its magic, and did really well to make the shot look balanced. I remember that last year the iPhone 14 Pro
struggled a lot in these kind of conditions. It could either keep the shadowed parts or the brighter parts under check but not both. I am finally glad that I can take these type of shots with my iPhone. Now I am not saying that this is the best phone
for capturing HDR shots, as I am sure there are others in the market which are a bit more aggressive with their HDR algorithm. But the HDR shots on this generation of iphones have seen a huge improvement compared to last few years, and I count this as a win.
I like the colours coming out of this phone. Occasionally there is a slight green tint in a few of its shots, but it doesn’t happen too often, and when it does, you can easily fix it by adjusting the tint slider within the image editor. Other than that, I
am satisfied with the colours. There might be a hair more contrast in these shots compared to the actual scene, so I cant say that these shots look exactly how the scene looked in real life. But they are close enough. This time, I think Apple nailed the colours on
their iPhone 15, as I feel that one captures the scene exactly how it was. So if you want most accurate looking colours, go with the iPhone 15 instead of this 15 Pro. That being said, since a couple of years, we have photographic styles on iPhones, and thanks to
them you can tweak the colours, saturation, contrast and tone in these images however you want. And once I tweaked these settings a bit, the colours started looking closer to how the scene looked in real life. iPhones have always been one of the best when it comes to focusing.
They are quick and the transition is always very smooth. This becomes very important while taking close up shots. Just look at how these ones turned out. The subject is in perfect sharp focus, and thanks to the wide aperture and larger sensor the background gets a very nice bokeh.
Speaking of the large sensor, this phone suffers from the same issue that we have seen on so many other flagship phones. Now because the sensor is so big, you will have to be a few inches away from your subject than you would usually want to be while taking
close ups, and you do have to get used to this. If you remember, this was much worse on the iPhone 14 Pro last year, and I had to be even further away on that phone. Apple HAS improved the minimium focusing distance on this 15 Pro SLIGHTLY compared to
last year, but I still like to take my close up shots by hitting the 1.2x or 1.5x button. I think this look much more pleasing as we basically get to be closer to the subject. It is still digital zoom but thanks to the big image sensor and new
image processing pipeline, these are effectively loss zoomed in shots. All that being said, once the close up shots are captured, They look amazing. To get even close to the subject, you can switch to the macro mode, and it lets you take shots like this. Unlike most other phones,
these are 12 megapixel macro shots so there are a lot of datails here. You might remember that at the back of this phone, we don’t get a dedicated macro camera, but the ultra wide lens delivers these cool looking macro shots. I think this is the best way to
achieve these shots. But I do wish that there was some sort of stabalisation for this mode, as you have to be very still and steady if you want the macro shots to be in sharp focus. Since we are already talking about the ultra wide lens, here are how
the ultra wide shots form it look like. It lets you capture so much more of the scene compare to the main camera, which in comparison seems to have a very narrow field of view. I mentioned this earlier, that this is the same camera and lens that we saw
on the iPhone 14 Pro so the results might seem very similar. But thanks to the new image processing, these wide shots are a bit sharper. I don’t switch to the wide lens very often, because as good as it is, its images are not as sharp or detailed as
the ones from the main camera. That is just how these cameras are made. I also wish that there was a bit more information in these shots. Maybe Apple could put an even higher resolution sensor behind this lens, because trying to cramp all this information in just a 12
megapixel shot doesn’t seem to do justice to it. This lens does come in very handy in these situations, when you want to capture more of the scene but there is not enough space to move back. As you can see, it is doing a decent job even in overcast
lighting condition. I would say this camera wont be my first choice if I have the option of moving back and taking the same shot with the main camera. Now the next camera on this phone lets you get closer to your subject, like you can see here. The main
camera lets me set the scene, but the 3x telephoto lens just makes this composition look so much better. It lets me get rid of all the distractions or the unwanted elements in the shot, and just focus on the beautiful architecture. There is also a 2x digital zoom option,
which captures a 12 megapixel image form the middle portion of the 48 megapixel sensor. So this is actually a lossless 2x 12 megapixel image. Thanks to this option, we have 4 different focal lengths with just 3 cameras. Apple includes the 1.2x and 1.5x option that we get by
zooming in on the main camera as different focal lengths as well, so according to them we get 7 different focal lengths from just 3 cameras. I think its a bit of stretch, and realistically we get 5 different camera options if we include the macro mode, from these 3
lenses, which is still pretty amazing. You can keep on zooming in digitally upto 15 times. Those images don’t look that good, But they are hugely improved over last year. A bigger surprise is how good the 5x and 10x digital zoom images look, These are again much better than
from any of the previous iPhones. If there is ample light and you have steady hands, these images end up looking good enough. Now I could have gone with the 15 Pro Max for that 5x optical zoom, but I feel like 77mm is a more useful zoom range compared
to 120mm for my photography style. Now we are going come back to the main camera to check out the 48 megapixel shots, and compare them against the binned 24 megapixel ones. For taking 48 megapixel shots, You will have to switch to one of the Max modes from within
the camera setting. While the default 24 megapixel shot could be anywhere between 2.5-7MB in size, the same shot when captured in 48 megapixel could end up taking upto 120MB of your phones storage space. Which is crazy if you think about it. Since the default 24 megapixel shots also
have a lot of information, you will have to zoom in at least 7-8 times to see any noticeable difference between the 48 and 24 megapixel shots. Once you do, you will find that the 48 megapixel shots not only has more information, but it also manages the noise better.
These are ProRAW images, so they have some computations pre-applied, but there is still a ton of room and information if you want to edit them even further. You can play with the colours, highlights, shadows, exposure, tone, crop in to recompose the shot, and do much more with these
images, the possibilities are endless. This mode comes in handy when you want to capture images of some architecture or landscape, where you would want to preserve most of the details or zoom in in some part go the image later on. All that being said, the 24 megapixel shots
have also held on to a ton of details, And if you think about it… File sizes for these 48 megapixel shots are enormous, so your internal storage might fill up pretty very fast. So I would suggest, for most of your daily shots, stick to the default 24 megapixel
mode, as even those shots look amazingly detailed. Portrait shots, if you guys are not taking these, you are missing out. No matter which phone you have, images shot in this mode instantly make them standout and look a lot more professional.Now on the iPhone 15 series, Apple makes it
easier than ever to capture these shots. Whenever you have people or faces in your shots, or whenever you tap to focus on a certain part of the shot, the phone starts capturing the depth information as well, and later on you can decide if you want to make this
image a portrait shot or not. We have now got to a point where the edge detection for these portrait shots is near perfect. It wasn’t this good when I first got the phone, but Apple has kept on refining it via updates. The Lidar Sensor on the back of
this phone also helps detect the edges better. I think the key to getting these shots look good is to shoot at a slightly higher aperture number. By default the F number is set to F/2.8, you can lower it down to something like F/4.0 or 4.3 and your shots
will look a lot more natural. The iPhone 15 pro allows you to take 2x and 3x zoomed in portraits as well, which is great because the best looking portrait shots are always been shot with either 50 or an 85mm lens on an actual DSLR camera. And having the
option of these focal lengths makes the 15 pro even more versatile. I used the 3x zoom while taking this portrait shot as it helped bring the Taj Mahal in the background closer, thanks to the natural optical lens compression. I think that made this shot look so good. This
15 pro takes amazing portrait shots even when the lighting conditions are not ideal, like when you are indoors or when its overcast. It still detects the edges like a champ, is quick with it and the images don’t have any noticeable noise in them. For taking portraits of object,
I would again suggest you to increase the F stop number a bit to about F/4.0 and your shots will turn out amazing. I am not talking about just the iPhone 15 Pro, This is true for any phone that you might have. Once you have done that, you will
find that the edge detection is just as accurate (maybe even slightly better) than it was while taking portraits of people. I don’t know why it is so, but a lot of people don’t make the right use of the portrait mode on these phones. I wish they switched to
it more often, and experience how much better their shots can turn out. How often do you guys use the portrait mode on your phone, you can let me know in the comments. And just like that, we now come to the image which I clicked in Indoor, arterial and
lower lighting conditions. It might not come as a surprise that the main camera on this 15 Pro takes just as good images in these lighting conditions, as it did during the day time. And it doesn’t even break a sweat. These are again 24 megapixel shots, because the 48
megapixel mode isn’t the best when it comes to capturing images in these lighting conditions. Even then, you can see there are plenty of details in these artificially lit 24 megapixel images. As we get to even lower light, I am surprised to see that there is absolutely no noise
at all even in the darker parts of these images. Apple now processes these images in a way that the colours look a lot more natural. If you remember, last year I had a small complain that the 14 Pro tends to cool the colours a bit when shooting in
lower light, that is no longer an issue with this iPhone 15 Pro. 99% of the time the colours that you see in these shots was how the scene looked in real life. Another good thing about these images, is that they don’t look too processed or there not that
extra bit of sharpness that sometimes manufacturers resort to in order to hide the noise in their low light shots, or to make these shots appear more detailed. There is noting of that sort going around in these low light shots. Now all of these were normal low light shots,
without the night mode, but when you actually switch to the night mode, or when it comes up when the light is just not enough, you can see the difference it makes. There’s not just more light being introduced, but everything looks so much more detailed, and the light are
also being handled in a much better way. You can see that the light is not over blowing the area around it in the shot with the night mode turned on. Unlike some of the other phones, This 15 Pro doesn’t add up a ton off light in these shots
to make them look like they have been captured during the day. It makes the night shot look like shots that are captured at night, it just adds a bit more details and that’s it. There is some amount of noise in these shots, which you can see if you
zoom in on the darker parts. But its minimal and not distracting at all. Apple mentioned in their keynote that there is a new coating on the lens which takes care of the lens flair, and that is true to some extent. The kind of flairs you would get when
the light source or sun is on the edge of the frame are no longer an issue. But the light flairs and light orbs are still very much an issue and I am surprised as how Apple which is a multi trillion dollar company is not able to solve this
one. You might not have seen them in my images, as I was very carefully composing the shot to minimise them, but it is still a very big issue for many people. Just like during the daytime, wide lens lets you capture a different perspective of the same scene, and
show much more of it. We went through his earlier, that the wide lens doesn’t have the best image sensor, or the lens optics, and this results in an even bigger difference in the normal and wide shots in lower light. There is much more information and less noise in
the normal shots compared to the wide ones. Yes, the wide lens also gets night mode, but these images take over twice as long to capture compared to night mode shots with the normal lens, and this means you will have to hold the phone steady for over 3 to
5 seconds, for these images to look decent. Because of all these reasons, I would suggest you to stick to the main camera for most of your low light shots. That brings us to the front facing camera. I believe this is the same hardware that we saw on the
iPhone 14 Pro, 12 megapixel sensor with F/1.9 aperture and 23mm lens, but thanks to the new image processing, selfies form this phone look a lot sharper and detailed. Skin tones look good, and the colour temperature and white balance is also more consistent while taking selfies. I don’t take
too many selfies outside of these camera review and comparison videos, but if you do, you are going to love the selfie camera on this phone. Edge detection is near perfect for portrait selfies, but if you want it to be even better and want your portrait shots to look
more natural, lower the F number from F/2.8 to something like F/4.0. Since just the face is in focus and everything else is gradually blurred out, the faces in these ones look even sharper than the normal selfies. That being said, despite of having Autofocus and advanced processing algorithms, if
you have multiple in the shot, and they are not in the same plane of focus, someone will still be blurred out. I wish Apple could fix this thing. If I have multiple people in my portrait selfies, I would like every one of them to be in sharp focus,
not just the ones who are closest to the camera. Here is a video from the front facing camera of the iPhone 15 Pro. You can see how it is handling the overall colours of the scene exposure and stabilisation when I am walking around with it. There is a
busy road next to me so you guys can also let me know how this phone is handling my voice. It can shoot videos in cinematic mode, and that is what I am shooting this video at. And the key to make these videos look good is to shoot at
a higher F stop value. This video is being shot at F/8.0 and I think that makes the background look really good, and the edge detection around me is looking pretty natural as well. iPhones have always been the best when it comes to shooting videos, but this year Apple
took it to the next level. They didn’t add some crazy 8K video recording option which most people anyways don’t use. But with the iPhone 15 Pro series, Apple has given the Pro smartphone videographers what they’ve always asked for, the ability to shoot ProRes Log videos natively. This gives
you a ton of flexibility if you like to grade your footage, and these log videos pack in a huge amount of information. Now I know, most normal people don’t care about this or would ever use this feature, but if you are a smartphone shooter, you know what all
this means. There’s just no other smartphone in the market which comes even close. These videos take a ton of storage space, so it would be best if you record these ProRes Log videos to the external SSD, which you can now also do thanks to the USB Type C
post on these phones. For everyone else, the normal videos from this phone also look excellent, as they have always been. Colours look natural, there is amazing dynamic range and there just an overall pleasing look these videos, that no other smartphone manufacturer has been able to replicate yet. If
you want to shoot videos with your phone, iPhone is your best bet. You can now switch between the lenses while you shooting 4k 60fps videos. So you can go from ultra wide to the normal to the telephoto lens like you can see in this video, while you are
recording 4k video at 60fps. And just like that we have seen close to 125 image and video samples from all the cameras on this iPhone 15 Pro. While I loved the cameras on this phone, the overall experience of taking these images and videos has not been the smoothest
or the most pleasing. One of the biggest issues I had with this phone is that it gets really hot while shooting images and videos. At least my phone does. Apple did release a few updates and it has got better over time, but it still gets pretty hot if
I am out shooting for a long time. It doesn’t shut down or anything like that, but the brightness drops a lot and the back of the phone, the part next to the camera feels uncomfortably hot. Leaving this thing aside, I feel like the cameras on this iPhone 15
Pro are a definite upgrade over the previous generation, and I am so glad that Apple finally managed to fix the HDR mode on these phones. And finally I feel like the ability to shoot ProRes Log videos puts it in a completely different category all together. I feel more
and more confident of having this as my main camera for shooting images and videos whenever I go on vacations. For a long time I used to carry a dedicated DLSR or a Mirrorless camera along with a smartphone, but not any more. I am working on a few videos
comparing the cameras on this phone with some of the other phone that I have, and those videos will be hitting your subscription box very soon. If you guys haven’t checked out my video about the best cases for this iPhone 15 Pro, you can do that by clicking on
the link in the description section. So these were my thoughts about the cameras on this iPhone 15 Pro. You guys saw all these images too, so what do you think about these cameras, let me know in the comments. That is it for this video guys. Please hit the
like button if you enjoyed this video, and subscribe to the channel for more quality tech videos like this. You can also check out some of the other videos from this channel. This has been Sagar and I’ll catch you guys in the next video. Take Care.
