iPhone 11 Review For Filmmakers

What's up everybody, my name is Alex Chung and today we are reviewing the latest iPhone 11. Now coming from the Google Pixel 2 XL, I'm not that much into the iPhone and the whole ecosystem that Apple has, but what really intrigued me as a filmmaker was these cameras. And so that's what we'll be primarily taking a look at. If you're looking for a review of the phone in general, this is definitely not the review for that. With that said, let's get right into it. The iPhone 11 has two cameras in the back and then one camera on the front. And on the back you have the standard wide angle lens on top, and on the bottom you have the ultra wide angle lens that is really new to this whole iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pro. The standard wide angle lens has an aperture of f1.8, while the ultra wide angle lens has an f-stop of 2.4. And on a full frame camera, the standard wide angle and the ultra wide angle come out to be 26 millimeters and 13 millimeters respectively. And it's funny that the ultra wide angle lens on the iPhone 11 is wider than this Laowa 15 millimeter lens that I'm currently reviewing right now. The front facing camera on this phone also has a wider lens as well and a better sensor than the X or the XS. I first thought there were two lenses on the front of the phone, because when you go into the camera app at first, you get this sort of standard angle selfie mode right now. And if you actually press the two little arrows at the bottom, it actually kind of zooms out and it gives you a wider angle lens. What it's actually doing is it's cropping in on the single wide angle lens on the front, and when you press that two little buttons at the bottom, it zooms out to that true wide angle look. However, when you go into video mode on the selfie camera, you actually can't zoom in or out. It actually is sort of locked into that zoomed in state a little bit. And I'm not sure why they didn't implement the standard wide angle on the selfie camera, but on the back cameras you are able to I'm sure you've seen it in other people's reviews. The ultra wide angle lens on this camera is just it's just cool. It's so cool to play around with. It's really fun. It's something new. I mean, there's definitely moment lenses that I've definitely used on the Google Pixel in the past, since this only has one standard lens. And it's fantastic how technology just keeps changing and updating itself. If you're shooting pictures on the ultra wide angle lens, I definitely treat it the same way you would a DSLR ultra wide angle lens. I would only use it for architecture, landscapes, city shots, interior shots, and definitely stay away from portraits. They just really distort the face a lot around the edges. Maybe it's a style choice for you, but for me, I definitely stay away from shooting portraits on the ultra wide angle lens. However, for video, it's a completely different story. It actually shows a lot more of your background of your surroundings in video mode. So definitely take advantage of the ultra wide angle when you're out doing, you know, travel stuff, you want to show off a location, but you want to capture maybe yourself in it or some sort of subject or person in it. The ultra wide angle lens is perfectly suited for those situations. And I noticed also on the ultra wide angle, the iPhone actually crops into the image when you're shooting video. I think that just helps compensate a little bit for the stabilization. And it also does, I think is some sort of like de-fishing. So the edges aren't like overly distorted, like it is in the photo mode. You can now shoot 4k up to 60 frames per second on all three cameras, not just the back two cameras on the iPhone. And that is amazing coming from the Google Pixel 2, which only shot 30 frames per second on 4k. For slow motion, you can film 1080p all the way up to 240 frames per second. That is incredible. And that's only on the back two cameras. For the front facing camera, you have the option to shoot up to 120 frames per second in 1080p. Just a word of caution though, when you're shooting slow motion on these phones, make sure you have enough light coming into your sensor because of these little tiny sensors on the phone. They need a lot of light in order for the slow motion to really look good. The resolution does take a little bit of a hit. You'll notice that the footage looks a little bit softer, looks a little bit mushy here and there sometimes. And if you're someone like me, you're probably not shooting a whole ton of slow motion footage, you're not really using it or incorporating it into your videos. But if you're into those action stuff, you're doing extreme sports and stuff like that, you're filming your buddies on your iPhone, then that's when slow motion will come in handy for you. It actually reminds me a lot of a GoPro because, you know, it's got the wide angle lens. It's not as wide as a GoPro is, but then you can also text and call people and post stuff on Instagram. It just reminds me of a GoPro. And yeah, now something that I do want to point out is that this new iPhone also supports shooting in HEVC, which is high efficiency video codec, which is also H.265 instead of H.264, which was the previous version. And this is just technical jargon for those video editors who really like these stats and these like little nitty gritty technical stuff. But this HEVC codec is actually a much better codec for compressing 4K files. It actually squeezes all that information into really tiny file sizes, but it also retains a lot of that high quality that you get from shooting 4K. So it does save a lot of storage on your phone, on your iCloud, wherever you may store that. I don't use iCloud, I don't use that kind of Apple stuff. So for me, it'll be on the phone itself and then also on the hard drive when I take it into my computer to edit with. I mentioned it a little bit ago, but the stabilization in these cameras, all three cameras in fact, are, you know, it's amazing. I'm sure you've seen other videos about it. You know, people have been raving about the in-camera stabilization that they get from the all three cameras and it really is really good. There are a lot of times that I'm able to get really smooth handheld footage just by using this iPhone without having the added extra bulk of a gimbal. And I'm going to be comparing the video quality that you get from the iPhone 11 with and without a gimbal. So if you're interested in seeing that, make sure you subscribe and stay up to date when that video drops. And it's good to note that when you're shooting on the ultra-wide angle lens, the nature of a wide angle lens naturally just reduces the amount of handheld shake that you're going to see in your footage. The more telephoto your lens is, the more handheld shake you're going to see that, you know, vibration that you're going to get in your camera and your footage. And so when you combine that with the in-camera stabilization of this new iPhone, it just, you know, you know, it just works its magic. It's really good actually. In the iPhone 11, Apple has updated its smart HDR technology, which now gives you much, much better dynamic range when you're in these high contrast situations. The highlight roll-off and the highlight retention on these cameras is incredible. There's a lot of places where I thought in the video where my face would be completely blown out or the background, the sky specifically would be completely blown out. You know, even all my DSLR cameras, they might be blown out. But with the new smart HDR technology, it actually saved a lot of these blown out highlights and the overall image looks just really good. However, it's not 100% accurate all the time. It's a little bit hit or miss. If you notice in some of these clips that the sky is actually flickering. It's like the HDR sort of turning off and on. It doesn't exactly know when to kick in. Sometimes it doesn't know when not to kick in. So you definitely do have to be wary of that, but when it works, it just looks amazing. And I'm sure that Apple will keep improving upon this technology. It'll only just get better and better. And hopefully in the future, this works without any sort of problems. Now, low light video is definitely going to be something that you'll eventually run into, whether you're at this really dimly lit restaurant trying to get a really cool video of your food or you're in the city trying to get some shots of you and your friends, wherever that might be, you're eventually going to run into these situations. And in general, I would stay away from shooting low light video on your phones. But if you are going to on the iPhone 11, from my experience, the ultra wide angle lens is the worst one to shoot with because it has an aperture of F 2.4. It doesn't let in a lot of light and combine that with the small sensor size on the iPhone 11 and smartphones in general, the ultra wide angle for video is just completely garbage. Don't use it, stay away from it. And then the selfie camera is a little bit better than the ultra wide angle. I still wouldn't use it. It has an aperture of F 2.2, which is not much better than F 2.4. It does give you a lot of grain, still a lot of noise. It looks really mushy. You don't really have that much detail in your shots. So definitely stay away from the ultra wide and the selfie camera. The best option that you have is using the standard wide angle lens. That lens has an F 1.8 aperture, so it does let in a lot more light. And that's really the only option that you should be going with when you're shooting in thinly lit situations. You do sacrifice a lot of that wide angle-ness on this phone, but I'd definitely be more than happy to trade it for better looking footage. Color science on iPhones have always been really, really good. Skin tones on the iPhone 11 look really nice. They look very natural. And that's really what you're going for when you're shooting videos of people. What I find when I'm shooting video on smartphones is that usually skin tones look kind of mushy. They look a little bit plasticky just because of the dynamic range. But now with a smart HDR on the iPhone, it looks considerably better. Audio is one of those things that never really gets talked about when it comes around to filmmaking, but it's actually one of the most important things. People will forgive you if you have bad image quality, but if you don't have really crisp, clean audio, people are going to hate you for it. But unlike the Google Pixel, the iPhone 11 actually handles audio recording very well straight out of the camera. No need to attach an external microphone like the one I have on top of my camera. All right, so this is the audio test of the iPhone 11. Just no mic, just straight out of the camera. Just picked up some chicken from California Chicken Cafe. And how's it sounding? It should be pretty good. I've reviewed the footage and the audio sounds really good straight out of the camera. No mic needed. And so that's very nice just to keep the entire package of your phone very minimal. You just need the phone itself. No extra gimbal needed. No extra microphone needed. Man, everything about the iPhone 11 really just sells it for me. It's perfect for mobile filmmakers who are on the go with content creation. They're doing stuff for Instagram, the posts, the stories, and being able to quickly create really good, high-quality content off of your phone is really helpful. The only thing that I would say that holds the camera back is the lack of ability to manually adjust the controls on the camera. But there are definitely apps like the Moment camera app and FiLMiC Pro that allow you to take over control of your camera. I have a couple more videos coming out about the iPhone 11 really soon, so make sure you stay subscribed to know when they are dropping. My name is Alex Chung, and I'll see you later. Bye!