iPhone 17 Pro vs Pro Camera - 1000 pictures later.

Here are some side-by-side pictures of the iPhone versus a pro camera, specifically the Fujifilm X106. Can you figure out which one is which? Can you figure out which is shot on iPhone and which is shot on the Fuji? I have purposely mixed them up just to make it a bit more interesting. So I love photography and I think if you're watching this video you're also probably here to taking some pictures. I have always been obsessed with cameras ever since I was a kid and now that phones are getting so good it's gotten to the point where in certain scenarios it just makes more sense to carry around a phone. Don't get me wrong, I love my mirrorless cameras. I love my Fujifilm camera, the one that I have here, the Fujifilm X106. I absolutely love this camera, it's fantastic. I use mirrorless cameras to record my YouTube videos and stuff so I completely see the value in high-end cameras like this. Of course the experience you get from using something like this, an iPhone can't match up to it, like it just can't. There's so much more that goes into cameras like this and it's the reason why people buy them, it's the reason why people like me buy them as well. But what I always like to do is I like to see how far I can take my iPhone and that's been my goal in the last sort of two, three, four years because I've realised that iPhones have gotten so, so good now that it's actually quite hard sometimes to tell the difference between this and the Fujifilm X106 and it's what I want to demonstrate in this video, how close you can get the iPhone to a high-end, pro level, prosumer camera like the Fujifilm X106. Let's get a few things out of the way first. The sensor in this is much, much larger than the sensor in this and generally, not always, but the larger the sensor the better quality images. You just get a lot more data to play with, a lot more information for those pictures that you shoot. Another advantage of a larger sensor is that you get more depth of field so when you're taking a picture of someone or a subject or a product or something like that, the background is more likely to be blurry. The iPhone can't really do that without some trickery but it has gotten better because the sensor is much larger now. The downside though is of course the size. When you compare these two, this is so much larger than the iPhone. This is so much more convenient, a lot easier just to fit in your pocket, take with you wherever. This, not so much. You can fit it in like a jacket pocket, you can have it strapped around your neck or whatever, but it is much bulkier, much heavier and just a lot more effort to carry around and that's, I think, the important thing here. What is the most convenient? What is the most convenient to use? And let's be honest, the iPhone is the most convenient to use and not only that, you have three cameras, you have three different lenses that can take all sorts of different pictures. With this, you just have the one focal length. Now, you can crop in, which is what the iPhone does as well. You can crop into pictures because it shoots, I think, it's 14 megapixel pictures, but you're just stuck with one lens. You can't change the lens on this one. Of course, with other mirrorless cameras, you can change the lens, but with the Fujifilm X-106, you have the fixed lens. So now, let's look at the image that I shared earlier and tell you which ones are which, basically. So, let's start with the Porsche here. This was from my trip in Tokyo. What I've done is I've edited the pictures to have the style that I would usually apply to any of the pictures that I would usually shoot. I kind of just applied the presets that I like to apply and then just adjusted the sort of exposure, contrast and those sort of sliders. I don't do anything too crazy because I like my images having a certain sort of style and mood. I actually don't think either the Fuji or the iPhone take pictures that look particularly amazing straight out of camera. I think all pictures need a sort of style and mood applied to them to match whatever style and aesthetic you're trying to go for. So yeah, if we look at these two images, the one on the right is the iPhone, the one on the left is the Fuji. And when you have them side by side like this, you can sort of tell the difference in colours and contrast and brightness and stuff like that. I can even adjust it further just to bring down the exposure and the highlights for the Fuji to match the iPhone a bit more. You can also see some natural vignetting on the Fuji picture in the corners. It's a bit darker than the centre of the image. If we look at the originals, so this is straight out of camera. And yeah, I actually don't like either of them straight out of camera. I do actually think the iPhone though looks more natural straight out of camera here. I'm shooting in ProRAW on both of these and then just using the default processing that Lightroom does for ProRAW images. I think I prefer the iPhone here. I think the iPhone actually looks better naturally straight out of camera. This shot here is of Tokyo from Shibuya Sky. The one on the left is the Fuji, the one on the right is the iPhone. Here, I think this is where you're going to see the Fuji sort of Not in terms of colours or anything like that, but it's the details. So if we zoom in on the Fuji shot here, if we zoom in even further, we'll look at this sign here, Tower Records. If we do the same on the iPhone, you can see a massive, massive difference there. Even though the iPhone has more megapixels technically at 48 megapixels and the Fuji has 40 megapixels, you can see how much more detail is retained on the Fuji. How much more natural the image looks when you zoom in. The iPhone image looks a bit sort of blotchy. There's a lot more artefacts. It almost looks more like a water painting. That's the best way I can really explain it. The colours and stuff, yeah, it's easy to adjust the colour. So I'm not really looking at the colours that much. But if we wanted to, we could reset the images to look at them completely natural, straight out of camera. And look, you can really see there is a big difference there. Look how much sharper the Fuji image looks compared to the iPhone. And it just shows megapixel isn't everything. I think this is a really good example of where megapixel count doesn't really matter. Of course, there are a lot more things in play here. The glass, the sensor size, all these different things. But the Fuji film clearly takes sharper images here, even though it has eight less megapixels. This is both of the shots straight out of camera. And I think I actually prefer the Fuji here purely just because it looks brighter. And again, this is why shooting in RAW is so important, because you can adjust the brightness of these images very easily to make the iPhone look brighter, because generally that's what people seem to think makes a better image when it's brighter. But that's not necessarily true. So here is a picture of me. And this one actually surprised me the most because they look so, so close. But the telltale sign is the blurry background. If you look at the background on the Fuji camera, you can see it's sort of out of focus. And then if you look at the iPhone, it's in focus because of the sensor sizes. And of course, I've got my Fujifilm camera around my neck. So clearly you can tell this is shot on the iPhone. What really impressed me is just how close they are. Like the skin tones and stuff are a little bit different on the Fuji, but I can adjust those. I can adjust the skin tones to look however I like. If I reset the images though, you can see the Fuji here is too bright. It's because the scene itself is dark. So it's now trying to overcompensate thinking, oh, you're taking a dark image. Let's up the brightness. The iPhone here does look better, but I think my skin tones are horrendous. Like my skin looks yellow. Why does my skin look yellow there? My skin does not look yellow. I have a nice caramel brown. Okay. Like my skin just doesn't look that great here. But on the Fuji, I'd say my skin looks more natural. I look like I'm in the beginning stages of decomposing on the iPhone picture. But yeah, on the Fuji, I just think it looks better. If we actually adjust the Fuji to bring down the exposure, see just a minor adjustment on the exposure and the Fuji image definitely just looks better. It looks nicer. With the iPhone image, we can easily adjust the hue. There we go. And now my skin actually has some life. And all I did was just adjust the orange hue slider, brought it a bit to the left. If we go back to the edits that I made, yeah, I think these are pretty close. It is literally just down to the background blur. So this one I shared on my Twitter, and I was really surprised at how many people got this wrong. And it was because people thought that the Fuji couldn't take pictures this blurry, and that it must be taken with an iPhone. And this one just looked more natural. That was really surprising to me because obviously when I look at these pictures, I can instantly tell which one's the Fuji and which one's the iPhone. The iPhone picture here on the right is shot completely straight out of camera. I'm not using portrait mode or anything like that. I'm just shooting with the main camera at one times, just taking the picture. And I think this is where you can really see the sense of size on the iPhone come into play because look at that blurry background. That's really good. The ice cream is really nice, sharp in shot. You can see the individual sort of bits of the ice cream. You can see the detail in the cone. You can even see like the skin around my nail and everything like this is, this is really, really good. This is where people don't realize how good the iPhone is. I really do think this is an incredible image from the iPhone and it's on par with the Fuji film. Is it as blurry? No, but this doesn't look like a shot on an iPhone. This looks like it's shot on a professional camera for me. On the Fuji though, you can see how blurry that background is. Look at that perfect separation between the ice cream and the background. Like it just looks so good. The blur as well, the grain in the blur, it just looks so, so good. And this ice cream, by the way, it was amazing. It was at Mount Fuji. It tasted so good. It's one of the best ice creams I've ever had. I'd rate it a 9.5 out of 10. Like it's really that good. If we look at the original images, we can see, I think the iPhone generally does look better here, but it's just because it's a brighter image and it's warmer. The Fuji film picture is a bit colder and it's a bit darker as well. Even though this is straight out of camera, I actually think the iPhone image here looks more natural than the Fuji. Purely on the colors though. I'm looking at the warmth and the sort of style of the picture. Purely on the colors, I think the iPhone just looks more natural. So now let's look at some pictures where it's nighttime. There isn't much light apart from the light that's coming from the buildings. This is shot in Hong Kong. On the left we have the Fuji, on the right we have the iPhone. And I think both of the pictures here look really good. With the colors and the presets that I've applied, oh, like this to me epitomizes what Hong Kong looks like. It's only when we zoom in do we start seeing the details. But before we zoom in, I just want to say the iPhone picture here again looks so, so good. You would think with a sensor that small, it wouldn't be able to take that clean images, but I think this image looks really clean for an iPhone picture. Considering it's nighttime and there's lots of harsh lights and stuff, I think it's done a really, really good job. So this is the Fuji shot. We're looking at this FWD sign and you can see that clearly says get ready on that sign there. If we zoom into the iPhone, yeah, we can see, I mean, the sign isn't actually on in this one. I guess it's changing. It's sort of transitioning, but we can see the Fuji here. It's just better. I actually think the top of this building, this skyscraper, you can really see the difference in the detail. Like if we go down a bit, we can see the building on the Fuji. There's just more detail on the iPhone. It's just a bit blotchy, but I still really do think this is a fantastic picture to come out of the iPhone. If we look at the original images, that's the original on the Fuji. This is the original on the iPhone. The iPhone, I actually think looks more natural here. This is what it looks more like in real life when it comes to the sort of darkness of the image. If we go back to the edited versions, man, the edited versions, like it's crazy how much of a difference just some presets can make. Like it completely transforms the image. It takes it from like just a normal night shot to like cyberpunk. But if we look at the images like normal, like this, which is how most people are going to see them, they both I think look really great. All of these images that I've shot, I think look amazing. All of these images that I've shot comparing the iPhone to the Fuji, I was really surprised at how close everything is. I wasn't expecting it to be that close. And when I shared it on socials and stuff, even other people were just like, wait, this is really, really hard to tell. I actually can't tell the difference. And I think that's important because most of these images are just going to end up on Instagram, on TikTok and other sorts of social networks and profiles. So does it really matter that the fine details on the Fuji are better than the iPhone? I don't think it does. Not if they're going on Instagram, not if they're going on these websites and stuff, they're just going to be compressed anyway. I know I'm going to get a lot of questions about how I set up my iPhone to take these sorts of pictures. I have another video on my profile showing my camera settings. I also have all of my presets and stuff. I'll leave links to everything down in the description below, just so you have the same process that I have. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it and make sure to follow me on Instagram and Twitter, where I share a lot more of the pictures that I shoot with these cameras.