Review iPhone 13 Pro: The camera conundrum

 A little over ten years ago, Steve Jobs told us it just works. Now. At that specific time, he was referring to the launch of Icloud, but it's a company message that existed long before and has been repeated many times since. And to this day, I think many would argue Apple still believes in and does business buy this philosophy. But does it even make sense anymore?

If you ask me, this phone tells a different story. I'm Christie Grout with digital Trends, and this is the iphone 13 Pro.

Now, right off the bat. Don't misunderstand. This phone is incredible, but I think what really separates this phone from the iphone before it is just how complex and nuanced to the camera system has become. Now, at this point, I've got to ask if you wouldn't mind giving the video the old LSB like subscribe Bell satiate that algorithm if you don't mind, that is still, this is a review, and I would be remiss not to cover all the major bits, but it's been a week since reviews have started flowing out.

So let's just breeze through this stuff so we can get to the real conversation here, which is around the camera.

Okay, so the battery, it's bigger. It lasts longer. Is it gonna change your life? Probably not, but it's a much appreciated quality of life enhancement. Okay.

On the other hand, the continued lack of fast charging is an embarrassment and is poised to become the new where the heck is the high refresh rate talking point? Every year the Apple continues to refuse to add it. And speaking of the iphone 13 Pro and Pro Max have a nicer, brighter screen. What about that promotion display? Does it look better?

Well, certainly. Can you live without it? That depends on you. But at least until you've lived with it. Probably a lot of people have said that they'll never go back, having experienced a higher refresh rate screen.

And it's definitely absurd that it took Apple this long to implement it, but in their defense, they have had an edge in that buttery smooth animation Department for a while, which has allowed them an excuse to hold off for as long as they did. Just know that it makes everything feel faster, feel smoother and overall makes for a more pleasant user experience. In my opinion, the notch. It's smaller now, barely. And there's a new processor, apples, a 15 Bionic.

That's what enables all these improvements from battery life to camera performance. What's there to say? Probably more than I could tell you. Frankly, that kind of thing tends to fly over my head. It has a five core GPU.

Now please see Luke Larson for all your chip, explainer needs with all that out of the way, let's talk about the cameras. On the back are three lenses, just like the twelve Pro series. You've got your wide angle lens, your telephoto and your ultrawide. I'm not going to get too into the weeds with the numbers here. I'm a hobby photographer at best, and by now there are 100 other videos with all of that information.

But suffice it to say there are a lot of improvements here. Over last year. The wide angle lens is able to let a lot more light in now, which isn't gonna be immediately noticeable when shooting in broad daylight, but in low to medium light, the difference is substantial. As the sun starts to set, you begin to see more vivid colors from neon lights. Highlights are more pronounced and less noisy than before, and even in complete darkness.

Well, other than the light of the moon, I was able to get some truly remarkable shots overlooking the Dishutes River for fun. I even laid down on the road and pointed the lens up at the cloudless sky, holding the phone as still as possible for the maximum 10 seconds with night mode. Now, does this image look like hot garbage compared to a really nice DSLR or a mirrorless camera? Yeah, probably with the right lens and tripod compared to some Samsung and Pixel phones. Still, yes, I'm not going to be an Apple Apologist here now that they've established themselves as Kings of camera prowess.

I think some real advancement and shooting space should be a bigger priority, but I also just really think space is cool, so that might not be important to everyone. And the point is, it looks a lot better than it has in the past. I could at least post this without being embarrassed about it. The telephoto lens has been bumped to three times from two five, which okay, thanks for that. I guess Apple's definitely playing it safe here with the Zoom, but I'm not sure that's a huge deal.

I would advise against using digital Zoom beyond three times at all, frankly, because it's going to look choppy and blocky and grainy and all of those things that you didn't pay a $1,000 to have in your photos. I would have liked to see at least a five times optical Zoom here, but that's pretty nitpicky given just how great the shot it does take. R, the ultra wide lens is also a delight. It has an impressive 120 degree field of view and enjoys all the same enhancements from the new chip as the wide angle does, including color performance, sharpness noise reduction, and all of the rest.

The camera also has a new feature called Photographic Styles, with which you can apply a stylistic thread to every photo you take automatically.

Beyond the default setting, there are four customizable profiles, rich, contrast, vibrant, warm, and cool. Unlike a filter on, say, Instagram, the iphone 13 Pro uses computational photography to change different elements of a photo depending on your style settings. It's important to note that these color profiles are, quote, unquote destructive, meaning you can't go back and edit them after the fact. Like with a raw photo, which is a shame but otherwise on its face, this feature is super exciting. Sadly, in my testing was not so in practice.

It's just that I'd really like to see them take it much, much further. For example, like I mentioned, you can customize these styles, but only in terms of tone and warmth. All things considered, I don't think these shots drastically stand out from one another or from anything else, at least not enough for me to be applauding styles just yet. And maybe I'm just spoiled by software like Adobe Lightroom that I've grown accustomed using for anything. I know I'm gonna publish, but if this feature does stick around long enough to evolve, what I really want to see is more like maybe 30 measurably different presets with fine tuning controls for curves, color grading, grain vignette.

The works then have that apply to every photo you take. The phone can already shoot in Pro raw. Why not use that to pre tweak your settings and keep the original file around to change later? Now that would be cool. This this is just a Glorified auto button with four settings, and of course we have to talk about macro photos.

It's more automatic than some other photo settings, but as you get really close to the subject, the ultra wide lens will kick in, giving you super crispy closeups up to 2 CM from an object. This feature works strikingly well if you can avoid the device itself casting a shadow on your subject, which is just something you have to be aware of. And while most people won't be using it every day, it does perform measurably better than its recent appearances on Samsung phones in the last couple years.

Now let's pivot to video. I'm fully blown away by the quality of video on the iphone 13 Pro.

The color, sharpness noise reduction and everything else is just absolutely best in class, particularly in daylight, but it holds up in medium to low light environments reasonably well. The image stabilization is so good at this point that I almost take it for granted. And then there's cinematic mode, and this is probably the biggest buzz word from the event. I'm just gonna pop that bubble right there. It's pretty neat, but it's got a lot of issues sort out before I can truly be used for movies, as Apple would likely to believe for one.

While the focus wrecking works well some of the time, it also works terribly a lot of the time. The one shot you see over and over again where the person in the foreground turns their head and the camera automatically focuses on the other face in the background. That's cool and all, but I couldn't get it to work without tapping manually. And let's not gloss over the fact that that's not the only time someone would ever want to swap focus in a shot. I've already seen that exact shot enough times in marketing and reviews that I'm totally over it it's overrated and okay, I lied.

It automatically changes focus. Also, when someone comes into frame, that's about the extent of it from what I can tell, and frankly, it only looks okay. You're still kind of getting that Zoom call or cheap portrait mode look on the edges of hair and clothing fabric. Sure. Maybe if you buy a bunch of professional lighting and other gear or like in the keynote a Rainmaker in a crane, you'll be able to mask a lot of these issues, but for the most part, you're going to want to stick with the default video option on this one.

And trust me when I tell you that that is in no way a disappointment.

Okay, so there is an overview of everything you should know about the iphone 13 Pro and Pro Max, as well as my thoughts. Now let's think back to Steve Jobs's promise that it just works with regards to the iphone 13 and 13 pro. Does it just work? It's not that it doesn't work clearly, it works incredibly well, in fact. But I'm starting to ask myself, Is this too complicated for the average consumer?

Sure, I can just pop my phone out of my pocket and take a couple of photos without overthinking things. And chances are it's gonna look pretty darn good. But if I take the time to consider the best possible photo for any given situation, I could probably make it look exceptional. And now that's a question I have to consider every time I want to take a photo. Most of these features, with the exception of Macrophotography, are on the regular 13 models as well.