![]() Photo 1įirst, let’s take a look at what would be a typical size for on-screen or web viewing: 1,500 pixels on the longest side. ![]() When things get too dark, Apple makes the 48MP option unavailable, but the phone was quite happy with these shots taken shortly after sunset. I’ve chosen low-light shots, as that usually is the greatest weakness of squeezing more pixels into a small sensor. Okay, enough preamble, let’s take a look at the comparisons. I have tried to ensure that I haven’t deviated too far from Apple’s own JPG processing, but you can’t (for example) say that the sunset is more vivid in one or the other.ġ2MP and 48MP photos were taken within a second or two, but they are handheld, so the framing isn’t precisely the same – however, I’m confident that in these conditions the tiny difference in framing would have no noticeable difference. The “important note” about this is that when we compare 12MP and 48MP photos from the iPhone 14 Pro, we are comparing Apple’s standard processing with my personal processing choices. (When you view a RAW file on the iPhone, it effectively shows you a preview of how the photo would look with the standard processing, but the actual ProRAW file has none of these edits.)Īs mentioned above, this makes it useless to non-photographers, as you have to be able to process the photo to your own tastes. Here, Apple hands over the actual data from the sensor, and invites you to process it as you wish. You can use Photographic Styles to change the default editing the camera makes, but you’re always viewing a pre-processed image. Sure, you can edit it afterward, but you’re editing a photo that has already been edited by the phone, to give the result Apple thinks most users would want to see. With the former, the iPhone’s own image-processing software decides how to process the file. An important note about RAW filesīefore we compare 12MP and 48MP photos, we need to emphasize one key difference between shooting in JPG/HEIC and ProRAW. It’s not a useful format for a mass-market iPhone user, so it makes complete sense for Apple to have the button be a RAW one rather than a 48MP one. Second, because 48MP images are shot in RAW format, users need to know how to process and edit these files. If Apple used 48MP as the default, it would eat both on-board and iCloud storage at a terrifying rate. Not just four times the size, as a typical iPhone user might expect, but generally around 20 times bigger! Here are examples from three of my photos: ![]() This is, to me, a very sensible decision on Apple’s part – for two reasons.įirst, and most obviously, 48MP images are much bigger than 12MP ones. Instead, you have to select ProRAW format, which is done by tapping the crossed-out RAW button. There’s no 12MP/48MB switch in the Camera app. Indeed, enabling the 48MP capability is almost hidden. Open the Camera app and take a photo, and you’ll get a 12MP file. So I was pleased to see that 12MP remains the default resolution for photos. Smaller pixels mean more noise and less detail. I’ve always been a fan of Apple’s approach of fewer, bigger pixels, as that’s what gets the best results in low light. The net result is that pixels are around 60% smaller than those on the iPhone 13 Pro. That’s because the 65% larger size is now divided by four. Switch on the 48MP capability, however, and now the pixels are smaller. These virtual pixels are bigger than those used in the iPhone 13 Pro. ![]() When shooting 12MP photos, which remains the default, the iPhone uses a technique known as pixel binning to effectively turn each block of four physical pixels into a single virtual pixel. The sensor is 65% larger than its predecessor, which is significant in percentage terms, but still an extremely small sensor compared to dedicated cameras.īut the story doesn’t end there. The larger the sensor, the better the images. The biggest on-paper differences between old and new phones, of course, is a larger sensor and 48MP resolution on the main camera.Ī larger sensor is straightforward. My tests did lead me to change my mind to a small extent – so now I’d say that I’d expect to use the 48MP capability on extremely rare occasions, rather than never … Let’s talk pixels But I was of course still curious to see how much of a difference the megapixel count makes in real-world photos. I’ve said before that I was unlikely to use the iPhone 14 Pro 48MP resolution personally, and indeed I stuck to 12MP during a recent trip.
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