Oliver Haslam on October 10, 2018, 10:33 pm

iPhone XS Max Vs Canon C200 Professional Digital Cinema Camera Comparison

The iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have been out for a few weeks now, and there is one thing that most people can agree on – Apple massively undersold just how big of an improvement the new camera is when compared to even the iPhone X.

Reviewers and users alike have continued to comment on just how impressive the still photos and videos taken with the new iPhones have turned out to be, and one professional videographer found the footage to be so impressive, he decided to compare it with a $10,000 camera.

Ed Gregory said that the idea to carry out the comparison popped into his head after he was “shocked” at just how good the iPhone XS was as a video camera and the rest, as they say, was history.

A few weeks ago I picked up the new iPhone XS Max and as a photographer and film maker the first thing I did was open up the camera app to see how it looked and to be honest I was actually shocked. It looked awesome. Over the next few days I took a few videos and found myself actually watching them back on the phone and being pretty impressed. I would then watch a video I shot on the C200 and to be honest I would question which one I liked more. So that was it, I just had to test them out.

Just as you might expect, the ultimate conclusion was that the iPhone XS wasn’t able to really compete with the $10,000 camera, but Gregory did say that at times he was hard pressed to tell which camera had produced some footage and that’s something that is pretty mind-boggling. For his testing, Gregory used a Canon C200 and spent an hour taking comparison shots. He also notes that one big advantage the iPhone’s footage had over the Cannon’s was that it was almost ready to be used without needing additional work.

Back at may studio (In Color Studios) I put the footage together and threw on a color grade. The iPhone footage took almost no work to color grade whereas the C200 to a lot of heavy lifting which is one of the joys of shooting in RAW.

Gregory also commented on the fact that the dynamic range of the iPhone – something that has received a lot of attention – was almost able to compete with that of the Canon C200.

The dynamic range is super impressive. It’s able to keep the highlights on the bright sun while keeping details in the shadows. This is some crazy multiple exposure processing that’s been done. Considering this is all being done in real time in the palm of your hand, it’s super impressive.

Gregory did, however, say that the ultimate weakness of the iPhone XS camera was the amount of sharpening that was applied to the footage, with some detail lost as a result. Still, the fact that this test was even feasible is impressive.

(Source: PhotosInColor)