Apple's iPhone 11 Pro bested by a $250k video camera. Obviously

iPhone 11 Pro camera (Image credit: iMore)

What you need to know

One YouTuber wanted to show how inadequate iPhone cameras can be.
So he compared iPhone 11 Pro with a $250k video camera.
And the phone lost. Entirely predictably.

It's fairly common knowledge at this point that the cameras in Apple's iPhone 11 Pro are pretty impressive. But they're still small and attached to a phone, so it isn't really fair to expect them to be able to compete with really expensive video cameras. Especially when the lighting isn't perfect. And YouTuber Zebra Zone wanted to make that point. So he did.

To do that he took the humble iPhone 11 Pro and put it up against a $250,000 video camera setup. And yes, things went pretty much as you might expect them to.

As PetaPixel (via Cult of Mac) notes, none of this is a surprise to the YouTuber, either. And he isn't particularly down on what iPhone 11 Pro can do. It's just that while he says the phone might be OK most of the time, it won't be all the time.

His argument is that an iPhone might be okay 80% of the time—which may be an overstatement—but that what a client is paying for when they hire a videographer is 100% reliability, consistency, and quality. Even in low or mixed lighting. Even if you're forced to shoot from further away than you thought. Even in all of the situations where a smartphone still falls extremely short.

So there we have it. If you were thinking about starting a Hollywood movie studio with your iPhone, it might be an idea to rethink that move. Just saying.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.

3 Comments

You know what else can beat the iPhone 11 Pro? The cheapest DSLR with a telephoto lens.
Uh........ no. The cheapest DSLR is either just as good or not quite as impressive. If we're talking straight image quality, it might win, but the levels of computation required every time you take a picture with the iPhone are incredible. It takes a bunch of different shots to get faces, exposure maps, everything. It's astounding. And don't even get me started on Portrait Mode. That would require a whole book.
And this is coming from a guy who uses a Canon DSLR almost daily. My iPhone is way better at handling low light, really fast motion, and color in general. It's almost magic. It makes the WORST conditions into an awesome picture. The iPhone 11 Pro beats most DSLRs with video, though.
And the OnePlus is better. See Marcus test!