iPhone 13 Pro Max: Cinematic mode brilliant but not perfect yet
Can the new iPhone 13 really turn us all into creative filmmakers worthy of Hollywood movie magic comparisons? We check it out, along with the new macro mode, and find that it’s not without some issues.
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Can the new iPhone 13 really turn us all into creative filmmakers worthy of Hollywood movie magic comparisons?
Cinematic mode video certainly promises a lot and in our first couple of weeks of testing, it has been super impressive.
In simple terms, cinematic brings to video what portrait mode brought to photography in the iPhone 7 Plus a few years ago.
The depth-of-field effect keeps the focus point of your video sharp while blurring the foreground or background.
What is particularly clever is that even if you shoot something out of focus, you can change the focus point later on the phone.
It’s not perfect though. There are some things that it just can’t get right.
But when you see it in action tracking your dog in focus with the background of the beach blurred behind it, while you are walking along, you have to be a little wowed.
I had the same feeling when I first saw portrait mode in still photos in an iPhone.
What used to take hours of editing after a photo was taken was produced in micro seconds.
The computing power to do this for video is mind boggling – that’s why the latest phone has a super fast processor with extra graphics grunt.
Having the ability to then change the point of focus and the depth of blur in your video on a device in your hand in real-time is something that movie makers could have only dreamt of years ago.
When you look at what this camera can do, and how quickly, and then look at the cost of a similar camera in a Hollywood studio, the latest iPhone is a steal.
Even videographers are saying it can do what previously only ‘proper’ DSLR cameras could.
We’ve been testing the iPhone 13 Pro Max which also comes with three times optical zoom (up from 2.5 times in last year’s model), a much brighter and faster display, and a battery that delivers all the power you need to shoot and edit video, play games, scroll your social media feeds and do some work as well.
Apple is not the first to introduce bokeh effect blur to videos. Samsung did it with the Galaxy S10.
But Apple has done it better and no doubt there are more improvements to come.
We put it to the test at an infinity pool looking over the Brisbane skyline at Emporium Hotel.
Focusing on the water in the pool, the background of the skyline is blurred but by moving your phone or pressing where you want to focus on in the shot, you can bring the high-rises and bridges into the shot.
You can do the same thing when you are filming people. The camera will even pick up when you someone turns their head towards someone and change the focus to them.
In action sequences, like following a waterskier on the water, the tracking mode is put into overdrive.
The focus is locked on the person as they zoom by you but as they move too far away the tracking stops.
If objects get in the way (like a tree or something else), the phone will struggle to stay focused.
It also has trouble with things like the edge of glasses and hair in some of the shoots we have seen.
But once you start using cinematic mode you’ll find yourself looking at the world differently.
Moving closer to your subject creates for a nice background blur. For example, we shot a beach scene with a beautiful rock jutting up from the sand in the foreground and it looked a treat.
There are scenes where the normal video mode works better so it’s worth playing around with your options.
MACRO MODE IS SUPER COOL
On the photography side, the big addition has been macro mode, which allows you to capture incredible photos as close as 2cm away.
Once you start playing with you, you will be stopping to smell the roses in the neighbours’ yard and see what you can find crawling on the petals.
If you can hold the camera steady enough, the detail captured is incredible, as we found when shooting a dandelion.
You can also shoot macro video which looked really cool when we were getting up super close to a beautiful rose.
The redesigned camera system also sucks in more light at night, something I noticed when taking photos of my dog at a distance after the sun had already gone down.
If there’s one gripe with the camera is the zoom could be bigger, along the lines of the latest Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra which has a 10 times optical zoom.
But as an all around package for phone photographers and video enthusiasts, the iPhone 13 Max Pro is hard to beat.
The sophistication of the artificial intelligence is getting better with every iteration.
Smart HDR 4, for example, does a superb job in capturing different skin tones, even against a backdrop of harsh light.
It does that by creating segmentation marks for each individual person so the photo is more realistic.
You also now have the ability to apply different photographic styles to provide richer colours, or change the tone and warmth of what you are shooting.
I haven’t really got into that yet but it will be appealing for those who have their own photo ‘style’ particularly for Instagram.
Other things we are really loving about the new iPhone 13 is ProMotion which allows the refresh rate on the screen to go anywhere from 10 to 120hz.
As you’re scrolling through content, everything feels faster, more fluid and more natural.
The fact that it can adapt to what you are doing means that a lot less power is used for say when you are just reading an article or email versus when you want the faster refresh like gaming.
The OLED screen is also 25% brighter offering a 1000 nit display and 1200 for HDR content.
The iPhone 13 Pro Max is priced from $1849 while the iPhone 13 Pro starts at $1699. Storage now ranges up to 1TB which will take the price from $2569 while 512GB is from $2219.
SPECS FOR IPHONE 13 PRO CAMERA
Telephoto
- 77-mm focal length
- 3x optical zoom
- ƒ/2.8 aperture
Ultra wide
- 13-mm focal length
- ƒ/1.8 aperture
- Faster sensor
Wide
- 26-mm focal length
- 1.9-μm pixels
- ƒ/1.5 aperture
Originally published as iPhone 13 Pro Max: Cinematic mode brilliant but not perfect yet
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