CAMERA AND VIDEO:
The iPhone has been a photographer’s smartphone favorite for many years. While if you simply compare cameras by megapixel, the iPhone 6 Plus is considerably behind its competition. However, the way in which the camera takes and processes the image as well as the sensor size both play a large role in the quality of the image. The only time megapixels is going to impact you is when you’re blowing your pictures up to extremely large sizes. As long as you’re not planning on displaying/printing the image beyond 20 X 30, the quality of the image should be just fine.
I don’t profess to be a professional photographer, so I’m going to defer the camera comparison over to our professional photography friends at improvephotography.com. In their testing they found that in many ways the iPhone 6 Plus’s camera actually performed worse than the iPhone 5S. They mention that contrast and burst shots performed considerably better on the iPhone 5S.
However, in the iPhone 6 Plus’s favor, it performed better in low light settings. The phase detection auto-focus also delivered clearer more focused photos; especially in very noisy environments.
Overall, I’ve been pleased with the quality of the pictures that I have taken with the iPhone 6 Plus. While it is definitely no DSLR replacement, it gets the job done and gives you an accessible camera anytime anywhere. Below are a few examples of photos that we took with the iPhone 6 Plus:
The front facing camera is only 1.2 megapixels and shoots in HD at 720P. While far from the best front-facing camera on a smartphone, it gets the job done for video chatting and low res selfies.
Video on the device also comes with some bells and whistles. While shooting in HD is nothing new for iPhones, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus both shoot at 60 frames per second which equates to smoother video. Apple’s Focus Pixel technology works surprisingly well while changing from one subject to another and remaining in focus. When shifting quickly from one subject to another, there are fractions of a second in which you will notice the camera refocusing, but it performs significantly better than my DSLR’s ability to autofocus while shooting video.
WATCH HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7v6-tw7B_w
The new slow motion video mode is also an extremely cool new feature. Having the ability to capture video at 240 frames per second allows you to see an entirely new world. While Samsung has had this feature since the Galaxy S4, the execution of slow motion mode on the iPhone is a much better experience. For one, after shooting video, you can choose what portion of the clip you want to show in slow motion. Additionally, when the phone is shifting into slow motion it shifts quickly but gradually giving it an almost Hollywood movie slow-down slow motion effect. Also, the iPhone 6’s slow motion video also captures sound; something the Galaxy S4 nor S5 capture when shooting in slow motion.
You’ll notice, when using this mode, resolution does go down to 720P. Also, it doesn’t perform well in low-light settings. Our NoPhone Gymnastics video was shot using the iPhone 6 Plus and you can see some minor flickering while playing back the video in slow motion.
While a higher megapixel camera would have been welcomed, the camera performs really well in terms of taking pictures and videos with a variety of different features and modes to keep your creativity on steroids.
