Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max Camera Evaluation: Big and Beautiful

Last month, iPhone 12 Pro Max was declared as the top device in the iPhone 12 family, with the largest screen and the most impressive main camera designated by a new batch of mobile phones from Apple. The main wide-format camera is in a 1.7 camera? There is an f/12 MP lens equivalent to 26 mm in front of the12 MP sensor at the camera position (larger than12 MP10.4 in iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone1Promax? Sensor). It also has a sensor-based optical stabilization system, which is Apple's first system (most mobile phone camera modules will move the lens instead of the sensor to offset the camera movement). There is an ultra-wide camera equivalent to 13mm and a remote module equivalent to 65mm, which can provide 2.5 times zoom on the main camera (slightly larger than the reach of iPhone 1 1 Pro Max or 12 Pro), and an unusual lidar sensor is used to construct the depth map.

In theory, iPhone 12 Pro Max has the most impressive imaging function in Apple's mobile phone so far. Read our comments, which are based on the new version 4 of DXOMARK camera test protocol to understand its performance.

Main specifications of the camera:

Ultra-wide: 12 MP 1/3.6 "sensor, equivalent to 13mm (measured as 14mm) f/2.4 aperture lens.

Telescope: 12 MP 1/3.4'' sensor, equivalent to 65mm f/2.2 aperture lens, OIS PDAF.

Lidar depth sensing

LED flash

4K Dolby Vision HDR video at 24/30/60 fps (tested at 2 160p/30 fps).

Test summary

Apple's iPhone usually provides excellent imaging performance, but last year's model was pushed down by the latest and worst rankings of other mobile phone manufacturers in our ranking. With the help of iPhone 12 Pro Max, Apple once again rushed into the height of our database, but it has not reached its peak. The impressive DXOMARK camera scored 130, second only to the top three, but its excellent photo sub-score 138 (based on excellent performance and few mistakes) was second only to Huawei's Mate 40 Pro.

Exposure is usually accurate (as you wish), especially in portrait shooting, even in very low light. Impressive dynamic range will reduce the exposure score, but when the camera faces a scene with high brightness range, highlights and shadows are often cut out. Colors are usually pleasant, especially indoors, and the effect of warm colors is usually very pleasant. However, in high dynamic range scenes, the reliability of color is poor.

Auto-focus is particularly fast and accurate, and iPhone 12 Pro Max set a new high for this score. Although the sensor is bigger, the main camera can still maintain enough depth of field (and manage it properly), so that everyone can concentrate on our collective test.

This phone balances texture and noise better than iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, and the texture retention effect is very good. Even if the light level drops, the camera can hang on the details. The noise is also lower than what we measured in its predecessor. However, despite the improvement, the best thing in the competition is to balance the noise and details more skillfully.

Apple is in a leading position in using special portrait mode to simulate background blur. Apple's latest achievements on this iPhone provide good results, good subject separation, natural fuzzy gradient and even noise on the whole screen. However, this fancy lidar sensor is obviously not the whole content of depth mapping, because we can still see the artifacts around difficult objects such as hair.

Image artifacts have been well controlled, but iPhone 12 Pro Max actually took a small step backwards than its predecessors, and the score was reduced by 3 points. If you are looking for them, you will usually see color shift, color quantization, ringing and ghosting.

Indoor, Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max can capture pleasant color rendering of detailed images.

IPhone 12 Pro Max scored 68 points in our new zoom index, which combines the scores of Wide and Tele. This is a major improvement on 1 1 Pro Max (we re-tested with the new protocol), but it lags far behind our competitors. This iPhone does well in most aspects, providing a wide coverage and good overall image quality (with some warnings). With moderate scaling, the powerful remote module of the telephone can complete the work well.

But the zoom of iPhone 12 Pro Max is far from the best competitor. Xiaomi, Huawei and other companies have been trying to expand the coverage of long-focus telephone module phones, while the price of iPhone is only 65mm.

Except for some highlights, the exposure is accurate and the contrast is well managed.

Outdoor, bright and pleasant colors, especially when HDR processing is moderate.

The video score of iPhone 12 Pro Max is 1 13, which ranks second with Huawei P40 Pro in the video test, making Huawei Mate 40 Pro ranked first. Apple has added Dolby Vision HDR support, which really provides high dynamic range and pleasant tone mapping when playing on compatible monitors. Usually, the dynamic range is wide, although you can still edit highlights in extreme cases.

In most cases, texture and noise can be well balanced. When shooting outdoors or indoors in moderate light, there is less noise and rich details. The luminosity must become very low before the noise becomes annoying and the details are reduced. Although there are sometimes some slight white balance projections, the colors are usually pleasant (especially in very weak light).

Like still images, video autofocus is accurate and fast, and can move quickly and smoothly when the distance of the subject changes. Stability is also very effective, including when walking or translating.

Even though the exposure is usually accurate, our testers still notice that the exposure is a little unstable under all conditions. Glare and color quantization sometimes occur, but the overall video performance is very good.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, outdoor video

Interpretation of photo soundtrack

Because of its outstanding performance in most image quality attributes, the excellent photo performance of iPhone 12 Pro Max is 138. In this section, we will carefully study how to determine each sub-score and compare it with the image quality of some major competitors.

Exposure and contrast

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

93

The exposure performance of iPhone 12 Pro Max is competitive with most other flagship products, but there is indeed room for improvement in high dynamic range scenes. Target exposure is usually accurate, especially when facing human faces.

In this backlight scene, although12promox can better keep the exposure of the model's face, both iPhone can explode. We also saw some flashes in the iPhone lens.

Highlights of Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, blowing highlights, not exposing the face.

Huawei P40 Pro has better exposure.

The following example shows the tenacious grip of iPhone 12 Pro Max on target exposure. Both comparators may seriously expose the subject's face under the influence of weak light and white background, while12promox can keep it bright better.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, slightly underexposed face.

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, the face is under-exposed.

Huawei P40 Pro is seriously underexposed.

colour

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

10 1

IPhone 12 Pro Max solid color high score. Indoor and outdoor renderings are usually pleasant (although sometimes there is a slight blue outside). However, in scenes with high dynamic range, there may be problems in color rendering, showing an almost cartoon-like appearance. In the following example, we use very beautiful colors on the foreground subject of12promox, but the HDR color in the background looks like the skin color of other models. The old iPhone performed better in the background, but the main body was underexposed, while Huawei adopted a more balanced approach, although people's expressions faded a little.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, strange HDR color rendering.

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max has a dark prospect.

Huawei P40 Pro, color balance, but slightly faded.

Indoor, iPhone tends to favor warm color rendering, which is Apple's specialty, and the effect is usually more pleasing.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, excellent color rendering.

Huawei P40 Pro is light yellow, and its skin color is not very pleasing.

Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G, the color is good, but the skin color is slightly pink.

Automatic focusing

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

109

Apple won the title of autofocus with iPhone 12 Pro Max, and got the highest score we have recorded so far. In all cases, autofocus is fast and accurate. One of the inspirations of our new test protocol is that the brightness range of the scene has the same influence on the autofocus performance as the overall lighting level, and when facing the high dynamic range, quite a few mobile phones perform well under uniform lighting. However, as we can see from the following table, the iPhone is not affected by the brightness distribution of 7 EV, and provides closely grouped timing, which can actually release the shutter in one tenth of a second, thus obtaining an instant feeling. To be fair, this excellent autofocus performance is at least partly due to Apple's new lidar system.

Comparison between autofocus and 7 EV change under outdoor lighting (1000 lux)

Apple's management of depth of field is also very good. With the increase of sensor size and fixed aperture in mobile phones, this problem is becoming more and more serious. In our tests on people at different distances, the iPhone has chosen the right focus, which can maximize the clarity of objects at close range and far range.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, depth of field

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, cropping and background theme become the focus.

Huawei P40 Pro, Depth of Field

Huawei P40 Pro, cropping, slightly focusing on the background theme.

Samsung Galaxy Note20 super 5G, depth of field

Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G, cropped, and the background theme is slightly out of focus.

Quality of materials

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

10 1

noise

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

75

The texture score of iPhone 12 Pro Max is very high, which confirms the observed effect. Even if the light level drops, the details can be well preserved. In this respect, its performance is better than 1 1 Pro Max in most test ranges. In the table below, we can see that it can beat Samsung reference equipment in extremely low light, although it can't catch up with Huawei. When the light goes out.

Texture comparison (dotted line indicates deviation from average)

In the following example, under the challenging indoor mixed lighting conditions (bright windows in the background complicate things), iPhone 12 Pro Max is obviously superior to its predecessors in details, although Huawei has surpassed both.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, indoor texture

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, cut, exquisite details.

Apple iphone 1 1 pro max, indoor texture

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, cut, few details.

Huawei P40 Pro, interior texture

Huawei P40 Pro, cutting, exquisite details

The noise performance of iPhone 12 Pro Max is not so impressive at least under the flagship standard, although it is improved compared with the previous generation in low illumination. In the chart below, we can see that the baseline noise floor of Samsung is higher, and in most test ranges, the new iPhone is always lower than its background. On the other hand, Huawei usually controls noise better than other devices.

Visual noise comparison

These experimental results are confirmed in the following examples. The new iPhone retains more details and is less noisy than its predecessors, but Huawei is more impressive (though underexposed) than both.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, low light and low noise.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, cut, you can see some noise.

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, low light and low noise.

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, cut, more noise can be seen.

Huawei P40 Pro, low optical noise

Huawei P40 Pro, clipping, low noise.

false appearance

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

65 years old

Generally speaking, the image artifacts on iPhone 12 Pro Max have been well controlled, but there is still room for improvement. The mobile phone loses the most points for color quantization in this score, which will happen when the color gradient that should be smoothly presented is not ideal, but ringing (due to excessive sharpening) is also a problem. Other minor effects include tone shift, ghost, moire fringe and fusion artifacts (errors when merging data from multiple cameras).

In the following example, we see color quantization and hue shift in the sky.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, color quantization

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, cropping, artificial color gradient.

In this example, ghosting is caused by the inability to consider the movement between stacked frames.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, Ghost

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, cropping, ghosting

evening

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

64

IPhone 12 Pro Max is a powerful night game, which is an improvement of 1 1 Pro Max, but it is in the leading position in the competition. When the light is low to low, the exposure is good and the dynamic range is quite wide. Colors are usually pleasant. In the following example, the iPhone has a better bright exposure effect than Samsung, which can better balance noise and details. The exposure of Samsung and Huawei is slightly dark, but the excellent night performance of P40 Pro distinguishes it from the other two cameras.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, flash off.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, cut, good details and exposure.

Samsung Galaxy Note20 super 5G, off.

Samsung Galaxy Note20 Ultra 5G, cut, low exposure and much noise.

Huawei P40 Pro, let it out.

Huawei P40 Pro, cutting, low noise, good details, dark exposure.

Decentralized view

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

70

IPhone 12 Pro Max uses simulated shallow depth of field to shoot pleasant images in its portrait mode. The background blur effect is natural, and the iPhone has largely avoided some competitors from trying to present faces naturally. In this mode, when entering the trap, the skin color is pleasing to the eye and the level of detail is good, although Huawei's reference equipment does have something extraordinary. In this skill, it does better in preserving facial details.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, a pleasant leisure effect.

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, pleasant effect.

Huawei P40 Pro, a pleasant leisure effect.

The iPhone does a good job of distinguishing the subject from the background, but like most devices, it does make mistakes on the edges, especially on difficult boundaries such as hair. Lidar sensors don't seem to be much different here, at least in ordinary light (Apple's marketing emphasizes its ability to build depth maps in low light, but this is not part of our test protocol).

In addition to typical boundary errors, our testers also noticed that the iPhone sometimes completely ignores foreground blur. But otherwise, the fuzzy gradient is quite natural, which is greatly improved compared with 1 1 Pro Max.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, outdoor shooting.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, the depth estimation is good.

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, outdoor scenery.

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, cut, the depth estimation is good.

Huawei P40 Pro, outdoor scenery

Huawei P40 Pro, cutting, excellent depth estimation.

The new high-end iPhone can also capture simulated images in low light. Because of the use of lidar and night mode in the shooting mode, natural shooting effect and excellent details can be maintained even in very dark conditions. As mentioned above, the low-light shooting test does not belong to our test regulations at present, but at the end of this evaluation, we added some low-light shooting samples to our gallery for your reference.

preview

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

77

When we launched the preview benchmark, Apple proved that it was far ahead of its competitors in accurately displaying the content displayed on the screen, and iPhone 1 1 Pro Max got the highest preview score so far. IPhone 12 Pro Max and its non-Max brothers now occupy the top spot, but the whole industry still has a lot of room for growth in this indicator. Even if you use the equipment with the highest score, what you see is exactly what you will get. Generally speaking, the exposure in the preview image is very close to the actual image taken in the photo. The dynamic range is usually close, although it may be more limited in the preview, as shown below.

Preview: accurate exposure, some HDR

Capture: wider dynamic range

In portrait mode, the blur effect can only be previewed by the approximate value of the depth map, so the blur often spreads to the subject more than the final image. Zoom did not reach the ideal state. When you move between cameras, it will jump, and occasionally there will be white balance and unstable exposure.

Preview: Preview is a shot simulation, but the depth error is too big.

Capture: Better Depth Estimation

Scaling score description

The zoom score of iPhone 12 Pro Max is 68, which lags behind most flagship phones we have tested with this new protocol. The zoom score is a combination of wide-angle and long-distance scores. In this section, we will carefully study the realization of these sub-scores, and compare the zoom image quality with some major competitors.

Distant

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

87

IPhone 12 Pro Max is better than its predecessors in this sub-item, but other flagship phones we have tested are better than Pixel 5. The new iPhone is more attractive than 1 1 Pro Max, but many competitors go further, so the scores are quite different. In other words, in the middle zoom range, even if the long focal length of the iPhone is above the natural focal length, the effect is very good.

However, in a closer zoom range, we find that iPhone 12 Pro is beyond a larger peer area. Because the 52mm equivalent zoom module of 12 Pro mobile phone is shorter, its zoom range is earlier than the 65mm equivalent camera of 12 Pro Max. IPhone 12 Pro Max does not combine the output of the remote camera with the wide-angle camera like some mobile phones, but only cuts it out of the wide-angle camera, so its image quality is lower than that of 12 Pro in this range. Note: We usually refer to the zoom factor based on the main wide-angle camera, which is why we call it 2.5 times zoom.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, turn off zoom.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, cutting, low detail.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro, turn off zoom.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro, cut, exquisite details.

But once the remote control module is inserted, it will do better than iPhone 12 Pro and 1 1 Pro Max, although some details will be lost and the noise will exceed the ideal range. The output exposure and color of the two iPhone are significantly better than Samsung.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, medium zoom

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, cut, exquisite details.

Samsung Galaxy Note20 super 5G, medium-range zoom.

Samsung Galaxy Note20 super 5G, cut, less details.

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, medium zoom.

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, cut, less details, more noise.

In such a long zoom range, the remote sensor of iPhone 12 Pro Max has been greatly cut, and the image quality has dropped sharply (as you expected).

extensive

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max

4 1

This iPhone makes up for the deficiency of Tele score with its powerful widescreen display. Apple first introduced the ultra-wide module equivalent to 1 1 Pro in iPhone 65438 and1pro, and continues to adopt this specification here. Although it is not as comprehensive as Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra's super wide-angle lens, this camera is still very rich in packaging and has surpassed most competitors in coverage. The picture quality is generally good, although sometimes you will see green shadows (see the picture below), and the details and dynamic range may be better.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, super wide.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, cut, well covered, slightly green.

Huawei P40 Pro, super wide

Huawei P40 Pro, cutting

Samsung Galaxy Note20 is super 5G and super wide.

Samsung Galaxy Note20 super 5G, cutting

Interpretation of video soundtrack

The overall video score of the device comes from the performance of the device, and the result, like the photo score, is obtained from a series of attributes. We tested the iPhone 12 Pro Max video mode, 4K resolution, 30 frames per second and HDR mode (Dolby Vision 8.4), and achieved the best results on the whole. We use an HDR-compatible display (Apple XDR Pro Display) to analyze Apple's HDR video, and use native SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) mode and SDR display to analyze the comparison devices in this test.

The video score of Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max is 1 13, ranking second in the database when we wrote this article. Video sub-scores are as follows: exposure (99), color (99), autofocus (103), texture (84), noise (102), artifact (78) and anti-shake (10 1). In this section, we will make some comparisons with the main competitors of this equipment, and carefully study the advantages and disadvantages of this equipment in video.

IPhone 12 Pro Max can shoot well-exposed videos in very low light levels, but when the situation becomes dim, the exposure does decrease. The performance of this iPhone is a little better than that of 1 1 Pro Max, but Huawei P40 Pro can still maintain more accurate exposure under very dim conditions.

Video target exposure comparison

Color development is usually pleasant, and there is a good skin color indoors and outdoors. Our testers did notice a slight color cast, and when the lighting quality suddenly changes, sometimes the white balance will overshoot. After compensation, the mobile phone will compensate this change more fully, so as to obtain more accurate results. Video shows low noise to low illumination. In bright light, the details are also very strong. It decreases with the decrease of light, but it is not bad at the lowest light level.

Our laboratory measurement results show that the noise performance is very good under strong light, and then it follows the excellent precedent set by Huawei P40 Pro to a great extent, and it performs well in the dark environment as low as 1 lux.

Video temporal noise comparison

In this texture map, we can see that iPhone 12 Pro Max has more details than Huawei in the minimum illumination, although Huawei performs better in the median.

Video texture comparison

Like still images, iPhone 12 Pro Max has fast and accurate autofocus function when shooting video. When the subject moves or changes, the camera will move the focus quickly and smoothly as needed, and tracking is very effective. That is to say, our testers did notice that when AF is locked on the background instead of the object, a fire occasionally happens in very dark conditions.

Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max, low light video

Apple iPhone 1 1 Pro Max, low light video.

Huawei P40 Pro, Low Light Video

Video artifacts are usually well controlled, but our testers noticed that lens glare and color quantization and parts with subtle color gradients in the scene presented unnatural rendering. The video stabilization system of iPhone 12 Pro Max may be very effective in maintaining shooting stability because of the sensor shift, and will not introduce frame shift artifacts.

conclusion

The weakest link of this iPhone is the lack of telephoto function, which we have seen more in competitors' flagship products. If the arrival rate is crucial to you, there are other mobile phones that do well in this indicator (but none of them are running iOS).

Generally speaking, the video performance is excellent, second only to the best video we have ever seen. Wide dynamic range, good color, low noise, effective and stable, this iPhone is a good choice for users with video functions.

superiority

Fast and accurate autofocus

Precise exposure

White balance in comfortable indoor and low light environment.

Rich in details and plenty of light.

Wide dynamic range of video

Pleasant color rendering and skin tone in most videos.

Noise in video is usually well controlled.

Video stabilization is effective.

disadvantaged

The dynamic range is limited to still images.

Noise is usually visible in still images, especially in low illumination.

In HDR scenes, colors may look unnatural.

Color quantization, ghosting, tone shift and ringing in photos

The exposure in the video is unstable.

White balance projection in low illumination video

Spot color and color quantization artifacts in video

Please also check out our Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max gallery below. It includes the images taken by our experts in various situations and shooting modes for your review and inspection.

Early times

then

Note about the image format of this comment: Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max records photos in DCI-P3 color space, which is also used by Apple monitors. DCI-P3 is more updated than the sRGB color space used by most devices. Therefore, in order to ensure that the images used in the review can be displayed correctly on various browsers and devices, we converted the original images from DCI-P3 to sRGB. In some cases, this will slightly reduce the color richness compared with viewing the original image on a DCI-P3 calibration display with appropriate software. We also use the new HEIF (Efficient Image Format) to capture the original image, and then convert it into very high-quality JPEG for viewing in standard browsers and image editing software. (HEIF is very similar to JPEG, but it provides better compression effect for similar image quality, so this conversion makes the size of sample image file larger than that when shooting. )

We uploaded the iPhone 12 Pro Max HDR video using Dolby Vision)8.4 technology to YouTube without any changes. We recommend that you watch it on a compatible monitor for the best experience. In other words, YouTube processing may change the video quality, which is beyond our control.

film

Evaluation of apple iphone 12 pro max camera