The iPhone 13 Pro is here and, unusually, its most vaunted features aren’t its cameras. My CNET colleague Patrick Holland gave the 13 Pro …
The iPhone 13 Pro is here and, unusually, its most vaunted features aren’t its cameras. My CNET colleague Patrick Holland gave the 13 Pro and Pro Max high marks for their long battery life, sumptuous ProMotion displays and the software improvements brought by iOS 15. But there’s plenty to love about its camera too, with the 13 Pro’s new 3x optical zoom and Cinematic mode for videos. None of the iPhone 13’s flashy new camera features relate to Portrait mode, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t improvements. Comparing the iPhone 13 Pro to 2020’s iPhone 12 Pro and 2019’s iPhone 11, I found that this year’s model was reliably better in both low- and high-light (sunny) conditions. It’s also made strides with edge detection, allowing it to more smoothly foreground your subject, especially compared to the iPhone 11. I rounded up some friendly volunteers to put these phones’ cameras to the test. Before I compare the Portrait modes in these cameras, a few notes: I originally planned to include comparisons with the iPhone SE, but the SE requires you to be much closer to your subject, which results in much deeper blurring. That’s something I only realized after I had taken all the photos and started comparing them. Total rookie error. It’ll be updated with SE shots soon. Second, I compared an iPhone 13 Pro to an iPhone 12 Pro and a plain, not-Pro iPhone 11. That may sound unfair to the iPhone 11 line, but note that the only camera difference between the 11 and the 11 Pro is the latter’s telephoto lens. Since all the photos below were shot at 1x zoom, that doesn’t come into play. Third, the iPhone 13 Pro’s A15 Bionic processor consistently resulted in much quicker shots. I often noticed a delay between pressing the button and the photo being shot in the 11 and even the 12 Pro. And finally, I’ll be commenting a lot on how well these phones foreground their subject, and the quality of the focus falls off. Note that you can adjust the aperture before or after taking photos on all these phones to set things to your liking.
