Last week, Apple released its new 2020 iPhone SE — an inexpensive smartphone for $399 that has
Whose camera shoots better?
Based on iFixit analysis, whichlooked at the basic camera hardware, the new iPhone SE uses the same camera sensor as the iPhone 8 (12MP lens with f/1.8 aperture and 28mm focal length - narrower than the 26mm focal length of the 12MP wide-angle camera in Apple flagships).
Despite hardwareiPhone 8, the new iPhone SE has more advanced photographic capabilities, which are provided by the powerful A13 Bionic internal chip, such as Portrait Mode and Smart HDR, so for the most part the quality of the iPhone SE camera is superior to the iPhone 8, but inferior to the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro.
When it comes to photos with goodlighting (that is, bright lighting indoors or outdoors), all three iPhones give similar, decent images, because here you do not need a lot of work to improve. The iPhone 8 and iPhone SE photos are slightly warmer than the cooler iPhone 11 Pro images.
iPhone 8 fights backlighting, which in somecases can be overexposed, and it is here that you can see Smart HDR in the shine of iPhone SE. Although the iPhone SE did a great job with bright lighting, it definitely fought in low light conditions compared to the iPhone 11 Pro.
Both SE and iPhone 8 were in a quandaryin low light conditions, but iPhone SE images are slightly better due to the A13 chip. The iPhone 11 Pro has a night mode, a feature not available in the iPhone 8 or iPhone SE, so it is significantly superior to the iPhone SE in low-light photographs.
iPhone SE has portrait mode, very similaron a higher-end iPhone, but this is the first of Apple’s iPhone to rely entirely on portrait-image generation software and portrait lighting. Since the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro have two and three cameras, respectively, their hardware images in portrait mode look better, but iPhone SE does a respectable job.
РежимiPhone SE's portrait mode is limited to peoplebecause the neural network that supports this function must detect a person in order to blur the rest of the image. It will not work with pets, food, or other items, like on the iPhone 11 Pro.
Because in portrait mode iPhone SEuses 2D images to create a depth map, a feature unique to the iPhone SE — you can take a photo in portrait mode of an existing photo. This doesn't always work well, but it's a fun way to spice up some old photos and add background blur.
Like the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro, iPhone SEsupports 4K video at 60 frames per second, which is an impressive feature for a smartphone for $ 399. A video comparison between the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone SE showed a slight difference in quality. Both looked great, and optical image stabilization worked well.
iPhone 8 does not support 4K video at 60frames per second, so we compared with 4K video at a speed of 24 frames per second, and again, the image quality was similar, but the stabilization on the iPhone SE seemed better, and the sound quality was higher.
iPhone SE has a simple 7 megapixelthe front camera, which also supports program portrait mode, which is not available on iPhone 8. The front camera is nice, nothing impressive, but it works quite well for FaceTime and selfie and was generally comparable to the front cameras iPhone 8. iPhone SE does not support wider angles available with the front camera on the 11 Pro, and selfies with the 11 Pro looked a little better.
For front-facing video, both the iPhone 8 and iPhone SE were very difficult with bright lights that constantly overexposed the video. The iPhone 11 Pro did a much better job.
It is worth noting that the iPhone SE also supportsQuickTake for front and rear cameras. QuickTake allows you to hold the camera button in the photo mode to quickly capture video without having to switch to video mode.
In general, the iPhone SE camera takes pictures,pretty similar to the images taken by iPhone 8, but the A13 chip does a lot in the background to make these photos look better. The iPhone SE is also not too far from the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro when it comes to images shot in bright light, but the similarities end there.
This is a single lens camera, not a camera withtwo or three lenses, so it does not support versatility with additional lenses, there is no optical zoom, program portrait mode is not as good as hardware portrait mode, and Night mode is not used for images in low light.
iPhone SE — It's certainly a passable camera that will take great photos every day, but those seriously interested in better iPhone photography should take a look at the iPhone 11.