The camera quality in the iPhone jumped a massive amount from the 3GS to the 4. In resolution, exposure control and colour. It jumped up again in quality with the 4S (enough for me to purchase an upgrade solely due to the better camera) but how much better is the camera in the new iPhone 5? While the resolution is the same (3264px by 2448px or 8 Megapixels) the iPhone 5 lens is slightly wider than the iPhone 4S. Apple have also said the iPhone 5 performs better in low light and the HDR option provides more accurate tones.
iPhones used in this test:
iPhone 4 vs iPhone 4S vs iPhone 5
The Rules:
- No sharpening
- No HDR mode
- No zooming (duh)
- No colour correcting
- No 3rd party apps used (just the built-in camera app)
- No flash or other lighting
- No tripods (to simulate real life handheld shots)
I’ve resized the images down to 700 pixels wide to fit within this article page, but have also provided a 100% or actual size crop – ie: taking a 700 pixel wide sample from the original image with no resizing. The iPhone 4 only has a 5 megapixel camera, so its actual size crops are slightly less “zoomed in”.
Note: Clicking on each image below will open the original full size photo in a new window. They’re 2-3MB each
Example 1: Bright scene in full sun
Here’s the same shot – but at actual size and cropped to a 700 pixels wide section…
I’m liking the iPhone 5′s handling of the blown out glass areas on the left. With HDR mode it’d be able to pull those blown out areas back even further.
Example 2: Close Up Detail
The much better handling of highlights is clear to me in the 4S & 5 in this pic. The exposure seems much more realistic.
And at actual size…
The sharpness of the iPhone 4 is impressive in this example, but the iPhone 5 gives the same sharpness at 8 Megapixels – making the little hairs on the flower stems even visible.
Example 3: Tough exposure with bright/dark areas
The exposure from the iPhone 4 makes me remember why I upgraded to the 4S. It seemed to over-expose when in doubt, and had problems with blown out highlights.
And at actual size…
The iPhone 5 is looking sharper to me – and again, thats without any post-camera app sharpening. (The camera software would be applying its own level of sharpening within the camera app, but still, for that resolution it doesn’t look over-sharpened to me.)
Example 4: Interior scene
And at actual size…
The extra resolution comes into play here with the 4S and 5, you’re almost able to read the tiny text on the signage. And both make the 4 look pretty noisy. The (lack of) noise on the sign looks the best in the iPhone 5.
Example 5: Low light
The iPhone 4S & 5 have come up with a much more realistic colour balance and exposure. This scene was quite dark too – down a dark covered carpark alley.
And at actual size…
This crop is from the bottom of the frame, where you expect sharpness to drop off (away from the center) but the iPhone 5 has kept that poor little squashed Campos cup pretty darn sharp in what was very little available light.
The white post edge behind it is definitely more blurry from the 4S, and there’s a lot more noise in the 4.
The Verdict
The jump up in quality from the 4S to the 5 isn’t as great as the jump was from the 4 to 4S. In fact, it’s probably hard to pick the difference in some of the above photos because they’ve been resized down quite small to fit on the page here. If you are printing your photos out on photo paper, or viewing them fullscreen on a large monitor you’ll have a better chance of picking the difference (click on any of the above pics for fullsize versions). If you have the iPhone 4S now, the upgrade to the 5 is small but probably worthwhile if you fancy yourself as a ‘mobile photographer’. If you have any other phone, I dare say the iPhone 5 will impress you very much. I think I need to upgrade.
You can download all the original photos here (38MB zip package)