A filmmaker and colorist who put the iPhone XS low-light video capabilities to the test says that the results are so good that it may be better to simply let the camera app do its own thing than to use flat or gamma log in something like FiLMiC Pro …
Richard Lackey said that the camera improvements should not be underestimated.
Low-light image-processing
He said that the dynamic tone mapping employed appears to be particularly sophisticated.
While this may have “just” been a “S” year, the significance and impact of Apple’s clear direction towards sophisticated real time computational image processing should not be underestimated […]
With the iPhone XS Max I was able to capture clean video in very low light conditions. Not only was it clean, it had more color information in dark parts of the image than any previous generation iPhone I have shot with.
The noise-reduction likewise. He wrote that he can normally spot artefacts resulting from this, but he couldn’t in this case.
Something else is at play, and it is dynamic, changing according to some combination of variables linked to a real time analysis of the scene. It may even be making separate localised adjustments to different parts of the image, which would be extremely impressive if true.
The bottom-line
But most tellingly of all, a professional filmmaker actually thinks that the camera might make a better job with its own settings that choosing his own base profile.
What surprises me the most is areas of the image in low light that I would normally expect to see a lack of detail and texture, have decent detail and texture. Go figure. Not quite sure how they are pulling this off.
If I didn’t still use a standalone camera for any planned shooting, this might be enough to change my mind about not upgrading to the iPhone XS. It certainly seems that the improvements are more dramatic than they first appeared.
Check out the video below to judge for yourself. It begins with a graded version, followed by the straight-from-camera footage.
