4K Video On The New iPhone 11 Pro: The Good And The Bad

Written by Shawn Koh (Tech360.tv Community Creator)

Another year, another iPhone launched. This year Apple released 3 new phones, the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro Max. The clear contenders in this new line-up are obviously the iPhone 11 Pro & Pro Max with the added extra camera on the back. Let’s take a look at the 4K video capabilities of these phones.

Phones manufacturers in this generation target to improve performance and functions in each new iteration and release, but with the release of the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max, Apple clearly showed their intent to target phone photographers and videographers.

Testing the new iPhone 11 Pro, there were big surprises but also some letdowns. The advantage of the added camera was firstly an increased range in the wide-angle lens. The average consumer usually faces the issue of taking photos in tight spaces and needing more space to capture everything in one shot.

Secondly, the distribution of different focal lengths to specific lenses improves picture quality drastically due to the reduced reliance on digital zooming. A dedicated wide, mid-range and telephoto means manufacturers do not need to squeeze large focal ranges into the camera lens. It’s the same principle used in the professional camera markets where lenses with a smaller focal range (eg. 24-70mm lens) perform much better than lenses with large focal ranges (eg. 24-300mm lens).

The main letdowns of this phone were the lack of low light performance in its video modes. We can only expect so much from a phone camera and it still has a long way to go in comparison to mirrorless cameras or DSLRs.

Image stabilising worked well on the mid-range lens but isn’t available on the wide-angle lens. On the telephoto lens it was slightly laggy as it tried to stabilise and correct itself, but all in all, it was impressive and sufficient for daily videos and photos.