 Hey guys, Thunder E here and as you can see, I am back here with my buddy, Marion Sel. How's it going, Marion? Very good, and you? Yeah, good. Hello. Good. And yes, we're here because we are about to do another professional photographer camera review. But this time, it's all about Apple Pro Raw. Now, Apple announced that they're going to have a RAW format, which is good news. It means that you can now edit your photos in RAW, meaning you're getting more information to play with so you can do more creative things or get more out of the environment. Now, I could have done those photos myself, but you guys don't want to see it because it's terrible, terrible photos, and Daniel's laughing over there. But I decided, of course, to reach out to Marion, and he's going to walk us through some of the photos that he took with the iPhone 12 Pro Max because Apple Pro Raw is available on the Pro Max and the iPhone 12 Pro. So without wasting any more time, let's hit record and check it out. All right, let's do this. All right, so I want to show you something. Now, we're working here with Capture One. And in the background, we have Lightroom. By the way, I've never used Lightroom myself, so forgive me if I'm slow. But OK, looking at this here, this is a JPEG, and this here is a RAW file. So I can imagine that maybe the RAW files look to you intimidating because they're so gray, but depending on what you're searching for, what you want to achieve, and you get a gray RAW file because you've got all the tones in there that you can use to play with. If you like the look of this photo, which is very happy and very apple, like very, it's nice and kind of a little bit like a canny sort to my perception, then maybe you don't even want to go for a shooting RAW because shooting RAW is much more about actually going away from using necessarily the color look that is dictated to you by whoever company you choose your phone to be with. So RAW files, they have the advantage that you get loads of data in all the different segments of your image in the highlights as well as in the shadows. Also, you can change, let's say, the white balance after the shot, and you have a lot of room to play with the exposure, for example, without losing too much data. So let's see, I just want to show you this. You can, for example, darken this image a little bit so we don't lose too much of the sky. Then let's try to brighten it a little bit with this here, which just goes into the mid tones. Then we can push the shadows, get more of the shadows. Now that this image becomes a little bit less contrasty, we can actually erase the contrast and then we can play around with clarity and so on. At one point, the more you play around, the more you create a personal style. And I think that's what RAW or shooting RAW is all about. Basically, you want to be creative on your own. As I said, it can be intimidating to see all these potential little things that you can play with in front of you. But actually, it's like learning by doing, you'll get into it very quickly. So that was this image. Let's go for the next one. Once again, comparison shot between what the JPEG looks like. And then just as a test, I wanted to show you what you, for example, could do with an image shot in the same environment. Now that it's a RAW file, this image looked like this, quite similar to the JPEG actually, to start with. And I did add a decent amount of contrast to it. I made it look almost like a black and white image. Went ahead and actually I removed a little bit of the, I basically, what do you call it, I untilted it a little bit, tilt and shift. Because the super wide angle lens gives me these crazy falling lines of the skyscraper. So basically I made it a little bit more harmless. And then I looked into like desaturating pretty much everything besides these particular tones. The warm tone of the entrance and these purple tones of the LED lamps on the side of the building. And now, you know, I did a lot of work to it as in like the, especially the tilt shift, it really does something to the pixels, stretches them and so on. So I'm glad I didn't do it on the JPEG file, because see maybe how much texture we already have in this JPEG. Also how strongly this image is sharpened already. Comparing it to the RAW file, you see how the gradients are much much softer over here. Let's have a look at the same side on this one. This is all quite pushed and contrasty. You see also maybe that in this area here we basically have a very, very soft amount of structure here or detail or texture. While here we've got a lot of it, so if we went ahead and we used the JPEG to start raising our contrast or structure or clarity, we'd instantly kind of hit the limit. Once here you can really, you can play around and just push it as far as you want it to go, like increase details, maybe even go ahead and sharpen it. It is coming in a little bit sharpened and I'm going to explain where that comes from later in another moment. I want to show you this image here. When you open the RAW files on Capture One, it comes in as a RAW file, a DNG file, digital negative with a neutral color curve. The same image in Lightroom opens with a very dark color curve. The apple embedded color profile looks very dark, but you can instantly in Lightroom choose different profiles also. By the way, on the Lightroom app inside your phone, you can do the same thing. I most of the times ended up going with a landscape here in Lightroom to work. In Capture One, you saw how dark this image came in with the original curve. The apple curve and I wanted to tell you that if I could choose between shooting a RAW file too dark or too bright, I would always shoot it too dark because it's much easier to get texture and detail out of the dark areas than it is to trying to recover highlights. Next shot is another comparison shot between JPEG and RAW file because you see how how strongly Apple's algorithm treats the JPEG file. It's something that I wouldn't want to work with later on because there's already so much processing embedded into the file. I wouldn't even know how to tone that down. So here you go, you've got a RAW file, you can do all the treating and all the processing yourself. Maybe in this particular area you recognize how screaming the texture is in these areas. The sharpening is actually very very heavy. It looks great once again on the iPhone display, even if you send the image to friends and so on, it looks really good. It is too much for me personally when I look at it on the screen, on this screen. If I wanted to print one of those two I would definitely start my retouch on my post processing work with the RAW file compared to the JPEG. You see though how Apple does a really good job here at maintaining the sky blue, getting those highlights from the continuous lights on the bridge out and so on. It's actually really well done. So the algorithms of Apple are great as well as you see how the buildings are really visible here compared to here where they have a very flat look to them. So it would be a lot of work to push this image to become what the algorithms of Apple have done, but maybe that's exactly where you don't want to go. So therefore you shoot RAW files. Was there anything else in this? Oh yeah, I wanted to tell you that this image has been shot at night. So even though it looks like it's a white sky that's just because the snowstorm just kicked in and it was a very night time environment but because the city is reflecting inside the clouds it was not a night time shot. It's shot at 60th of a second. Here is actually a night time shot. I think on the phone I clicked to shoot for two seconds or for three seconds. I don't remember. The EXIF tells me that it's been shot for 15 of a second. That is I'm going to talk more about this later on. That is because the long exposure on Apple is actually not one single photograph that's taking three seconds of time. It's several photographs that are being overlapped and overlaid. Looking just at details the night mode in particular increases the texture of your image very very strongly. You've got super highlighted sharp edges and comparison to this one. Here you still have highlighted edges. Some areas I got to be honest, loose texture also. I'll explain later where that comes from. Is that in the JPEG one? It's in the RAW file. Well I can just mention a few things. The RAW files are not RAW as you would expect a single image RAW file. Apple still takes several photographs and in many cases it's a mixture of a smart HDR and deep fusion and night mode. So basically you get a photo that's shot in night mode that might or might not have deep fusion and smart HDR embedded. As of right now there's no tool for me to control if it's embedded or not. But this is not a RAW file in that sense that it is a one single shot. It is a processed photograph. So there are several image overlaid that became one single RAW file. So every now and then I run into these areas where I think I'm actually missing texture. Maybe that's because I am personally coming from shooting film when I started working in photography. So I'm used to having grain and some areas just become looking like black blonde or or empty for me. Even if I went ahead and added texture to the areas it would still it would still create areas that have grain and other areas that have nothing at all and only a gradient that sometimes creates an artificial feel for me in these Apple photos. This photo here I want to show you because it's such a backlit environment. This is shot on the longer lens which is an equivalent of 65 millimeters on a 35 camera 35 millimeter camera and super backlit. I suspect that Apple has already embedded a little bit of smart HDR into this image. But I wanted to show you something in here that I saw in many of the photographs. Even though it is a RAW file you have a specific almost paintbrush like texture in very high detailed areas. In this case the the floor with ice that's reflecting the sky and all of the the icy snow here. Let's raise the contrast a little bit. It's a good shot to play with because you've got you've got loads of room to play with. You can actually create a really strong black and white image here for example by darkening for example the sky and pushing the contrast adding more texture whatever you like. Actually with a RAW file you've got a lot of room to play and be creative. I'll just do a few things and make this quite dramatic. Let's try this here and of course if I add even more texture to all to all these areas there would be even more highlighted. So there's something here that looks a little bit digital to me and I think we've got we've had something similar in the past where we're looking at an algorithm that has treated the Huawei images very strongly. We are getting into an environment where Apple also treats specific areas of the images. It doesn't matter if you're shooting JPEG or RAW file you get these in specific areas of the image which look to me very digital. I've actually had another shot of a grass field where I got the same digital feel to detail areas. Just for fun let's see how much there's left in the detail because as of right now it looks like there's nothing. Let's see here you go. There is a little face in there. I just wanted to show you it's there. All right of course we went kitesurfing with this phone. The RAW file here if I was to show it to you on the Apple iPhone display maybe anyone maybe you can you can add this to the video later on. Here it is in Lightroom with the Apple curve which is once again super dark. It's easy enough to change the curve go for something else. You get something that already looks much more like you would expect it to look like. As I said before in a few other videos actually that Apple has a very well balanced way of treating backlit environments. That's why I shot these particular images in backlit. So if you look at the RAW file on the phone and I think we can put that on your screen later on you will see that there's on these shots there's a lot of detail in the shadows as well as in the highlights as well as you get like a quite nice balance of sky and clouds and colors. So I don't know yet exactly how you would get a RAW file off the iPhone and maintain that look if that's something you would want to do. Maybe you want to print an image and you like the look that Apple gives you. Maybe that's a later on thing where you can then download the this AGI-C box that wraps around the RAW file so you can in Capture One open and get all the Apple color processing. I'm not sure if Apple is going to allow that to happen. Here direct comparison of course between RAW and JPEG you see how much more punchy the JPEG is and that is because I was actually trying to shoot this in RAW but then I did the burst and the burst only shoot JPEGs anyways. Yeah let's go to the next one. Next one is like a proper night time shot on the regular lens. By the way I just wanted to quickly mention that the regular lens is now featuring a chip that is about 40 something percent taller than the chip in the previous phone. So basically it maintains the same amount of megapixels. What that means is that the size of the pixels grew so you've got taller pixels that can then receive more light and dark environments in particular. So this one here was a night time shot and even though it's a RAW file I instantly see how much algorithm has already treated this image. So night mode means several images are being overlapped. You can sometimes choose even up to I think even up to 10 seconds exposure time but because it's handheld and you're not shooting a single image of 10 seconds Apple is just gathering information throughout a time period of 10 seconds and assembling it into one file and I think the longer your exposure time is the higher you can expect the quality of the file to be later on. I quickly mentioned something now that on the long lens the night mode actually does not use the long lens. It uses the regular lens and it then crops in to give you 12 megapixels out of that regular lens crop. Yes so this looks almost painted to me. I think I have seen night shots of the pixel and the Huawei that were much much nicer than what's going on here and remember being blown away by the Huawei night mode. I can't say that it's the same with Apple as of right now. Maybe it's just a software thing. I think that the sensor is very well capable of creating stunning night images. Another very low light photo of my cat. It's a very dark environment here. We've got really nice details in, oops sorry, got really nice details in Lightroom they come out a little bit better I think than in Capture One just because of the profile that's being used here which is actually which one do I choose? Let's see. Oh hey interesting that's the Apple one so it's the darkest one. Yes actually in this particular case seems like the phone tried to overexpose its phone. This looks really nice. Once again though if you see this photo in particular on the iPhone screen you've got way more details or it looks like way more details. It translates a little bit better on the screen and you get the sensation that you get a better detail playback on the Apple display than on my computer screen. Now the question is, is that Alaska? No it's actually Cactus. It's the cat that barely shows his face. Well obviously I've got a shot of Alaska as well but like Cactus, shooting Cactus is like shooting royalty. He never shows up. So those were the images I wanted to show you. Yeah let's sum it up I guess. Yeah those are quite interesting. Now before we continue just going back to this image. Yes Cactus here is when you're shooting in RAW on the iPhone your experiences that you're capturing a lot of the information you expect or do you feel like it's a bit less? No I think the phone does a very good job at giving you all the information you expect and the information you want to have. So it's once again it's one of those situations that if I go kite surfing then I don't want to carry a professional camera around with me so I'm really thankful if I have a phone in my pocket that can then shoot RAW files because at the end of the day like the best camera is always the one that you have in your pocket and if I go into environments where I feel like I want to play rather than work then I'm happy to have a phone in my pocket that can take really good RAW files. I think the sensor the bigger sensor of the regular camera is actually a game changer because the quality you get out of that sensor is higher than the quality you have gotten out of the smaller sensors. It's a game changer I think. If I can choose to have the iPhone in my pocket compared to like the one that I have now of course I go with the Apple like 12 max pro even though I want to say it's much too big for me personally but yes the RAW files that are coming out of this phone are good besides those little details that I pointed out with like looking at specific textures and specific high detail areas I think that is rather a thing on the super wide angle and the long lens rather than on the regular lens which is better at handling high texture high detailed areas. Any final thoughts on the 12 format itself? I know you've enjoyed using Apple pro RAW but what about the phone itself with any thoughts before we round up? Yes so the phone itself is a really nice product I think it's like it's a quality obviously super high quality piece I like the finishing of this one in particular it has a more edgy feel. The cameras they seem to be huge I mean it's a little bit of an exaggeration actually the sensors are small on these two cameras it's a bigger sensor over here so I'm sometimes struggling a little bit with the thought that Apple is calling this pro and like the whole idea of like the pro RAW and so on it's a little bit of a branding situation I think because when you use the camera app there's not so much inside the camera app that reminds me of a professional camera app like you cannot choose the exposure time you can't choose the ISO or the white balance which is like super basic professional options to choose from so in that sense it is a more consumer oriented I know it's full on consumer oriented but also it has now this nice feature that you can shoot RAW which aims at professionals. Me personally I'm if like the shoots I'm doing I have so many quite expensive ingredients that there's no good reason for me to shoot my shoot on a phone so but of course like if you go out and you you have your phone in your pocket this phone in your pocket it's great to shoot good landscapes with this and not worry about being able to print the files later or not you're like yeah you can absolutely print files of that you get out of this phone because you treat the the files differently than Apple treats them for you and you can you can be very creative with this phone I think all right you guys heard it we're going to have sexy portraits of the Colonel for you so you can print those out and Mari we're taking those photos I'm just joking guys but thank you very much Mari for giving us an insight on pleasure. I hope you guys enjoyed this video and you got to understand how Apple Pro RAW works how you can use it editing with it the kind of things you can actually do if you like this video definitely hit the like button also subscribe definitely check out Mari and sales website and also his Instagram page I'll have the links for you guys down below you can check him out there he does some fantastic work and by the way he shot Wonder Woman a couple years ago because that movie is coming out really soon so he is truly awesome thank you again very much my pleasure for this but again guys thank you and always enjoy entertainment thank you very much happy holidays