Gadgetory

the iPhone 7 plus takes great photos and video but now it has a younger sibling the iPhone 8 plus with larger camera sensors a faster processor and a new software trick called portrait lighting mode but just how much better is the 8 plus to find out I took them around San Francisco for a good old fashioned iPhone camera shootout first stop was Dolores Park in the mission over all photos and videos from the 8 plus had a touch more detail saturation and dynamic range than those from the 7 plus here's a panning view of Dolores Park the video from the 8 plus handles the highlights of the palm trees better and has a tad more saturation in the Greens of the grass and the Blues of the sky the same is true with photos look at this picture of Stella the cat taken with the 7 plus now here she has taken with the 8 plus both photos are good but the one from the 8 plus has a bit more detail in her fur and a slightly wider dynamic range of colors and then there's portrait mode it was first introduced on the 7 plus and uses the two rear cameras to simulate an artistic blurry background the 8 plus improves on this by adding new lighting effects which are currently in beta portrait mode photos taken the 8 plus pop a bit more than those from the 7 plus some of the new lighting effects are better than others with natural light studio light and contour light working the best stage light and stage light mono which completely black out the background weren't consistent they often looked a bit Picasa like and not in a good way but when a stage light effect shot did work pictures looked stunning my next stop was a top twin piece to watch the sunset over the city look I don't like using a flash on any phone it's distracting and your subject turns into a glowing white light zombie against a dark background but Apple address this on the 8 and 8 plus with a new feature called slow sync flash basically the cameras shutter stays open longer making the background look less dark and this is hands-down my favorite feature on the A+ and it works really well but there are times where a flash is not an option low-light photos and video from both the 7 + + 8 + were noisy especially when shot on the telephoto lens but the 8 + seem to apply noise reduction smarter cleaning up textures and patterns better than the 7 + next I stopped by nourished cafe for an espresso and to test out some slow motion video the 8 + triumphs here being able to shoot 240 frames per second in 1080p compared to the 7 + a--'s 120 frames per second the results look sharper and the motion more dramatic especially when someone's struggling potatoes if you want the best iPhone for photos and video it is definitely the iPhone 8 + but if you're trying to decide between buying the 8 + and the 7 + I recommend giving the 7 + some serious consideration image quality is really close to that of the 8 + and if you can live with less storage the 7 + is cheaper of course in November everything changes the iPhone 10 will be available giving us a chance to do another camera shoot out