Every year, the popular YouTuber Marques Brownlee — better known as MKBHD — shares his own blind smartphone camera test based on the choice of his followers on the web. MKBHD has just posted his 2020 blind camera test and surprisingly, iPhone 12 Pro Max lost to OnePlus 8T in the first round.
The test is not scientific and it consists only in revealing which photo people think is best based solely on the images without any other reference. Marques shared the photos on his social networks a few days ago so that his followers could vote for the photos they preferred.
Last year, the iPhone 11 Pro was defeated in the first round by a photo taken with OnePlus 7T Pro. But if you thought the results would be different this year with the iPhone 12 Pro Max cameras, well, you’re wrong.
Photos were taken with 16 different smartphones, including Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, Pixel 5, Huawei Mate 40, Apple’s iPhone SE, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. To our surprise, both iPhones lost to their rivals in the blind camera test.
The iPhone SE camera was compared with the Moto Edge+ camera, but MKBHD followers chose the Moto Edge+ photo as the best one. Then, the photo taken with the iPhone 12 Pro Max was placed side by side with a photo taken with OnePlus 8T — which also won against the iPhone.
The two best photos based on people’s choices were taken with the Zenfone 7 Pro and the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra, and the winner was the Zenfone 7 Pro.
Marques explains that the photos were not edited or even adjusted before they were taken since the idea of the test is to find out which phone can take the best photo using just the automatic controls. While the photos taken with the iPhone SE and Moto Edge+ are very similar, the photo taken with the iPhone 12 Pro Max camera was over-exposed in the window, while OnePlus 8T did a better job with its HDR.
He also mentions that things like exposure, white balance, and saturation usually determine how people see a photo and then choose which one looks best. Although the photos from both iPhones captured lots of detail, the color temperature became more blue due to the sky behind the window — which affected the whole photo.
You can watch the entire blind test below:
