Pro Cinematic 4K Footage from Google Pixel and iPhone 7 Plus

It’s not so uncommon now a days when professional photographers try out the high-end smartphone cameras to check what guts they have gotten. In fact manufacturers now hand over their new smartphones to the photographers mainly to promote the photography power of those devices.

Recently an Italian filmmaker, Matteo Bertoli has tested the top-ranked Google Pixel smartphone camera and published a cinematic 4K footage in most lighting conditions. Matteo has also previously tried the same with iPhone 7 Plus.

Manufactured by HTC, Google Pixel is currently the top rated smartphone with every aspect, reviewers have really good response about it. In fact Google’s stock value has hit the highest till date and the credit is being given to the success of this specific device.

Staying the course, official camera samples from Google Pixel have also been published. The camera is the bigger factor of the smartphone which was marketed with focus on its 4K video recording capability. While Google Pixel lacks in optical stabilization, it makes use of gyroscope to stabilize footage digitally. It’s eventually the digital stabilization. You can watch below the footage, Matteo has published and it’s really cool.

Here are the remarks of the filmmaker “I was very impressed with the new Google phone. Dynamic range is good, plenty of details. The software IS is not bad at all considering is not optical. Overall the phone did very well.” 

The footage was shot purely on Google Pixel with no additional lens. However Matteo used a tripod, a Rhino slider and the Shoulderpod S1 for handheld footage. He did not use any kinda of gimbal. The footage was also edited in Final Cut Pro X and color graded in DaVinci Resolve. Although the footage was recorded with Google Pixel’s camera, Filmic Pro and the native camera app was used for the purpose.

According to me, the video quality is actually up to the mark considering it from a smartphone. It really makes you believe, that smartphone cameras are not just for online picture sharing anymore. After giving a tough time to point and shoot digital cameras, they have now even surpassed the capabilities of those cameras. Still can’t compare to the capabilities of DSLRs. We’ll see how far the technology takes the smartphones along.

Just in case if you are wondering, following is the footage from iPhone 7 Plus which Matteo published a few months ago. Although the footage are completely different from the Google Pixel’s one, you can still compare the quality and performance of the footage. Feature wise, iPhone 7 Plus has optical stabilization but the sensor itself is smaller than the one in Google Pixel. iPhone 7 is ranked 4 at DxOMark’s ranking list.

Matteo thinks the the Google phone is better in still photos than the iPhone 7, even in low-light. Videos from Google Pixel are slightly sharper – he told DRTV. “The 7 Plus with the depth effect looks amazing though. What I noticed is that the footage coming out of the Pixel has more contrast and saturation where iPhone is more flat (I think same thing happens with the photos), but they’re both very close.”

You can tell about what you think of these two footage in the comments below.