Can You Tell the Difference? (iPhone 7 vs. FZ1000 Camera Comparison) 

It gets really easy when you notice the FZ1000 is slightly closer to everything.

Won't deny, voted for iPhone a few times

It got really easy after you figure out the FZ's slightly flatter color

I had all correct. I notcied that when you were outdoor the FZ1000 had more saturated colours and a blurry background. But when you filmed the red sign, the iPhone had higher saturation than FZ1000, but the blur in the background gave it away. When you got the darker parts in the end, there were so much artifacts on the iPhone.. :)

Sell the camera, buy a power supply!

I got all but one. The Iphone doesn't seem to do well with color.

Bad youtube compression. Should really upload a 4k version just for the sake of higher bitrate. The trees and leaves are full of artifacts.

The iPhone 7 has an amazing camera jesus!

Soo once you can tell the fov apart then it's easy.

Not hard to tell them apart, I don't really get the "it's almost as good as a really good compact camera" which, besides having a way bigger sensor, isn't even a true DSLR, it's a bridge camera. My 2 cents.

I love your videos! Informational and direct :D You're so underrated, you deserve way more subscribers. Stay awesome man! Subscribed :D

Good video, too bad for the crappy youtube compression.

The iPhone camera is good but honestly, the DSLR can do so much better when it's used with the correct settings. A few of the shots were over or underexposed that could easily be fixed by adjusting some settings. Iknow it was set to auto but frankly, the auto feature is kinda meh for all DSLRs cause they're kinda meant to be used in a more manual way. I think a better comparison would have been using the best of the iPhone (adjust settings etc) and then the best of the DSLR (adjust settings etc). TLDR: All this shows is that the auto feature is better on the iPhone.... NOT that the camera is actually comparable.

I know this is technical nitpicking, but you know the FZ1000 is NOT a DSLR, right? It's got a 1-inch sensor (DSLRs have APS-C or Full Frame sensors which are significantly bigger), a fixed non-interchangeable lens (the vast majority of DSLRs have interchangeable lenses) and an electronic eye level viewfinder (a DSLR is defined by its eye level optical reflex finder, which is the R in DSLR). The FZ1000 might look like a DSLR, and has certain advantages over a DSLR, and in certain situations might exceed the quality of a DSLR (codecs, recording time, focusing during recording etc) but it is best described as a bridge camera. A really great bridge camera, one that might surprise some DSLR owners with how great the stills and videos are, but still.

The FZ1000 (owned it for a few weeks before returning it when it first came last year btw), is not a DSLR. The sensor isn't even close to the size of... even a crop sensor DSLR. That said, I still love those 1" sensors when paired with a decent lens like the FZ1000 and RX10 series as a jack of all trades type of camera. The easiest way for me to determine the two in bright lighting in these videos is the depth of field. The cell phone has virtually none. Everything is in focus except in the most extreme cases. The FZ1000 at least has some. I know you've said you hate depth of field in video games so maybe this is a non-issue for you, but to me, a shallow depth of field looks really pleasant for portraits.

The RU-vid compression is awful, not really the best test, maybe if you were able to link the raw file in the description that would be good.

The iPhone 7's camera was really amazing!

the iphone seems to have a yellow tint to it and slightly warmer colors in general while the FZ1000 appear to be more natural to me

with low light performance it was a dead giveaway even for someone like me who has no idea of how photography works.

I couldn't really tell the difference between the two, but I noticed that 1) the iPhone has way better brightness-adjusting than the camera 2) that the camera had better focus-image quality (the thing you are focusing on is crystal clear while the background and foreground is blurry) while the iPhone had almost no difference between foreground, focus, and background clarity. And 3) the camera had clearer up-close shots. Still a great showing from the iPhone, though. I was genuinely impressed.

Every outdoor video was obvious to me which was filmed with the FZ1000, the colors were richer and deeper.

The trick seemed to be looking for frame average white balance and looking at how detailed the background is, not the subject. That being said, the iPhone 7's footage had a more movie feel to it because of the lower background details (pseudo bokeh?), and is very impressive for a phone

I prefer iPhone for outside. I prefer the real camera for the indoor/PC stuff.

Photographer here. Two easy ways to tell: dynamic range and depth of field. The iPhone being newer had better DR but the FZ had nice DoF with its larger sensor. The only test I got wrong was one where neither of those were a factor.

The iPhone quality is pretty good in these bright conditions, but the biggest difference that is clear to see in the footage is the shallow depth of field that a dSLR can produce. In comparison, the iPhone video tends to look fairly flat.

I correctly guessed the FZ1000 by choosing the video with the richer pallet every time but once, and that was with the shot of the sign. The camera also more effectively showed a depth of field that the phone lacked. Phones seem to have exaggerated contrast and almost no depth of field on their auto settings, I assume because their sensor size is so small. Why did you do the video in 1080p? I think 4K would have been much more telling. I didn't have any problem with the guitar after the halfway mark.

I could only tell the difference because if you look at the video, majority of the iPhone 7 vids were auto correcting for the light whether there was to much or not enough. I have an iPhone 7 and I noticed that it did this making my job a little easier when it comes to taking pictures and video.

I was able to tell he difference quite well! the iPhone's camera is very nice. your camera seemed to be overexposing at times. iPhone zooms out in their photos to make them look more crispier.. just saying. great video, man!

Preferred the iphone about more than half. The colors seemed to have more contrast but in the lower light, the fz did better. Also, I really like how you went straight to the clips and didn't try to input your personal opinion until the end of the video. Like that, we don't have preconceived notions to make one or the other look better or worse.

I got 3 wrong. the walking one, the guitar, and the plaque. Your camera was always closer to the object you were filming. it also had much stronger greens and yellows (yellow maybe too strong as I was seeing it in your white pc build). The iPhone7 had a stronger red and was better in dark areas lighting wise. However in some clips like the gaming chair you're able to pick out some lower quality pixilation looking stuff.

It was really hard to detect when you were walking. But the images with lot of green were SO easy to distinguish. I just picked the gray-green-ish for iPhone.

the iphone tends to darken the colors un-naturally and make it "prettier" while the Fz camera tends to look more "real". The motion of the Fz tended to look a bit more stable too. I wouldn't go saying the iPhone is as GOOD as the Fz camera, but I can't deny that it's pretty close.

Awesome comparison, Great work!

You can tell by the depth of field most times on the actual camera vs the iPhone or any smartphone will usually have everything in focus

Got three wrong on 480p. Outside is easier, longer focal length (smaller fov) on DSLR. And indoors ISO noise gives iPhone away. Also iPhone tends to have colder color temperature and smaller dynamic range ( more color clipping).

FZ1000 definitely has better low light image quality, whereas the iPhone's camera tends to be more grainy. That and the depth of view really made it easy to differentiate.

A few things call out for the lumix: Color Warmth, Depth of Field, and Exposure. As well as moiré. The bigger sensor makes her much better on low-light situations, but can also be a compromise on very bright outside areas, as in the park the scene was a bit over exposed.

the 1" sensor giving the panasonic more subject separation makes it easy in the comparisons with foreground and background subjects

All correct. iPhone is testing/trimming the focus from time to time which is quite noticeable especialy in scenes where camera moves (that micro-stuttering). Also in some scenes the major focus gave out the iPhone because it had focused the whole scene while FZ1000 had closer focus with blurry background. The guitar scene was quite hard, except when the iPhone started to automaticly change settings and made the image flicker. And to top things of, that white-balance in the mobo/rig scenes, while side by side the iPhone image just screams "automated white-balance" everywhere making that arctic-camouflage look more like creamy-camouflage.

I watched the video in 480p (crappy connection) and although I couldn't tell the difference in detail and sharpness of the image, the stabilization and DoF gave the FZ1000 a clear advantage.

It's pretty easy when you look at the dynamic range. The iPhone drops the darks to straight black with no detail and sometimes blew out the whites too. however there were two clips where the iPhone did better with the highlights but my guess is it was either the angle of the shot or setup of the camera.

The Panasonic is pretty easy to spot because it's just showing you what it's shooting, whereas the iPhone 7 seems to deepen colors. I also noticed on the first video where you were just walking around, the iPhone 7 seemed to blur more.

I got all but one right. The higher quality camera is easily discernible due to differences in level of overall detail, saturation, clarity in high and low levels of light, focus, and FOV

Had to look carefully for the first few, but then I found the others effortlessly. There are a few giveaways but the biggest is that the iPhone leans a little purple while the camera leans a little green and overexposed. They're both pretty good though.

There was a destinct colour difference in the first few examples, and i think that the fz where better in daylight but the line got blured inside

2 ducks on the lake was a bit hard, but then camera moved away from them and it got easier to spot witch was what. you got me on the bronze memorial though... cam has flat colors, wich would make kind easy to spot sometimes but it was definately easy figure out the low light takes due to noise. great video man!

it was kinda visible when it came to shader warming and you could also see more visible dots on the iphone

Very good and interesting video. I have a iPhone 7 myself which I'll be using to help start my RU-vid channel. I can't afford high end camera. This video makes me feel more confident about the camera on the iPhone 7. Thanks Science Studio!

Quite easy to guess. Colors are off in various situations on iPhone7 and also another easy method to guess the camera was by the DOF. Where everything was quite sharp, pretty sure it was an iPhone. A DLSR will give you much more control at least with the lenses you are using while a phone cannot do that, even with that crap dual lens. Also, on an DLSR you can put a tele lens which give better image, separation from the background, etc.

The only real thing I could say is that low light on the iPhone 7 was inevitably going to be awful with the smaller sensor. Although saying that, with everything in good lighting conditions they really were not to far apart. The FZ1000 was noticeable in most cases as it had more vibrant greens and it pulled focus on far objects. The two latter things can be considered to taste.

The motion stab of the slr was jittery which gave it away in motion shots but it was hard to tell in some still shots

they were close, only discernable difference i could see was color and clarity at a distance. iphone performed well but not as well in moving scenes, the fz1000 seemed to have more of a z-height change when walking were the iphone you notice a rotation in the image and it makes it a little harder to track. atleast thats what it seemed to me.

Aside from the low light quality and white balance differences between the two, the iphone's stabilization gave it away for me for the most part. It doesn't jitter as much as the FZ. But then again the FZ1000 came out 2 years ago and the iphone 7 just last month.

i was able to tell which one was which right off the back thanks to the color temps and how wide the angle was

Very interesting test! I guessed correctly half the times. I own the fz1000...which settings did you use? In a couple of footages the quality (wb, isos, focus,...)was really bad. Did you shoot with auto-mode? I'm not an Apple fan at all but I have to admit that the IP7 is impressive! Nice channel btw, you rock!

The only one i had wrong was the Motherboard comparison. On all the others, you could clearly see the Depth-of-Field on the iPhone 7 lacking behind and the colors on the Lumix FZ1000 are sharper and more accurate to real life.

I got 2 wrong. I'd be interested in a follow-up that shows what the lumix can do that the iphone can't, considering the camera portion of it is probably like $200 at most but its video in this situation is nearly the same

Dope video my man. iPhone 7 was pretty damn close. You should make your own website and host the RAW files. :) / Kinda off topic but what boom arm is that you use for your yeti in the background? Thanks!

Your FZ could use some adjusting. Your contrast looks bad, and the colors leaning towards cool. Got a greenish tint to everything white.

for me the way to tell the difference was the exposure settings. Most of the shots from the DSLR were on a set non-auto exposure. The iPhone 7 compensated for this by auto adjusting, making some of those shots more crisp. Whereas the DSLR was overexposed. And if you did these in the order that you filmed them, then your first outdoor shot and indoor shot on the DSLR was tuned in for the lighting in that location and then stood out more in the future shots due to not being readjusted or not as fine tuned as auto settings. But that is just my opinion and observation. I enjoyed the video!

You should consider uploading to youtube in 4k even if your videos are 1080p. RU-vid's bitrate assignment algorithm shits all over 1080p but 1080p footage exported as 4k gets much better bitrate. Flip side is I think you'd lose the 60fps option

Not going to lie, the Iphone had me fooled for a few of them. Any plans on getting a Pixel phone? I've heard some great things about the camera so far, would love to see a comparison like this. Great video as always!

Got most of these after learning how they reproduced color and noticing the depth of field with the DSLR

Depth of field was a giveaway in lots of shots, smaller sensor of course rendering everything in focus.

I got 10/12 right and on the 9th scene (the guitar) I actually got it right first and then changed my mind so I had to count it as a fail... I was really surprised just how washed out the close-up of the grass was, though... I guess all the color in the pictures the camera takes comes from the automatic post-processing. I think you got a video processing goof at 1:25, check out the background - it keeps going blurry and then sharp again and blurry again... happens with both cameras, so almost certainly some issue with your post-processing or youtube's processing.

The only one that tripped me up was the one with the two clips on top of each other. Other than that it was easy enough to tell by looking at the background. The larger sensor of the fz1000 blurring the background a bit. The most obvious was the low light performance. Have to say the iPhone 7 has a fairly decent camera, but not quite able to keep up with dedicated camera's and their larger sensors.

After the first one it was easy, especially the color temperature helped a lot.

The iPhone didn't perform that badly due to a good amount of processing power, it may not have won every time, but having software that has been developed for years really helped, compared to a camera which isn't as focused on that kind of stuff.

I watch every video of yours no matter what it is. Your channel is so entertaining, you are going places my friend! Prepare to do youtube as a career (-:

The only way I was able to tell was the depth of field and FOV. Oh and teh FZ100 had slightly more saturated colors.

I'm not gonna lie, I preferred the iPhone's Camera alot more in most situations because of the richer blacks, and almost every time the DSLR (at least to me) felt like it was over exposing the images, and I personally prefer darker but richer images overall. however, the colors seem to be better in the certain situations that the DSLR wasn't over exposing and in some situations the DSLR seemed to have done a better job at low light than the iPhone, but considering this is a phone vs a expensive DSLR, it's still really impressive.

Only missed 1. All of the outdoor footage on the iPhone had a warmer color palette, and indoors it looked like the Lumix was green tinted. Overall pretty close! I think the 7 had the better dynamic range with the brighter whites though!

only messed up on the guitar, was pretty easy to tell the difference for the most part, the iPhone seems to have slightly lower dynamic range, and more subdued colors, that and the sporadic autofocus made it easier, also your studio camera has a more pinpointed focus compared to the iPhone.

In low light the iphone has this "filter like" feel to it and out side mostly on greens such as trees and grass the iphone feels dry. The close ups were where you got me.

I have the FZ1000, I have done some great paid work with it. If its anywhere close it is a great. Have you used it with Filmic Pro? Iphone 7plus+filmic Pro+dji mobile gimbal might just be my next live event setup.

cameras on phone just make things look further away. I'm not sure why it is but you could make a video on it

The key to see the difference is the depth of field (DOF). FZ1000 has a relatively larger sensor compared to iphone's. The larger the sensor the shallower depth of field you get. Just follow the blurry background.

i only got 1 wrong because the colour difference is huge

It's super easy distinguishing between the cameras. The iPhone 7 has a wide angle lens and the colours are darker on the iphone.

You can tell by the depth of field and how wide the lens is.

Your intro is still Science Studio xD

only missed on the scene with the guitar. Iphone soemtimes (liek in the last scene) gets focus, FZ1000 has a tiny bit bigger bokeh (probably zoomed in a bit). Iphones colors are a bit cooler, and the FZ1000 is somewhat softer. Iphones image is less detailed in low light, though having i believe the same sensor size and brighter aperture Well, the FZ is good, but if you dont need the zoom (wide angle is all you need), you can keep the iphone 7. If you actually need something better, get yourself an FZ1000 if you need the nice zoom range :P But youd better of go getting a mirrorless like G7 from panasonic or GH4, or an Olympus camera for the in body stabilisation. But if you dont need interchangebale lenses, huge bokeh or so, a Sony RX100 mark "something" (depends on your budget) will do, or its zoomy brother the RX10 mark "something"

i have to say, iPhone 7 seemed to nail it more times than not. one thing gave it away for me. sensor wobble (jello effect) on some of the scenes gave away the iPhone 7. and specially during the water scenes you can tell the iphone is struggling to get focus data from the background and causing some hunting and artifacting that is less present on the DSLR. some of this is definitely youtube compression, however it seems to have exaggerated this effect more then masking it. the DSLR that you own seems to not have great optical stabilization or the lens doesn't seem to constantly and actively stabilize. my Nikon D3300 and D7100 both with basic 18-104mm kit lens(not included) can cope better with walking using basic VR (vibration reduction) enabled. the iPhone 7 was really struggling to lock in good point of reference for its EIS while walking, this was causing exaggerated sensor wobble as OIS kicked in, EIS was actively attempting to grab a point of reference to stabilize on and couldn't.

Great comparison.. Its easy to spot FZ1000 outside, more detail and nicer WB, more DR. Inside is even more easy to spot iphone, more grain. 7 and 7 + can be quite grainy, DR also is not that high, even for high end phone. OIS and AF saved 7 plus form being disappointment for me for videos.

My God! You definetly need to record with the iPhone from now on!

i noticed when i seen it that the iphone 7 white was wayy off in the first one compared to the studio camera that studio one had better overall picture before corrections it seems it is a nice camera

As a DSLR user i got all right, but it was hard at some times. You can tell the difference in the colors, the depth of field and the noise.

Except for the last shot, and erring on the video, nailed the FZ1000 every time. White balance was a bit more towards the warm site, colours more saturated / vibrant, and overall just that little bit brighter.

1:07 guess left side is studio camera? Reason better color, little more crisp, hard to tell with compression.

Not going to lie, the iPhone 7 is pretty A1 in this comparison, but after a few slides, i did start to notice that the FZ1000 has a much more saturation than the iPhone which really brought things to life (most noticeable on the PC shots @ 5:19). Some might argue that over-saturation is a bad thing, but as an average consumer i tend to lean towards pretty looking stuff (shocker right?). But on the other hand the (what i am assuming is built in stabilization) on the iPhone was VERY nice, buttery smooth if i must say (most noticeable @ around 3:16 through 3:45 or so). I Honestly wouldn't choose between the two, just use them in their appropriate situations; FZ1000 for B-roll and anything that has LED's and the iPhone for going around IRL such as recording inside stores (which i see you have done recently).

This might be an interesting test, but I got them all right from the start. There are many details which gives this away and even in well lit areas you can't beat physics regarding optics and geometry, ultimately making the bigger sensor better. The iPhone did put up a good fight though.

I missed only two. The easiest way to figure it out is the DoF and some clips like the "historical sign" were indistinguishable.

it was actually quite easy for me to tell the difference I think there was one that I was confused on but for the most part you can tell that one inch sensor in the dslr takes in a lot more light

I only got two wrong. Image stabilization for is a big giveaway for the iPhone 7 and also focusing

Dynamic range wise, iPhone 7 wins. Bokeh wise, Panasonic one wins.

I was 83% accurate. The way to differentiate between the two is to notice that the ZF1000 has a far greater depth of field, better low light sensitivity, and more vibrant colors.

Depth of field is the key!

The darker shots were easier to tell. I got most right other than the ducks swimming across the water but with you walking I was able to tell because there was a bit of a wobble effect with the iPhone which is a tendency with mobile cameras.

the whole point of buying a DSLR is to take it off auto, and use those advanced settings. if you had done that, they wouldn't even be close. plus there is also the versatility of a DSLR that the iPhone can never amount to like extra mics, speedlights, different lenses, raw shooting, etc.

I couldn't tell the difference on a few. The iPhone seemed better with handling exposures and the colors on the camera seemed more natural. The first picture is what sold the camera for me.