Strangers Attempt to Differentiate between iPhone 15 Pro and $5,000 Camera through Printed Photos

Every year, I compare the newest iPhone to my daily professional camera and always receive feedback that after compression and scaling, you lose too much detail to be able to tell the difference. So, this year, I’ve taken the next step by having the images professionally printed on metal and asking random strangers if they can guess which photo was taken with a phone. 

This is my third year doing a print test and the second year of involving the opinions of strangers in the experiment. All the images in this come from my article comparing the iPhone 15 Pro to my Canon R5. While those results are a bit lacking, the images this year were closer than ever given the conditions they were taken in, which resulted in participants having a more difficult time figuring out which photo was which.

The first image I picked was the daytime photo from Gros Morne National Park. While this is technically a midday shot, which is where the iPhone typically has the best results, it was taken while on a boat with no tripod or stabilization. On top of that, it also has a huge dynamic range.

The second image was taken during blue hour and even has wave movement, which is normally a dead giveaway for an iPhone. Not allowing me to control the shutter speed when shooting in Apple ProRaw means no motion blur, but thankfully, using the timer allowed the shutter speed to slow down enough to have the images match well to the Canon R5. Typically, the shadow detail in these images is the giveaway; it absolutely was in last year’s comparison. This year, it wasn’t as straightforward, and the results match that which you can find in the video.

Last year, I had the images printed on archival paper, but this year I got the best I possibly could. The images were printed on Chromalux Aluminum by New Mexico Fine Art Printers, who graciously provided the prints for this comparison. I reached out to them because I recently had a gallery show with over 15 prints done by them with absolutely great quality, and I cannot recommend them enough. These prints don’t hide details and show the images as they are, giving participants as much information as possible.

For processing, I always edited the Canon R5 image first, and then matched the iPhone 15 raw to the best of my ability. After processing, I upscaled both images using ON1 Resize to poster size (24"x36"). I highly recommend using upscaling software anytime you’re printing large, no matter what camera took the images. This will always give you better results than your printing service sizing the image themselves. The daytime shot was printed at 15"x30" and the blue hour shot was printed at 24"x30". 

Instead of giving my opinion on the results, I went back to my old college campus to see if people passing by could pick out which image was taken by the iPhone 15 Pro and which by my professional mirrorless camera. You can watch that experience, hear what people had to say about each decision, and find the surprising results in the above video.