I finally broke down and upgraded my iPhone from a 6s to a 12 mini. One of the main reasons was to get a better camera. I’ve used the iPhone over the years to take a lot of pictures while cycling, including a good portion of the photos on this blog. I thought it would be fun to compare the two phone cameras in several respects.
When I booted the 12 for the first time, it showed this:
So I decided to try this phone to phone transfer.
I actually didn’t that much data on the old phone, so the transfer took less than 30 minutes. However, if you have a lot of data, you might be better off backing up to a computer and then restoring (or using an iCloud backup).
Next fun feature: face ID. An earlier version of face ID on the iPhone XS didn’t seem to recognize me if I took of my glasses. The 12 mini does much better, even working when I wore this Biden style pair.
However, there are limits. For one, it doesn’t work if I dress like this:
Next: low light mode. Here is a crop of a picture of Lucy under relatively low light with the two phones (6s to the left).
It’s obvious that the 12 does much better, but there is some weird sharpening going on that doesn’t quite make the details in the image look natural.
Here is an image pair taken outside.
Today I was out on Scarlett Rd, and I used one of my favourite concrete barriers to take some comparison photos with the two phones.
First up, the 12 mini, wide angle vs normal.
No big surprises here.
Next, I noted that the 12 mini gives you the choice of aspect ratios 4:3 and 16:9. I wanted to see if the photos were different.
In actual fact, although the 16:9 image looks bigger on the phone screen, it is just a cropped version of the 4:3 image, as you can tell from the pixel dimensions (4032×3024 vs 4032×2268).
Next, a comparison between the 12 mini and the 6s:
They look pretty close in terms of field of view, with iPhoto saying that the 12 mini is 4.2mm f1.6 and the 6s is 4.15 mm f 2.2
To get a better comparison, I took another pair of photos at home, this time taking more care to ensure that I was taking the photos from the same spot.
So the regular lens on the 12 mini is slightly more wide angle than the 6s, but they are really close.
The wide angle lens also makes for better on the bike selfies.
Finally, a few more notes about the low light mode. There is no doubt that it can capture some lovely images, but the thing that is not widely advertised is that it asks you to hold the camera still for a period of time, with the minimum apparently set to 1 second. This means that in addition to some frame averaging, there is some serious computation going on in terms of image stabilization.
As a result, there is no doubt that it does really well, even compared to a state of the art point and shoot, such as my Sony RX100 M5.
Here is a shot taken with the Sony at the memorial ride for 15 dead cyclists.
Or this:
So if things are relatively static, the iPhone 12 mini does really well.
Even if there is some movement, it captures the still parts of the image well, like this picture of Yvonne. Look at the cable tie in her hand. or the car in the background.
If everything is moving, then things are more of a mixed bag. Here is a shot from the Sony.
and one from the iPhone
In practice, I’ll be doing more shooting on the move with the Sony since I still find it easier to use one handed on the bike. In part, this is because I put a big hand grip on it, made out of Sugru. I’m still paranoid about dropping the iPhone.
As a side note, the photos that I took of the memorial ride were a mixture of shots from the Sony and the iPhone.
However, the iPhone 12 mini is the first phone camera that can really hold its own. For example I took this shot while riding this past Thursday.
In any event, the best camera is always the one you have in hand.
Biking in a Big City 
Nice breakdown. Definitely the iPhone 12 has reached the tipping point to where it’s equal, if not better than most “point-and-shoot” cameras. But as you pointed out, its form-factor is not as user friendly as a dedicated camera.
My honest opinion is, that I do not understand how can you compare iPhones with an RX100 without some basic knowledge about photography. WIth these blurry, wrongly focused photos, you can’t get a meaningful conclusion.