If you happened to watch Apple's iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro launch earlier this week, you were likely overwhelmed by the camera improvements the company laid out

But fear not - we took a look at all of the photographic upgrades coming to the next iPhone to highlight what will rise to the top and matter most to everyday users as Apple vies for the title of best camera phone

Of course, there is much more to share on this subject than just new features that will either take time to appear or prove their worth, like Apple's new ProRAW image format or the LiDAR sensor on higher-end models

But these are the innovations we are particularly excited about, and whether you use the dual-lens iPhone 12 and 12 mini or the triple-lens iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, Cupertino's latest hardware will give you the joy of shooting in any situation The newest hardware from Cupertino is sure to give you the joy of shooting in any situation

The camera that does most of the shooting is definitely the main camera, and it is here that Apple has put the most effort The main wide-angle shooter is the same on all iPhone 12 models (except for the sensor improvements, especially to the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which we'll cover a bit later) This new stack takes the form of a seven-element lens with a wider ƒ/16 aperture The underlying sensor remains at 12 megapixels

According to Apple, the larger aperture allows 27% more light to reach the sensor than the ƒ/18 optics of the iPhone 11 series This will be most noticeable in mid- and low-light photography, where light is more scarce iPhone 12 should produce less noise and blurred results in such scenarios

Smart HDR and Deep Fusion are the secret sauce behind what makes iPhone photography so great Apple's process takes multiple exposures of various lengths and selects elements of each frame pixel by pixel to provide the most optimized results

In short, Smart HDR and Deep Fusion are two different pipelines for achieving detail in harsh lighting conditions, with different amounts of frames to capture and different ways to stitch together the final image In addition, deep fusion targets darker shots, whereas smart HDR is more powerful in brighter scenarios

Both of these systems were included in the iPhone 11 series, but Smart HDR 3 is its next-generation technology and is exclusive to the iPhone 12 series the main feature added in Smart HDR 3 is the ability to identify a scene, for example, are you shooting a portrait of someone or a natural landscape, for example, it makes greater use of machine learning to adjust various parameters in order to get the best shot

Deep Fusion, on the other hand, required an additional second or two of processing on iPhone 11 devices with A13 Bionic, but should be faster on the iPhone 12 thanks to the power of Apple's new A14 Bionic silicon

Apple was somewhat late to the night mode party with last year's iPhone 11, but the feature was well done and produced respectable results compared to the company's rivals iPhone 12's night mode was improved by the new device's overall low-light performance and wider aperture Not only is it improved thanks to this, but it is available on all cameras, both standard and Pro models

This is a small but important distinction between the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 series Ultra-wide night mode photography was not possible, which was a disadvantage for those trying to capture expansive landscapes and cityscapes under the stars

In addition, the iPhone 12 line can also shoot time-lapse in night mode, which will excite more creative photographers

Dolby Vision may not be familiar to most new cell phone buyers, but once you see it, you will love what this technology can do Dolby Vision is an HDR format that dynamically changes the presence of content from frame to frame for optimal presentation, going further than the standard HDR10+ protocol

Video shot with Dolby Vision will have finer detail in highlights and shadows, and finer and smoother color gradations According to those involved with the technology, the results are astounding Perhaps even more impressive than the jump from Full HD to 4K resolution

Fortunately, both the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro can take advantage of Dolby Vision when recording video, but there is a difference iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini can only capture Dolby Vision video at 30 frames per second The Pro device doubles that to 60 frames per second In any case, video recorded in Dolby Vision will look stunning on the iPhone's Super Retina XDR display or on a 4K HDR TV

Apple has done well to ensure the relative equivalence of the cameras on all iPhone 12 models This year, however, the $1,099 iPhone 12 Pro Max gets special treatment, with a larger image sensor that includes larger pixels behind the main camera and a new technology called "Sensor Shift" that Apple introduced from DSLR cameras

First of all, the camera has a large image sensor with a large pixel behind the main camera

First, there is that fancy new sensor Because of this, all phones with megapixel sensors will eventually bundle these pixels together to make them as large as possible Thus, larger image sensors exhibit better light sensitivity and produce more detailed and colorful images without noise, even in dimly lit conditions iPhone 12 Pro Max's dedicated sensor has 17 micron pixels, which is 14 microns larger than the 14 microns in all other variants of the pixels, which Apple says improves low-light video performance by 87%

As for Sensor Shift, it is a new image stabilization technology not previously seen in smartphones Many devices use conventional image stabilization, which offsets judder by physically moving the lens iPhone 12 Pro Max also uses this But at the same time, the image sensor is moved to cancel out movement In DSLR cameras, this is usually called in-body image stabilization, but in the case of the iPhone 12 Pro Max, Apple calls it sensor shift Whatever you call it, it should help deliver sharper photos and smoother video than any iPhone to date

While the iPhone 12 series may look like little more than quantitative changes to the camera hardware on paper, the reality is that these new devices offer many more upgrades than a simple megapixel upgrade And given that Apple has historically offered some of the best camera phones on the market, we like to think that the additions to the iPhone 12 series will actually be perceptible

Critics may perhaps lament the lack of certain features, such as 8K video recording and a more powerful optical zoom of over 25x Indeed, imaging is one of the fastest evolving areas of the smartphone experience, so it will be interesting to see how the iPhone 12 moves the industry forward and how companies like Samsung and Google respond with their own improvements