Google’s Pixel phones have begun to make their way into the hands of consumers and reviews for the most part have been excellent so far, causing Alphabet’s stock price to tick upwards over the past week.

One of the most heavily-marketed features of the Pixel was the camera and particularly the 4k video capability, featuring digital stabilisation that used readings from the phone’s gyroscope to combat shaky footage in real time.

Although that sounds great in principle, we know from experience that electronic stabilisation is almost never as good as optical stabilisation. Cinematographer Matteo Bertoli is one of the lucky few to have gotten his hands on the Pixel already, and has used his new device to film some exceptional sample footage.

All the footage in the video was shot with the Google Pixel, although it did have some help as Bertoli used a tripod, a Rhino slider and the Shoulderpod S1, but didn’t use any gimbals or additional lenses. Although he has promised to upload an ungraded version at some point, the video has also been color corrected with DaVinci Resolve. Filmic Pro (a manual camera app) was also used for some portions of the video to control certain aspects of the recording.

That said, none of the equipment used by Bertoli is out of the reach of most consumers, and the footage looks excellent. The video really is a testament to the impressive levels of video quality that can be achieved by modern smartphones, and although the DRTV won’t be ditching their cameras for smartphones anytime soon, it’s encouraging to see the outstanding video quality of these devices.

Bertoli has also filmed a similar video for the iPhone 7 which is equally impressive. I asked him what he thought of the two phones in comparison to one another. “For photos I think the Pixel is definitely better, even in low light,” he said. “For videos they're very close but the Pixel seems slightly sharper. 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. ”

As direct competitors, it will be fascinating to see how the photography community takes to both of these phones. The rivalry between these two flagships will only drive mobile photography forward as time goes on, which is great news for consumers no matter what platform you use.

2016-10-25 03:00