**Cinematic Mode: A Cool Party Trick or a Reliable Tool?**

Apple's latest feature, Cinematic Mode, has generated a lot of buzz among filmmakers and videographers. The mode is designed to create a cinematic look and feel by blurring the background while keeping the subject in focus. However, as I recently had the chance to test it out on my iPhone 13 Pro Max, I have some reservations about its reliability. While Cinematic Mode does produce some stunning results, especially when shooting portraits or close-up shots, it's not without its limitations.

One of the biggest issues I encountered with Cinematic Mode is that it doesn't always work as advertised. The blur effect can be inconsistent, and the autofocus system can struggle to keep up with multiple subjects in the frame. This makes it difficult to achieve a smooth, professional-looking result. Additionally, the mode requires precise control over lighting and composition, which can be challenging to achieve on the fly.

Despite these limitations, Cinematic Mode does offer some impressive features that make it feel like a reliable tool in the right hands. The autofocus system is pretty good when it works, and the depth of field effect is pleasing to the eye. However, I couldn't help but feel that Apple's claims about Cinematic Mode being designed specifically for filmmakers felt a bit exaggerated. It's more like a cool party trick than a serious filmmaking tool.

**A Comparison of iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max**

One of the main decisions I had to make when testing out both phones was which size to go with: the smaller 6.1-inch display of the iPhone 13 Pro or the larger 6.7-inch display of the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Both phones have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on your priorities.

On the one hand, the iPhone 13 Pro is lighter, easier to use one-handed, and has a more compact footprint. It also has a slightly smaller price tag compared to the Pro Max. However, this comes at the cost of battery life, which is significantly better on the Pro Max. Additionally, the Pro Max's larger display and speakers produce fuller audio with more detail on the high end.

On the other hand, the iPhone 13 Pro Max offers a bigger, brighter, and more immersive display experience. It also has slightly better speakers that can get louder without distorting. However, this comes at the cost of size and portability, making it a less convenient phone to carry around.

**The Verdict: Should You Upgrade to the iPhone 13 Pro Series?**

Ultimately, whether or not you should upgrade to the iPhone 13 Pro series depends on your priorities. If you're coming from an older iPhone, such as an iPhone 10 or 11 series, the upgrade is definitely worth it. The cameras are much better, the battery life is incredible, and the new screens are bright and smooth.

However, if you're already on an iPhone 12 or 12 Pro, there may not be enough reason to upgrade. The Cinematic Mode feature is nice, but it's not a game-changer compared to what you've experienced before. Additionally, the camera improvements may not be as dramatic for those who are already familiar with the iPhone's camera capabilities.

For me, the iPhone 13 Pro series feels like what the iPhone 12 Pro series should have been last year. It's a solid upgrade that offers significant improvements over its predecessor, but it's not necessarily a must-have upgrade for everyone.

**A Personal Note**

This will be my final video at Android Authority, as I've decided to move on from tech and pursue other interests. I've really enjoyed working with the community here and collaborating with the great folks who work behind the scenes. If you want to keep up with me, you can find me on social media and I'll still be producing content over on my personal channel. Thank you for watching, and I wish the Android Authority team all the best in the future!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwe've all seen it a flashy new iphone that apple claims is its greatest iphone yet and with the recent release of the new iphone 13 pro series i was pretty curious as to what hidden tricks apple had up its sleeve but as i got around to using these devices i'm not so sure what latest and greatest innovations apple was referring to to me both the iphone 13 pro and the 13 pro max feel like what the iphone 12 pro series should have been last year with that in mind i'm luke pock with android authority and let's talk about whether or not the iphone 13 pro series is worth the upgrade right off the bat there isn't a whole lot of difference design wise from the iphone 12 pro series the square design is still here they're still a notch and the phone is still incredibly thick admittedly apple did reduce the size of the notch by about 20 percent but in the day to day you're not really going to notice that in order to make this light change apple moved the speaker from the middle of the notch to the very top of the device it's a small change but a change nonetheless no the most noticeable difference here is the larger camera module and the new 120hz display let's talk about that display first while there are not many upgrades over last year's model the 120 hertz pro motion panel is a welcome addition still it's difficult to get excited about a feature that android devices have had for literal years that said apple's implementation of the feature here is fairly polished and using a 120 hertz screen in tandem with ios's already fluid animations makes for one of the smoothest experiences on a smartphone that i've ever had in fact my first reaction to booting up the phone was just pure surprise and apart from the ipad pro i had never seen ios running on 120hz display now it should be noted that as of right now apple has not given out any documentation for third-party apps to make use of this feature which might affect battery life in the future according to apple this is a bug and it's working on enabling third-party support in a future update but the whole thing feels a little bit suspect to me even when apple enables support it's going to take a little bit of time for developers to catch up to the new standard and as a result on some web pages and apps there are some strange graphical artifacts that occur it's fine for the most part but again we're going to have to wait for apple for an update that aside the 120 hertz screen is not the only addition to the iphone display in fact these new displays are much much brighter than the iphone 12 pro series the iphone 13 pro and 13 pro max can hit a thousand nits of typical peak brightness versus the iphone 12 pro and pro max's 800 nits on paper this doesn't seem like a significant difference but in real life it's very noticeable and lastly something that i haven't seen anyone else mention is that these displays don't seem to suffer from the same color shifting or green tint that previous iphones have dealt with in fact compared to my iphone 12 pro max the colors on the 13 pro series have no tint at all from there let's talk battery life both the iphone 13 pro and pro max have some of the greatest battery life performance that i've ever seen but there is a significant difference between the two on the iphone 13 pro max i consistently averaged about 9 to 10 to sometimes even 11 hours of screen on time which is honestly insane on the other hand with the 13 pro i only averaged around 6 to 8 hours of screen on time don't get me wrong performance on the regular 13 pro is still really good but the 13 pro max shines when it comes to battery life still apple is sticking with the outdated lightning connector and i would have liked to see usbc this year that might change in the coming years with a new eu law that forces manufacturers to adopt the usb-c standard but whether or not that will trickle down to the us markets remains to be seen something that doesn't remain to be seen is performance okay terrible transition aside the new a15 bionic chip is really fast this comes as no surprise considering that the iphone performance has been very good in the past few years i'll put up some benchmarks for you all but the short of it is that this processor is only slightly faster than the a14 bionic that said we're starting to reach a point where the processor gains year over year matter less and less yes this phone can and will handle any top tier aaa title on ios and yes there is a five core gpu instead of a four core one but again the performance gains here aren't anything to write home about the big question you have to ask yourself is will the pro series last a few years given apple's great track record for software support the simple answer is yes i expect the a15 bionic chip to be relevant for at least a few years and especially considering how well optimized ios is i don't expect any major issues in performance in the years to come as expected my experience with the devices were more than enjoyable apart from some graphical glitches due to the new 120hz panel i didn't come across any lag or stuttering again performance on the iphone 13 pro series is top notch hanging easily with the latest offerings from samsung and oneplus i'm not going to go too in depth here but aside from the pro motion display the only other big upgrade in these new phones is the camera system so this year the iphone 13 pro and pro max ship with a triple 12 megapixel lens system this consists of a made wide lens a 77 millimeter telephoto lens and an ultra wide lens capable of capturing 120 degrees field of view the main sensor now features a lens with an aperture of f 1.5 over the 12 pro max's f 1.7 in theory this change should make for better low light images and i'm happy to report that low light images are indeed sharper and brighter it also means that the natural depth of field on this lens will be a bit more shallow that said in the day to day i didn't really recognize a huge bump over last year's iphone 12 pro max images from the main lens are still just as sharp producing good color representation and contrast in fact comparing the two side by side proved to be a pretty futile experiment in full lit scenarios apple did say that there is a new autofocus system in the ultra wide camera that should allow for better light gathering i'm not entirely sure how this plays into photos but i can say that the ultra wide camera is wicked sharp in almost every image i was impressed with the sharpness and detail in each photo in most instances it's just as sharp as the main sensor and beats out the iphone 12 pro max as ultra wide in most scenarios also apple added a new macro mode to the iphone 13 pro series this new mode makes use of the ultra wide camera and produces some pretty impressive results that said i would have liked to see an option to select or lock macro mode because as of right now the macro mode will automatically kick in when you get super close to a subject regardless of what lens you're on unfortunately this limits your ability to get close with even the main sensor because it will auto switch to the ultra wide it's not a big issue but something i hope apple resolves in the near future the telephoto lens is now a three times optical zoom instead of last year's 2.5 again just like last year images produced are good and match the other two cameras in terms of sharpness and color accuracy there isn't a whole lot to say about this lens other than it's now easier to get close to far away subjects now on all three of these lenses hdr is pretty great apple stated in its keynote that the iphone 13 series would ship with a new hdr algorithm that should make for more natural looking smart hdr images for the most part it's hard to tell the difference but i did recognize that most hdr images don't lift the shadows as much as the 12 pro series did that said there does seem to be a bug with the hdr and in a fair amount of scenarios i had to tap the screen to get hdr to kick in i'll put up a video clip showcasing this but it doesn't happen every time but it's still something to be made aware of and i'm hoping apple will fix this in the near future lastly let's talk about the new cinematic mode i'll be upfront with you all i have a few issues with this new feature at face value the new mode lets user shoot video that feels more like it was shot on a dslr cinematic mode creates a fake shallow depth of field that is pretty impressive in certain situations essentially this new mode uses the larger sensor size of the cameras to track subjects or objects within the frame and blur out the background i'll be honest it's a pretty cool feature but it doesn't work all the time and it doesn't work reliably at the moment and that's where i have the biggest problem in apple's marketing it was pushing this cinematic mode to mobile filmmakers but the issue here is that apple gives you no control over the parameters of this new feature you're locked at shooting in 1080p at 30fps if this truly was aimed at filmmakers apple would have enabled an option for different frame rates and resolutions now i'm not sure if there are some sort of hardware limitations at play here or what but again the absence of some control means that this new feature feels more like a cool party trick rather than a reliable tool in the day-to-day videos can and will look pretty cool the autofocus system is pretty good when it works and the depth of field effect is pleasing to the eye that said the blur doesn't work all the time and the autofocus tends to hunt when there are multiple people or objects in the frame now don't get me wrong i'm not trying to diminish what apple has done here cinematic mode is cool and i'm glad it's a new feature personally i was in cape cod this past weekend and i had a blast running around and shooting different scenes with this mode but for apple to say it's for filmmakers rubbed me the wrong way again the feature is great and it's much better than the current offerings from samsung but as of right now cinematic mode is just a glorified portrait video mode and apple needs to develop it further for it to become a reliable tool now that i've covered the basics i wanted to briefly talk about the differences between the two sizes i've been testing both phones for the past week and i've been pretty torn on which device i'm going to keep on the one hand the iphone 13 pro is lighter smaller and easier to use one-handed it has a 6.1 inch display and has a much smaller footprint on the other hand the iphone 13 pro max has a bigger 6.7 inch display much better battery life and slightly better speakers speaking of speakers both the iphone 13 pro and the pro max on the speakers are significantly better than last year's iphones the audio produced is fuller with more detail on the high end and the speakers get louder but the iphone 13 pro max produces fuller audio compared to the regular 13 pro i just figured i mentioned this anyways as a result the tech enthusiast inside me wants the iphone 13 pro max but i really wish the size wasn't as large if for it up to me i would want a phone in between the iphone 13 pro and the iphone 13 pro max so after a week of testing i've decided to go with larger 13 pro max as much as i've enjoyed my time and experience with the regular 13 pro i can't ignore its obvious shortcomings still this won't be the case for everyone the iphone 13 pro still has some of the greatest battery life some great speakers and the same cameras and it's smaller which will be a pro for a lot of people which one is for you depends on your priorities if you care about the absolute maximum performance in both battery life and display then the iphone 13 pro max is the phone for you but if you don't need the insane battery life and want a smaller iphone with the highest end features then the iphone 13 pro makes more sense and that brings us back to the final question should you upgrade to the iphone 13 pro series to be honest if you're coming from an iphone 12 or 12 pro there isn't a whole lot here to make the upgrade worth it unless you need the bleeding edge on an iphone then i'd personally wait for the iphone 14. yes the new 120hz display is great and finally iphones compete with android offerings but if you really don't care then the cinematic mode and updated cameras shouldn't persuade you otherwise but if you're coming from an older iphone such as an iphone 10 or even an iphone 11 series then the upgrade here is a lot more tempting the cameras are much better the battery life is incredible and the new screens are bright and smooth if you're coming from an older iphone then you will definitely notice a difference again this is why for me the iphone 13 pro series feels like what the iphone 12 pro series should have been last year so i'm gonna throw the question over to you guys what do you guys think about the iphone 13 pro and pro max do you think it's worth the upgrade why or why not just let me know down below alright guys well this is actually going to be my last video here at android authority i've just decided that moving away from tech is going to be the best for me as of right now i've really enjoyed getting to know this community and you guys and working with the great folks that work here at authority media if you want to keep up with me you can find me any and all places on social media and i'm still going to produce some videos over on my personal channel if you want to follow there anyways that's going to wrap it up i'm luke pock with android authority and i'll catch you over on the internet youwe've all seen it a flashy new iphone that apple claims is its greatest iphone yet and with the recent release of the new iphone 13 pro series i was pretty curious as to what hidden tricks apple had up its sleeve but as i got around to using these devices i'm not so sure what latest and greatest innovations apple was referring to to me both the iphone 13 pro and the 13 pro max feel like what the iphone 12 pro series should have been last year with that in mind i'm luke pock with android authority and let's talk about whether or not the iphone 13 pro series is worth the upgrade right off the bat there isn't a whole lot of difference design wise from the iphone 12 pro series the square design is still here they're still a notch and the phone is still incredibly thick admittedly apple did reduce the size of the notch by about 20 percent but in the day to day you're not really going to notice that in order to make this light change apple moved the speaker from the middle of the notch to the very top of the device it's a small change but a change nonetheless no the most noticeable difference here is the larger camera module and the new 120hz display let's talk about that display first while there are not many upgrades over last year's model the 120 hertz pro motion panel is a welcome addition still it's difficult to get excited about a feature that android devices have had for literal years that said apple's implementation of the feature here is fairly polished and using a 120 hertz screen in tandem with ios's already fluid animations makes for one of the smoothest experiences on a smartphone that i've ever had in fact my first reaction to booting up the phone was just pure surprise and apart from the ipad pro i had never seen ios running on 120hz display now it should be noted that as of right now apple has not given out any documentation for third-party apps to make use of this feature which might affect battery life in the future according to apple this is a bug and it's working on enabling third-party support in a future update but the whole thing feels a little bit suspect to me even when apple enables support it's going to take a little bit of time for developers to catch up to the new standard and as a result on some web pages and apps there are some strange graphical artifacts that occur it's fine for the most part but again we're going to have to wait for apple for an update that aside the 120 hertz screen is not the only addition to the iphone display in fact these new displays are much much brighter than the iphone 12 pro series the iphone 13 pro and 13 pro max can hit a thousand nits of typical peak brightness versus the iphone 12 pro and pro max's 800 nits on paper this doesn't seem like a significant difference but in real life it's very noticeable and lastly something that i haven't seen anyone else mention is that these displays don't seem to suffer from the same color shifting or green tint that previous iphones have dealt with in fact compared to my iphone 12 pro max the colors on the 13 pro series have no tint at all from there let's talk battery life both the iphone 13 pro and pro max have some of the greatest battery life performance that i've ever seen but there is a significant difference between the two on the iphone 13 pro max i consistently averaged about 9 to 10 to sometimes even 11 hours of screen on time which is honestly insane on the other hand with the 13 pro i only averaged around 6 to 8 hours of screen on time don't get me wrong performance on the regular 13 pro is still really good but the 13 pro max shines when it comes to battery life still apple is sticking with the outdated lightning connector and i would have liked to see usbc this year that might change in the coming years with a new eu law that forces manufacturers to adopt the usb-c standard but whether or not that will trickle down to the us markets remains to be seen something that doesn't remain to be seen is performance okay terrible transition aside the new a15 bionic chip is really fast this comes as no surprise considering that the iphone performance has been very good in the past few years i'll put up some benchmarks for you all but the short of it is that this processor is only slightly faster than the a14 bionic that said we're starting to reach a point where the processor gains year over year matter less and less yes this phone can and will handle any top tier aaa title on ios and yes there is a five core gpu instead of a four core one but again the performance gains here aren't anything to write home about the big question you have to ask yourself is will the pro series last a few years given apple's great track record for software support the simple answer is yes i expect the a15 bionic chip to be relevant for at least a few years and especially considering how well optimized ios is i don't expect any major issues in performance in the years to come as expected my experience with the devices were more than enjoyable apart from some graphical glitches due to the new 120hz panel i didn't come across any lag or stuttering again performance on the iphone 13 pro series is top notch hanging easily with the latest offerings from samsung and oneplus i'm not going to go too in depth here but aside from the pro motion display the only other big upgrade in these new phones is the camera system so this year the iphone 13 pro and pro max ship with a triple 12 megapixel lens system this consists of a made wide lens a 77 millimeter telephoto lens and an ultra wide lens capable of capturing 120 degrees field of view the main sensor now features a lens with an aperture of f 1.5 over the 12 pro max's f 1.7 in theory this change should make for better low light images and i'm happy to report that low light images are indeed sharper and brighter it also means that the natural depth of field on this lens will be a bit more shallow that said in the day to day i didn't really recognize a huge bump over last year's iphone 12 pro max images from the main lens are still just as sharp producing good color representation and contrast in fact comparing the two side by side proved to be a pretty futile experiment in full lit scenarios apple did say that there is a new autofocus system in the ultra wide camera that should allow for better light gathering i'm not entirely sure how this plays into photos but i can say that the ultra wide camera is wicked sharp in almost every image i was impressed with the sharpness and detail in each photo in most instances it's just as sharp as the main sensor and beats out the iphone 12 pro max as ultra wide in most scenarios also apple added a new macro mode to the iphone 13 pro series this new mode makes use of the ultra wide camera and produces some pretty impressive results that said i would have liked to see an option to select or lock macro mode because as of right now the macro mode will automatically kick in when you get super close to a subject regardless of what lens you're on unfortunately this limits your ability to get close with even the main sensor because it will auto switch to the ultra wide it's not a big issue but something i hope apple resolves in the near future the telephoto lens is now a three times optical zoom instead of last year's 2.5 again just like last year images produced are good and match the other two cameras in terms of sharpness and color accuracy there isn't a whole lot to say about this lens other than it's now easier to get close to far away subjects now on all three of these lenses hdr is pretty great apple stated in its keynote that the iphone 13 series would ship with a new hdr algorithm that should make for more natural looking smart hdr images for the most part it's hard to tell the difference but i did recognize that most hdr images don't lift the shadows as much as the 12 pro series did that said there does seem to be a bug with the hdr and in a fair amount of scenarios i had to tap the screen to get hdr to kick in i'll put up a video clip showcasing this but it doesn't happen every time but it's still something to be made aware of and i'm hoping apple will fix this in the near future lastly let's talk about the new cinematic mode i'll be upfront with you all i have a few issues with this new feature at face value the new mode lets user shoot video that feels more like it was shot on a dslr cinematic mode creates a fake shallow depth of field that is pretty impressive in certain situations essentially this new mode uses the larger sensor size of the cameras to track subjects or objects within the frame and blur out the background i'll be honest it's a pretty cool feature but it doesn't work all the time and it doesn't work reliably at the moment and that's where i have the biggest problem in apple's marketing it was pushing this cinematic mode to mobile filmmakers but the issue here is that apple gives you no control over the parameters of this new feature you're locked at shooting in 1080p at 30fps if this truly was aimed at filmmakers apple would have enabled an option for different frame rates and resolutions now i'm not sure if there are some sort of hardware limitations at play here or what but again the absence of some control means that this new feature feels more like a cool party trick rather than a reliable tool in the day-to-day videos can and will look pretty cool the autofocus system is pretty good when it works and the depth of field effect is pleasing to the eye that said the blur doesn't work all the time and the autofocus tends to hunt when there are multiple people or objects in the frame now don't get me wrong i'm not trying to diminish what apple has done here cinematic mode is cool and i'm glad it's a new feature personally i was in cape cod this past weekend and i had a blast running around and shooting different scenes with this mode but for apple to say it's for filmmakers rubbed me the wrong way again the feature is great and it's much better than the current offerings from samsung but as of right now cinematic mode is just a glorified portrait video mode and apple needs to develop it further for it to become a reliable tool now that i've covered the basics i wanted to briefly talk about the differences between the two sizes i've been testing both phones for the past week and i've been pretty torn on which device i'm going to keep on the one hand the iphone 13 pro is lighter smaller and easier to use one-handed it has a 6.1 inch display and has a much smaller footprint on the other hand the iphone 13 pro max has a bigger 6.7 inch display much better battery life and slightly better speakers speaking of speakers both the iphone 13 pro and the pro max on the speakers are significantly better than last year's iphones the audio produced is fuller with more detail on the high end and the speakers get louder but the iphone 13 pro max produces fuller audio compared to the regular 13 pro i just figured i mentioned this anyways as a result the tech enthusiast inside me wants the iphone 13 pro max but i really wish the size wasn't as large if for it up to me i would want a phone in between the iphone 13 pro and the iphone 13 pro max so after a week of testing i've decided to go with larger 13 pro max as much as i've enjoyed my time and experience with the regular 13 pro i can't ignore its obvious shortcomings still this won't be the case for everyone the iphone 13 pro still has some of the greatest battery life some great speakers and the same cameras and it's smaller which will be a pro for a lot of people which one is for you depends on your priorities if you care about the absolute maximum performance in both battery life and display then the iphone 13 pro max is the phone for you but if you don't need the insane battery life and want a smaller iphone with the highest end features then the iphone 13 pro makes more sense and that brings us back to the final question should you upgrade to the iphone 13 pro series to be honest if you're coming from an iphone 12 or 12 pro there isn't a whole lot here to make the upgrade worth it unless you need the bleeding edge on an iphone then i'd personally wait for the iphone 14. yes the new 120hz display is great and finally iphones compete with android offerings but if you really don't care then the cinematic mode and updated cameras shouldn't persuade you otherwise but if you're coming from an older iphone such as an iphone 10 or even an iphone 11 series then the upgrade here is a lot more tempting the cameras are much better the battery life is incredible and the new screens are bright and smooth if you're coming from an older iphone then you will definitely notice a difference again this is why for me the iphone 13 pro series feels like what the iphone 12 pro series should have been last year so i'm gonna throw the question over to you guys what do you guys think about the iphone 13 pro and pro max do you think it's worth the upgrade why or why not just let me know down below alright guys well this is actually going to be my last video here at android authority i've just decided that moving away from tech is going to be the best for me as of right now i've really enjoyed getting to know this community and you guys and working with the great folks that work here at authority media if you want to keep up with me you can find me any and all places on social media and i'm still going to produce some videos over on my personal channel if you want to follow there anyways that's going to wrap it up i'm luke pock with android authority and i'll catch you over on the internet you\n"