Vlogging on the iPhone 13 Pro？ ｜ A Day in Van Life

This week I'm trying something kind of different. Apple sent me the new iPhone 13 Pro to review, and I've been roaming around the North Cascades in Washington seeing what this phone can do. Some of you have asked about my camera setup, and while I do use my Canon R5 and lenses for most landscape scenes, at least half of what you see here on my YouTube channel is shot with my iPhone. So I thought it would be fun to film a review of this phone out here on the road and share my overall thoughts from a photographer's perspective. This isn't a deep dive on technical specs. Mostly, I just want to show you what this phone can do from a visual standpoint. Like they say, the best camera is the one you have with you. I'm driving on the North Cascades Highway right now, and the fall colors are so beautiful. It's pretty rainy out, but yeah, so I'm getting this shot by holding out my right hand, holding the iPhone, and it's pretty stable, I think. I guess we'll find out. But yeah, this is a front-facing camera, so quality seems pretty good. And I have no idea how the audio will sound, but especially with the road noise and the rain, but I guess we'll find out together. Wow, this is so cool. Do you know what kind of salmon these are? So these are salmon, and they're coming upstream to spawn, and they've lived their whole lives out at sea. How cool is that? This view is incredible. So this is cinematic mode, and you can see it's blurring the background here the way a prime lens would blur the background, which is pretty incredible for an iPhone. It's pretty awesome to be able to just take a phone up into the mountains and get this quality video. But check out this view. Made it up to the top. This view is ridiculous. Oh, that was super crooked. And this is cinematic mode, so you can see there's a little bit of blur in the background here, which is nice. And yeah, it was a little bit of a slog up that last bit, but now it's getting chilly, so put on all the layers. And yeah, overall, this phone is pretty spectacular. There's a few different talking points I want to go over, stuff that, you know, I've been using it for about two weeks now, and stuff I want to mention that I can't remember up here on the mountaintop. Plus, it's about to get dark soon, so we should probably hike down because we got four, three and a half or four miles, we're not sure, to get back down to the vehicles. Gonna have to get a move on, but I will talk to you about the phone when I'm back at the van. All right, so it's 7 30 and it's already basically pretty much night time. And you can also use your iPhone as a headlamp. Photography slash hiking multi-tool. We are back in the van and I'm filming this on the iPhone 13 Pro. Okay, so I've had this phone for about two weeks now, and there are a couple of things that have really stood out to me. First is the battery life. I've noticed that I'm reaching for my cord way less often than I have in the past. And in some instances, I've even gone a whole day without having to charge my phone at all. So being on the road, or if you live a mobile lifestyle or any lifestyle really, just not having to charge your phone as often is amazing. It's definitely a nice upgrade. Second, the one terabyte storage option is a game changer. That's what this phone is. And I was able to film this entire vlog without having to stop and offload or delete files or anything like that, which really allowed me to stay in the creative mindset throughout the entire filming process. And what's also nice is you can go through and review each individual clip. You can scrub through, you can trim, you can delete before you drop those files over into your editing timeline. And the fact that you can do that natively on the phone while filming, I could just see how this would save me so much time in the editing process moving forward. Also, stabilization is better. Low light capture is better. These cameras actually have a wider aperture than the iPhone Pro 12, which means less noise overall. That clip that I just showed you where I was walking through the dark without a headlamp, but filming it, you could see how dark it was. And when I took this photo, this was taken three seconds, handheld, no tripod, and you can still see some light in there, which is remarkable for a mobile device. With the Pro, the cinematic macro and 77 millimeter modes have been really fun to experiment with. It uses digital blur. So there are some instances where you can see that it's not perfect if you zoom in, but it's still really incredible technology. And it's a small price to pay when you consider how much you would have to spend and invest into a camera and the lenses and all of the things. And also how heavy that stuff is. Like when I lug my camera and lenses up onto a mountaintop. Oh, I mean, sometimes it gets as heavy as 12 pounds. The iPhone obviously weighs a fraction of that and it costs less and it's multifunctional. You know, you use your phone for so many things and it just so happens to be an excellent vlogging camera. That being said, if you already have the iPhone 11 or 12 or any of the Pro models, you already have an incredible device in your pocket. I use the iPhone 12 Pro for the past year. I absolutely loved it. In fact, I use it to film at least 50% of what you've seen on this channel, like I said earlier. So there's no need to upgrade. But if you are looking for something that really kicks it up a notch and that can kind of take your content to the next level without investing in all of that camera gear, this is it. Let me know if you guys like this video and if you'd like to see more gear based reviews in the future. I had a lot of fun filming this one with Nathaniel Wise, who is also an outdoor adventure photographer. If you aren't following him already, definitely go check out his channel. Also, I'm leaving for Europe in a couple of days. I'm super excited. I'll be over there for about three weeks with some friends and I'll be going to Italy and Switzerland for sure. And potentially France and Austria. Not totally sure yet. But if like to see some mountain content, fall colors, really good food and just general whatever we get up to in Europe, subscribe. And if not, don't worry about it. And also like and comment this video if you want to. But either way, I appreciate you being here. Thank you. And I'll see you guys next time. Should you get me coming out of the toilet?