Can The iPhone Really Replace My Fuji X100VI?!

0:00 One of these photos was shot on my Fuji X106 camera and the other one on my iPhone 18 Pro. Can you tell which is which? So, you're probably familiar with this camera, the Fuji X106, and you're probably buying it because you want those cool film recipes that you've seen on the internet that this camera can get you. Well, with the new iPhone 18, apparently you can get really similar film looks just using this phone. So, I want to see if that's the case and if it's worth picking up this $2,000 camera or if I can just do all of this on the phone in my pocket. So, the Fuji X106 with these film recipes is doing its best to emulate film and the iPhone with its photographic styles is also trying to

0:45 emulate film. So, we're putting these two emulators against each other, not against film, so just keep that in mind. On the Fuji, I set this camera up to be shooting a Kodak Gold film recipe [music] and I'll leave those settings in the description. The recipes, if you can call them that on the iPhone, are a little bit different. I've set this to the Gold photographic style cuz this is like the closest I can get it to the Kodak Gold look, added the film texture, and it's sitting around like 85, and I've turned on the grain. At first glance, these images look shockingly pretty close. And if these weren't side by side labeled, I don't know if I could tell you which one was from which camera. I mean, maybe in some of these examples, but not in all of them. There's some instances where I

1:31 prefer the colors coming out of the Fuji camera and there's other instances where I actually think I prefer the iPhone. [music] There's a few shots here where I actually missed focus on the Fuji. I don't think that's going to happen on the iPhone. There's sometimes where the images aren't exposed exactly the same, but I know I could just change that in the settings afterwards on the iPhone. When you're setting up your phone to use the photographic styles, you need to make sure that your photos are in HEIF. In the settings, this is called high efficiency. If you do most compatible, that's shooting in [music] JPEG and you can't change these photographic styles afterwards. The Fuji has a 35 mm equivalent lens, so I switched the iPhone into the 1.5x camera, which is about 35 mm to match the Fuji. I can see that both of these cameras are adding grain. I don't know a lot about

2:16 grain, I'm no expert. I've just found it removes the digital edge. The grain on the iPhone photos looks more heavy-handed, if you ask me. It's unfortunate there isn't a slider within that texture tab, cuz I'd love to change the size and the amount that you get. Maybe the reason Apple made this such an intense grain is [music] maybe when you post these on social media, everything gets compressed and maybe the grain will look a little bit more normal. I don't know. It's cool that it's there. I wish I could dial it down maybe 25 or 50%. When I get these photos on the computer, I will say they both look better than they do while I was out there shooting. I really like these blues on the Fuji, but I could probably just change that in the photographic styles on the iPhone to get these to match. Resolution-wise, the

3:02 iPhone actually looks pretty good and I'm viewing these pretty large. I feel like I've got the settings and the tones and the colors on these cameras pretty close, at least off the back of the screens, but the Fuji just seems to have less contrast. And maybe that's cuz I have a little bit more control over the contrast within the Fuji menus, but the images just look softer, almost like there's a bloom filter on here, even though there isn't. I don't know how else to describe it other than they just look like creamier and less contrasty. So, under this new texture tab, I'm trying to figure out what the difference is between soft skin, glow, and film. The film look is a lot of different things. In this case, I think the film tab is just adding halation. This red glow around the highlights. When I'm looking at this on my phone and I'm increasing and decreasing the film

3:48 slider, that seems to be the only thing affected. I like the look of halation. However, in some of these examples, I do find it a little bit distracting. Maybe that's just because I'm comparing these side to side, but if I were to post these online, and because I've got control over them after the fact, I'd probably dial the halation back just a little bit. The only place that I actually see the smooth skin effect [music] actually doing its thing is on skin. It softens out and smooths faces and pores. I don't know if 100% is the way to go, but it's definitely doing something to these images. It's also pretty difficult to get to the intensity slider at the bottom of this menu. It was kind of hard to see while I was shooting what this glow effect was doing, but now, while I'm editing and looking at these photos closer, I can see that glow is reducing the contrast on the image and adding kind of what a bloom filter would do. It also might be

4:35 removing some of the saturation in the image, and the white seemed to be brightening up the more I turn up the intensity. I might actually prefer this glow to the film look, and I wish I could actually have both these turned on at the same time instead of just one or the other. By now, you're probably saying, "What in the world is this colorful case that he's got on his iPhone?" This is the Ostand Q3 rugged case from Torras. It's actually one of the most rugged cases that can actually survive almost anything you put it through. And if you watched any of my previous videos, you may notice that I've actually been using one of Torras's cases on my previous phone. It's made of thick hard plastic with four air cushions that reinforce impact before it even reaches your phone. You get actual protection without carrying around a chunky case. When you drop your phone, the corners flex and rebound instead of passing that impact straight to your phone. Torras ran this

5:22 through a 12-ft drop protection test, and the results came out clean. In your hand, this is one of the grippiest cases that Torras has ever made. The back feels like very fine sandpaper, and the sides have the same non-slip texture. So, it sits in your hand, and it's not slick how you would expect a case like this to feel. It's got clean minimal design and very little branding, but enough protection that I'm not worried about my phone. Now, the best part is this circle on the back, the Ostand. The Ostand does a couple different things. You can prop your phone up at whatever angle you need instead of just one fixed position. It's magnetic and strong enough to hold a wallet or power bank on the back without even budging. You can also hook the phone onto whatever you want so that your hands free or you can use this as something extra to grip onto like I did the other day when I was hanging off the side of a boat whale watching. Overall, it's one of the most practical and protective cases that I've ever used. Rugged where it needs to be and

6:08 doesn't add a ton of bulk. If you're interested in picking up one of these cases, I'll leave a link in the description below. Plus, it comes in a couple different colors to match whatever phone color you've got. Thank you Torres. Let's get back to the cameras. In general, these photos look to be exposed pretty similarly. However, there was an example here where I shot a photo in really poor light and I can see the iPhone's HDR computational photography kick in and I'm far better exposed on the iPhone photo. Mhm, I should have changed the white balance on those. Speaking of that, it's interesting I can change like the texture and the tones in all of this, but I can't change the white balance on the iPhone. I mean, I guess that kind of makes sense. I'm not shooting a raw photo, but I still have control over some of the parts of the image. >> [music] >> Kind of weird.

6:54 >> [music] >> There's some instances here where the depth of field looks pretty accurate or at least similar between the two cameras. Like when a subject's really close to the camera and the background's far away, these images look fairly similar. But with this like example of the flowers, the Fuji photo definitely has some depth of field and for some reason the iPhone one I mean, where'd that depth of field go? The whole background is in focus. Maybe the phone switched over into macro mode. I don't think that's the case, but the Fuji photo looks far more pleasing in this example. >> [music] >> It's actually pretty nice having a chunky hand grip, a thumb grip, an eyepiece, and all these tactile controls to help get the image and the

7:40 composition that I'm looking for. It's also difficult to compete with this huge touchscreen on the iPhone. It's just not as tactile. Now, the interesting thing about film and even shooting on cameras like this Fuji camera is there's no in-camera over-sharpening like the iPhone likes to do. I'd love to see the film mode on the iPhone be a lot closer to the Moment Pro Camera apps natural processing [music] mode. This film mode is just adding halation and grain on top of the image where natural processing removes the over-sharpening and computational effects and you get a more natural-looking photo. Images don't look perfectly exposed and I think they look far less iPhone-y and a lot closer to the film look that I think I'm trying to go for. Now, where do we land on this? Well, if you're just searching for images that look like the photos that

8:25 we've been taking and you don't want to drop another 2,000 bucks on a camera and you just want to use the one that's in your iPhone, well, it's a no-brainer. Just go with the iPhone. It's also quite a bit quicker to just snap the photo on your phone and post it to social media or drop it into a group chat versus connecting the camera to an app, transferring them over to your phone, and doing it that way. Now, if the process of gathering these photos is maybe more important to you than the actual finished images, I'd say an actual camera is probably the way to go. Having an eyepiece, a grip, tactile buttons, and a more robust piece of metal in your hand is unmatched. When I take both of these cameras out to shoot, I find that the images that I get are not that different, but the process of getting those images on the camera is far more satisfying. Additionally, I find that I usually get stronger images when I'm [music] just using a camera and

9:11 I think that's partially because of the limitations. Looking at these images side-by-side, they look really, really close. And remember, we're looking at two emulators trying to emulate film and we're not actually looking at film. If you want the most accurate film look, buy a film camera and pick up some film. I love that this feature is built into the iPhone and I do hope that this transfers to the older iPhone models like the 17 and the 16 cuz I think it's just a software thing. This is going to be great for me for Instagram stories and for quick sharing. However, when I'm going out to shoot something for fun or when I'm on vacation, I'm still going to be bringing my Fuji camera. I really enjoy the experience of making photos with something tactile like this [music] camera. Now, if you do want something more tactile, I know there's a couple companies out there that make these grips that fit onto the back of your iPhone. I've used them before. It's not quite the same as holding a camera, but

9:58 it's worth giving that a try to see if that suits you and the way you like to shoot. This video was a ton of fun to make and if you enjoyed it or if you didn't, just let me know in the comments below. I read all of the comments and do my very best to respond to all of them. If you enjoyed this video, go check some of the other ones out on my channel. I just made a video about my first 500 photos that I took on the iPhone 18 Pro. If you like that, go watch another and maybe after that consider subscribing. Anyways, my name is Davey. Thanks for letting me spill the gravy and we'll see you in the next one.