I upgraded from a 14 Pro Max to a 15 Pro Max, and before I send my 14 Pro Max back, I've been taking comparison pictures. Tonight before the moon rose I took some milky way shots.
First, the 14 Pro Max:
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Then the 15 Pro Max:
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Here are 1:1 pixel crops, centered on M8, the Lagoon Nebula, 14PM on the left, 15PM on the right:
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Good heavens!
I took the images on a tripod in 30 sec. night mode, with the 24mm cameras, in ProRAW, and converted to jpg using the Preview app on the Mac, no adjusting of brightness, contrast, etc. Here are the info screens for the images:
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Taken in Bonny Doon, California.
(For some reason, the 14PM is trying to identify the bushes in the foreground, but the 15PM isn't.)
Interesting that the 15PM shows more stars but uses a lower ISO. It says 10 sec exposure but apparently in night mode it takes three 10 sec exposures and stacks them for a total of 30 sec.
The cameras are supposed to be the same sensor size, etc. Apple has clearly made huge advances in image processing on night mode, or could it be the sensor is actually different too?
I had seen Shayne Mostyn's YouTube video testing night mode, that the 15PM was better than the 14PM, but wasn't expecting it to be so, so, much better than the 14PM.
His video here:
I can't wait to take the phone to a really dark site with no moon.