Like many of you, I preordered and received an iPhone 13pro last week. I personally am coming from an iPhone 11pro and have developed the habit of upgrading each other year as it is in my opinion the sweet spot to be able to keep up with the camera improvements without having to spend almost 2k CAD each year.

As a professional photographer, my main point of interest when upgrading is the cameras. Coming from an 11pro, I became concerned during the apple event that shooting at 2x with the 13pro might be a problem or at least that the sacrifice in picture resolution might be a dealbreaker for me, as it is my most frequently used "focal length" on the 11pro.

As most of you know, the focal lengths on the 11pro were 0.5x, 1x, and 2x. Apple decided to change that to 0.5x, 1x and 3x for the 13pro. This means that photographs shot anywhere between 1.1x and 2.9x on the 13pro are in fact cropped-in and resized shots coming from the 1x lens. Thus, shots in this range suffer from an unavoidable lower resolution/ definition.
I was really hoping that the upgrade in sensor size and pixel size on the 13pro would make up for this "cropping in" when shooting in between 1x and 3x, but as you will see with my test results, this isn't quite the case.. Even more surprising to me is that the iPhone 11pro beat the 13pro in the 1x photograph test.

So now, testing resolution output at various « zoom » levels.

For my tests, I used an iPhone 11pro and a 13pro. Both phones are on iOS 15, "photographic styles" turned off on the 13pro. Both phones are shooting in .HEIC. All of the photographs were taken without tapping to focus. I let the phones expose and focus by themselves. Focal lengths were selected by clicking the preset shortcuts directly (0.5x, 1x, 2x, etc) when possible rather than scrubbing the zoom wheel. Shots were taken at 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 2.7x, 3x and 4x. I mounted the phones on a flat surface, using a painters tape "stencil" to mark an outline around the phones, making sure both phones would be shooting from the same physical location.

Here are my results. Below is a wetransfer link containing all of the raw, uncropped files including behind the scenes images of my testing setup.
https://we.tl/t-TdgqcMJDVr

Here is an imgur gallery for easier viewing of the comparative results only https://imgur.com/a/ybgCn8y

In conclusion, this testing allowed me to determine that the iPhone 13pro was better than the 11pro at 0.5x and 3x+ specifically. iPhone 11pro was superior from 1x to 2.9x. I also found that the 3x and 4x shots coming from the 11pro (which remember, are actually shots from the 2x lens) were surprisingly crisp. Much crisper than the 2x and 2.7x coming out of the 13pro. If shooting at 3x+ is your priority, then I would definitely upgrade to a 13pro. If not, my personal recommendation would be to probably reconsider getting a 13pro.

I hope this can help some of you to decide wether upgrading to a 13pro is worth it!

EDIT:

Someone commented this link which is more evidence than I need and which is also totally insane because the initial purpose of my test was to see how the 13pro would fare in mid range zooms. But looks like it actually is slightly worse at 1x too.. https://m.gsmarena.com/piccmp.php3?idType=4&idPhone1=9847&idPhone2=11089&idPhone3=11089

Some highlights:

https://i.imgur.com/IrWEuRh.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/krzRbMk.jpg

I have two phones now. Work (iPhone 13 128gb) and my personal (iPhone 11 Pro). I've had my 11 Pro since release and have always found it to remain very impressive!

I expected the iPhone 13 (normal) to impress me more than it has - my iPhone 11 Pro seems super competitive overall (speed, cameras, etc). Only major thing I would say is the better life is quite improved on my iPhone 13.

What features am I maybe missing or glossing over where the 13 is quite superior? Or.. maybe where (for some reason) the iPhone 11 Pro is superior?