In a report published Oct. 14, Notebookcheck described the iPhone 18 Pro’s daylight video as particularly sharp at 1x and 4x, with good but slightly oversaturated color. The test used 4K at 30 frames per second with HDR enabled; separate night and cinematic clips show different conditions and workflows, not one shared benchmark.
What Notebookcheck reported from daylight video
Notebookcheck said it filmed in daylight while moving and changing subjects quickly, testing zoom settings of 0.6x, 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x. It singled out the 1x and 4x footage as especially sharp and described both settings as free of digital zoom. Its overall color assessment was positive, with a slight oversaturation.
The report also described color as consistent across lenses and jolts during lens changes as minimal. Those are qualitative observations, not a numerical stabilization score. Notebookcheck mentions comparing the main camera with a current Oppo flagship, but does not identify the Oppo model or report its results in the account. Read Notebookcheck’s report.
A separate iPhone 18 Pro Max night sample
Dan Vineberg’s Paris night walk is a different kind of example: it was filmed with an iPhone 18 Pro Max, and Vineberg says he did not color-grade it. The video demonstrates zoom up to 24x. Bright lights produce visible streaks and flare, while the supplied account notes some autofocus difficulty at extreme zoom. That makes it useful for seeing a creator’s real-world night footage, not for extending Notebookcheck’s daylight findings to another model or test condition.
Creator grading changes the look
Kirktwo’s iPhone 18 Pro Max film uses the Blackmagic Camera App and, according to the creator’s description, Apple Log 2 and ProRes Raw; the footage was color-graded with an Apple Log LUT and Powergrade. See Kirktwo’s film. Yantastic’s iPhone 18 Pro film was shot in Apple Log over 48 hours in Paris and graded in DaVinci Resolve. See Yantastic’s film.
Apple Log is a capture profile used in workflows that allow color adjustment in post-production. These polished, graded films show what creators made with those workflows; their finished color is not a direct sample of unedited default-camera output.
