Shooting with the iPhone 12 Pro above Emerald Bay in Lake Tahoe, California.
James Martin/CNET
For photographers, almost every new iPhone has a little something special, and one of Apple‘s newest devices, the iPhone 12 Pro, is no exception. It brings a few seemingly simple, but entirely effective, upgrades that I think shutterbugs are going to love.
This week, I took the iPhone 12 Pro on a short trip to a beautiful place, Lake Tahoe, and found that the Night Mode software and ultrawide lens upgrades are pretty exciting. Let’s dive into some of these updates that make the iPhone so great and gauge how it compares with Apple’s previous phone, the iPhone 11 Pro.
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Though Apple’s most recent family of iPhones — the iPhone 12, Pro, Pro Max and Mini — deliver a wild amount of camera tech, it’s spread across all four models. How much you want to pay will determine what kind of camera system you’ll get.
The iPhone 12 Pro has a triple-lens rear camera setup that’s common on most current high-end phones, and it adds a depth-sensing imaging technology called lidar (it’s on the Pro Max as well).
Lidar, which stands for light detection and ranging, uses lasers to survey the environment you’re shooting. By measuring how long it takes for light to bounce off objects and come back, the sensor creates a field of points that map out distances. It’s not too different from how Apple’s Face ID works.
The technology promises to help capture image data in low-light situations by better reading the landscape and augmenting the visual data from the camera lenses. Apple says lidar also will improve low-light shots by allowing the camera to focus up to six times faster in darker conditions.
I noticed a huge difference from the improved focusing. It happened so fast and accurately while I was shooting, I quickly learned not to even worry about whether the shot was going to turn out well.
Sunrise at Emerald Bay on Lake Tahoe, shot on the iPhone 12 Pro with the telephoto lens at 7:07.
James Martin/CNET
As with many of Apple’s incremental upgrades over the past few years, lidar takes the iPhone another step closer to having shooting abilities comparable to those of a high-end professional DSLR. Fast focus just makes it feel like a “real” camera setup. And for sure, the iPhone 12 Pro is a very real camera setup. I loved using the new focus feature and the ultrawide Night Mode — they made for excellent and instantaneous in-focus photos.
Software also makes a big difference. Though the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro have the same selfie, wide and ultrawide cameras, the real photographic monster will be the coming iPhone 12 Pro Max with ProRaw enabled.
The iPhone 12 Pro’s standard 26mm lens, dubbed wide, has now been upgraded from an f/1.8 to a wider f/1.6 aperture. That’ll mean marginally better low-light performance on the same 12-megapixel sensor as the previous iPhone. Then the new seven-element lens, which Apple says allows 27% more light into the sensor, has been shown to dramatically improve the clarity and sharpness around a picture’s edges. Across my photos taken with the wide lens, there’s a shockingly low amount of noise in the shadows, even in the smallest of details.
In these images shot with the wide lens, notice how the underwater rocks in the foreground are properly exposed and show virtually no noise, but at the same time we still haven’t lost any detail in the bright sky and the distant mountain range.
Kayakers paddle out to Bonsai Rock on Lake Tahoe’s eastern shore in Nevada, shot on the iPhone 12 Pro with the new f/1.6 wide (26mm) lens.
James Martin/CNET
In the below image, shot in the clear emerald waters of Sand Harbor along Lake Tahoe’s eastern shore in Nevada, the f/1.6 wide (26mm) lens captures varied tones, ranging from the shadows of the rocks underwater to the bright white splash of the paddle and the bright yellow kayak.
The clear emerald waters of Sand Harbor on Lake Tahoe’s eastern shore in Nevada, shot on the iPhone 12 Pro with the new f/1.6 wide (26mm) lens.
James Martin/CNET
Low-light photos with Night Mode
Night mode is a low-light assist capture feature that’s now available on the selfie, wide and ultrawide iPhone 12 Pro lenses, (on previous iPhones it was only on the standard wide lens). The feature will activate automatically when the camera detects a dark scene. When it’s on, the Night Mode icon at the top of the display turns yellow.
Overall, Night Mode is going to be one of the most aggressively awesome new features on iPhones, because it’s now available on every camera in the iPhone 12 line.
In default mode the camera will decide how long of a capture to make, but you can manually adjust the Night Mode exposure time by tapping the Night Mode icon and using the slider above the shutter button to choose a longer duration. Choosing Max will extend the capture time to its longest duration, thus letting in more light to the darker scene. For all of these images, I selected the maximum of 30 seconds.
For really the most stellar results, stabilize your phone by setting it on a surface or, even better, a tripod. I used a tripod to shoot these images.
Night Mode images on the iPhone 12 Pro are nothing short of amazing. I found the sweet spot for taking night photos to be during the 20- to 40-minute period of twilight just after sunset or just before sunrise. Photographers call these times the “blue hour,” when the sun is below the horizon and the indirect light is a beautiful soft-glowing blue.
Emerald Bay State Park shot on the iPhone 12 Pro with a 30 second Night Mode exposure using the wide lens at 7:13, one hour after the sun had set.
James Martin/CNET
This image is a 30-second exposure shot using my Peak Design tripod in almost total darkness. The quality is really incredible. I shot one of the images you’ll see below at Sand Point, also along the Nevada shore, on the iPhone 12 Pro using a 30-second Night Mode exposure and the ultrawide lens. It was minutes before 7 p.m. PT, or about 45 minutes after sunset.
For getting the best results using Night Mode, though, you do need some light. As the postsunset light began to fade to the dark of night, even my long exposure Night Mode images began to worsen significantly. I’d say that about an hour after sunset, things weren’t looking very good anymore.
For comparison, here’s a 30-second iPhone 12 Pro Night Mode shot on the left and an iPhone 11 Pro photo without Night Mode on the right. As you can see, the iPhone 11 Pro renders an almost a completely black image, with almost zero detail. Even in the blackest of the iPhone 12 Pro’s tones, there’s hardly any noise visible.
An iPhone 12 Pro 30 second Night Mode exposure on the left, and the iPhone 11 Pro without Night Mode on the right.
James Martin/CNET
In addition to making basic saturation and contrast image edits in Apple’s Photos mobile app, here below, I used the “Long Exposure” feature in the app to blur the choppy waters on the lake. The result is a smooth and milky nighttime image.
Sand Point in Nevada along Lake Tahoe’s east shore, shot on the iPhone 12 Pro with a 30 second Night Mode exposure using the ultrawide lens at 6:57, about 45 minutes after the sun had set. Basic edits were made in the Apple Photos mobile app.
James Martin/CNET
A half hour before sunrise, while it’s still quite dark, the iPhone 12 Pro’s wide lens delivered significant detail in the foreground rocks, the trees on Fannette Island, and the water in Emerald Bay.
James Martin/CNET
The ultrawide lens on the iPhone 12 Pro was used to take this image before sunrise, at 7:03.
James Martin/CNET
Apple’s new Smart HDR 3 and its Deep Fusion processing technology, which are on all four rear cameras and the front-facing camera, are upgrades to the iPhone 12 Pro that feel like a significant part of Apple’s camera success puzzle.
Deep Fusion’s advanced machine learning enables some pretty noticeable pixel-by-pixel manipulation of photos. I noticed enhancements in the ultrafine details of photos and a huge step forward in noise reduction. As you can see below, the shadows of the rocks and trees are crisp and detailed.
With the new “sky segmentation” feature, the tones in the bright California sky are rendered differently from the rest of the shot, giving the image more detail. Though the camera is looking directly toward the sun in an extremely bright scene, the iPhone 12 Pro still manages to balance everything out, and expose the varied tonal regions in a way that renders a real true-to-the-eye image.
The brightest light of all, the sun, doesn’t overpower the exposure or the tones through the rest of the image. The white highlights from the sun are limited to the sun itself, while the forest just below also manages to be properly exposed, with visible detail in the trees.
At the same time, the extreme brightness didn’t wash out the image. The contrast remains solid, with the beautiful blues of the sky, the emerald waters of Lake Tahoe, and the yellow of the Aspens in the foreground all rendered in a way that really reflects what my eye saw.
A beautiful Wednesday morning hike to Secret Cove along Lake Tahoe.
James Martin/CNET
In another image from Secret Cove, we see a really magnificent exposure balance between the bright sky and the reflective sparkle of the sun off the lake. But still we get well-preserved shadow detail with the foreground rocks and the tree trunk.
The emerald waters of Secret Cove in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
James Martin/CNET
Wide angle photos are some of my favorite images to shoot with any camera. Up close and personal, they put the viewer right at the center of the action. Since the ultrawide lens debuted on the iPhone 11 Pro last year, I use it all the time to capture the full scene in front of me, whether it’s taking in a smaller indoor space or capturing wide landscape vistas of the American West. Ultrawide lenses are always great for stunning landscape photography.
This year, Apple had made some pretty great software enhancements to the ultrawide lens that have me loving it even more than I did before. The sharpness issues that plagued iPhone 11 Pro images anywhere outside the center of the frame are now gone with the iPhone 12 Pro software upgrades. Far less distortion and more crisp details from edge to edge really drew me in.
You can see improvements in the below image I took from a lookout above California’s Emerald Bay State Park. The edges of the iPhone 12 Pro photo, on the left, have a significant amount of additional information over the iPhone 11 Pro photo (on the right), and far, far less noise. The iPhone 11 Pro wide image on the right looks extremely muddy and lacks any definition at all.
Emerald Bay State Park in California, shot with the iPhone 12 Pro, left, and last year’s iPhone 11 Pro, right
James Martin/CNET
The new iPhone 12 Pro has identical ultrawide angle hardware to last year’s iPhone 11 and 11 Pro. But upgraded software on both it and the iPhone 12 Pro will now correct the lens distortion that shooting with a wider angle lens can bring. That distortion could lead to warped images at the edges and a loss of sharp detail at the fringes.
The iPhone 12 Pro is rated for underwater, so I jumped into the (cold!) mountain waters of Lake Tahoe. Rated IP68 for water and dust-resistance, it can withstand being submerged to a depth of six meters for 30 minutes. Below, in this ultrawide lens photo taken at Sand Harbor, you can see how well the new software has corrected the distortion.
There’s almost no distortion across the middle third of the image and really great detail from edge to edge. Look closely at the detail in the rocks and the trees. There are fine details without any of the muddiness we saw with the previous ultrawide lens.
It’s only at the far four corners of the image where we start to see some minor warping and softening of the details. In the upper left, you can see the details at the top of the mountain begin to fall just a little bit, losing some of their clarity.
Swimming with the iPhone 12 Pro at Sand Harbor in Lake Tahoe, Nevada.
James Martin/CNET
I took this ultrawide lens kayaking in Lake Tahoe’s crystal clear blue waters off Sand Harbor. Notice the sharp details in the ripple of the waters across the image, and the details in the distant mountains. Only at the bottom left corner can you see some detail lost due to smoothing of the image.
Kayaking Lake Tahoe’s crystal clear blue waters off Sand Harbor.
James Martin/CNET
Here’s another stunningly blue ultrawide lens image taken with the iPhone 12 Pro. I edited the image using the “Long Exposure” feature inside Apple’s Photos app, which smooths the motion of the photo (in this case the waters of the lake) to a silky sheen.
An image taken with the iPhone 12 Pro’s ultrawide lens, with editing done in Apple’s Photos app using the Long Exposure feature.
James Martin/CNET
Video gets better
The iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max can now also use the Night Mode with the time-lapse feature. Using longer interval frames, more light is collected, resulting in dramatically better low-light performance. Unlike Night Mode when shooting a photo, video Night Mode is baked in to the feature and turns on automatically, without the designated icon being shown.
Take a look below at the sun rising over Lake Tahoe from Emerald Bay State Park in California. The dark rocks in the foreground have visible detail, and the bright skies also still have beautiful well-rendered tones. I shot this video in extremely low light about 45 minutes after sunset.
In the time-lapse below, taken during the twilight period more than half an hour after the sun had set, you can see some pretty great detail in the waters of Lake Tahoe in Nevada.
A photographic feast, with more to come
These have been some pretty significant upgrades for photography software on the iPhone 12 Pro. Though there still are a number of other phones that offer much longer zoom ranges, the iPhone 12 Pro remains one of the best phones for taking amazing pictures.
In its increasingly refined camera array, Apple continues to concoct a delectable recipe for photographic success. Rather than a single great bump in megapixels, or a massive sensor boost, this iPhone camera system is really the sum of many parts. A little Deep Fusion here, a faster processor there, some Smart HDR 3, sensor-shift stabilization and just a dash of magic make for a pretty sensational photographic feast.
And just around the corner, we’ll see the iPhone 12 Pro Max monster…
The federal government is ordering the dissolution of TikTok’s Canadian business after a national security review of the Chinese company behind the social media platform, but stopped short of ordering people to stay off the app.
Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced the government’s “wind up” demand Wednesday, saying it is meant to address “risks” related to ByteDance Ltd.’s establishment of TikTok Technology Canada Inc.
“The decision was based on the information and evidence collected over the course of the review and on the advice of Canada’s security and intelligence community and other government partners,” he said in a statement.
The announcement added that the government is not blocking Canadians’ access to the TikTok application or their ability to create content.
However, it urged people to “adopt good cybersecurity practices and assess the possible risks of using social media platforms and applications, including how their information is likely to be protected, managed, used and shared by foreign actors, as well as to be aware of which country’s laws apply.”
Champagne’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment seeking details about what evidence led to the government’s dissolution demand, how long ByteDance has to comply and why the app is not being banned.
A TikTok spokesperson said in a statement that the shutdown of its Canadian offices will mean the loss of hundreds of well-paying local jobs.
“We will challenge this order in court,” the spokesperson said.
“The TikTok platform will remain available for creators to find an audience, explore new interests and for businesses to thrive.”
The federal Liberals ordered a national security review of TikTok in September 2023, but it was not public knowledge until The Canadian Press reported in March that it was investigating the company.
At the time, it said the review was based on the expansion of a business, which it said constituted the establishment of a new Canadian entity. It declined to provide any further details about what expansion it was reviewing.
A government database showed a notification of new business from TikTok in June 2023. It said Network Sense Ventures Ltd. in Toronto and Vancouver would engage in “marketing, advertising, and content/creator development activities in relation to the use of the TikTok app in Canada.”
Even before the review, ByteDance and TikTok were lightning rod for privacy and safety concerns because Chinese national security laws compel organizations in the country to assist with intelligence gathering.
Such concerns led the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a bill in March designed to ban TikTok unless its China-based owner sells its stake in the business.
Champagne’s office has maintained Canada’s review was not related to the U.S. bill, which has yet to pass.
Canada’s review was carried out through the Investment Canada Act, which allows the government to investigate any foreign investment with potential to might harm national security.
While cabinet can make investors sell parts of the business or shares, Champagne has said the act doesn’t allow him to disclose details of the review.
Wednesday’s dissolution order was made in accordance with the act.
The federal government banned TikTok from its mobile devices in February 2023 following the launch of an investigation into the company by federal and provincial privacy commissioners.
— With files from Anja Karadeglija in Ottawa
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
LONDON (AP) — Most people have accumulated a pile of data — selfies, emails, videos and more — on their social media and digital accounts over their lifetimes. What happens to it when we die?
It’s wise to draft a will spelling out who inherits your physical assets after you’re gone, but don’t forget to take care of your digital estate too. Friends and family might treasure files and posts you’ve left behind, but they could get lost in digital purgatory after you pass away unless you take some simple steps.
Here’s how you can prepare your digital life for your survivors:
Apple
The iPhone maker lets you nominate a “ legacy contact ” who can access your Apple account’s data after you die. The company says it’s a secure way to give trusted people access to photos, files and messages. To set it up you’ll need an Apple device with a fairly recent operating system — iPhones and iPads need iOS or iPadOS 15.2 and MacBooks needs macOS Monterey 12.1.
For iPhones, go to settings, tap Sign-in & Security and then Legacy Contact. You can name one or more people, and they don’t need an Apple ID or device.
You’ll have to share an access key with your contact. It can be a digital version sent electronically, or you can print a copy or save it as a screenshot or PDF.
Take note that there are some types of files you won’t be able to pass on — including digital rights-protected music, movies and passwords stored in Apple’s password manager. Legacy contacts can only access a deceased user’s account for three years before Apple deletes the account.
Google
Google takes a different approach with its Inactive Account Manager, which allows you to share your data with someone if it notices that you’ve stopped using your account.
When setting it up, you need to decide how long Google should wait — from three to 18 months — before considering your account inactive. Once that time is up, Google can notify up to 10 people.
You can write a message informing them you’ve stopped using the account, and, optionally, include a link to download your data. You can choose what types of data they can access — including emails, photos, calendar entries and YouTube videos.
There’s also an option to automatically delete your account after three months of inactivity, so your contacts will have to download any data before that deadline.
Facebook and Instagram
Some social media platforms can preserve accounts for people who have died so that friends and family can honor their memories.
When users of Facebook or Instagram die, parent company Meta says it can memorialize the account if it gets a “valid request” from a friend or family member. Requests can be submitted through an online form.
The social media company strongly recommends Facebook users add a legacy contact to look after their memorial accounts. Legacy contacts can do things like respond to new friend requests and update pinned posts, but they can’t read private messages or remove or alter previous posts. You can only choose one person, who also has to have a Facebook account.
You can also ask Facebook or Instagram to delete a deceased user’s account if you’re a close family member or an executor. You’ll need to send in documents like a death certificate.
TikTok
The video-sharing platform says that if a user has died, people can submit a request to memorialize the account through the settings menu. Go to the Report a Problem section, then Account and profile, then Manage account, where you can report a deceased user.
Once an account has been memorialized, it will be labeled “Remembering.” No one will be able to log into the account, which prevents anyone from editing the profile or using the account to post new content or send messages.
X
It’s not possible to nominate a legacy contact on Elon Musk’s social media site. But family members or an authorized person can submit a request to deactivate a deceased user’s account.
Passwords
Besides the major online services, you’ll probably have dozens if not hundreds of other digital accounts that your survivors might need to access. You could just write all your login credentials down in a notebook and put it somewhere safe. But making a physical copy presents its own vulnerabilities. What if you lose track of it? What if someone finds it?
Instead, consider a password manager that has an emergency access feature. Password managers are digital vaults that you can use to store all your credentials. Some, like Keeper,Bitwarden and NordPass, allow users to nominate one or more trusted contacts who can access their keys in case of an emergency such as a death.
But there are a few catches: Those contacts also need to use the same password manager and you might have to pay for the service.
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Is there a tech challenge you need help figuring out? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your questions.
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s competition watchdog said Thursday it’s opening a formal investigation into Google’s partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it has “sufficient information” to launch an initial probe after it sought input earlier this year on whether the deal would stifle competition.
The CMA has until Dec. 19 to decide whether to approve the deal or escalate its investigation.
“Google is committed to building the most open and innovative AI ecosystem in the world,” the company said. “Anthropic is free to use multiple cloud providers and does, and we don’t demand exclusive tech rights.”
San Francisco-based Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked at ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The company has focused on increasing the safety and reliability of AI models. Google reportedly agreed last year to make a multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic, which has a popular chatbot named Claude.
Anthropic said it’s cooperating with the regulator and will provide “the complete picture about Google’s investment and our commercial collaboration.”
“We are an independent company and none of our strategic partnerships or investor relationships diminish the independence of our corporate governance or our freedom to partner with others,” it said in a statement.
The U.K. regulator has been scrutinizing a raft of AI deals as investment money floods into the industry to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom. Last month it cleared Anthropic’s $4 billion deal with Amazon and it has also signed off on Microsoft’s deals with two other AI startups, Inflection and Mistral.
