Six months ago, I decided to replace my iPhone 13 Pro Max, which had seen a lot, with an iPhone 15 Pro Max. In general, if you can’t find a reason, it was a simple fact: I just wanted a camera better.
The ability to shoot on it in all 48 megapixels instead of the previous 12 MP promised a lot of advantages – at least a good zoom, but mostly just greater detail of objects. Since I take many photos for reviews on the iPhone, the camera has always been one of the most frequently used smartphone devices for me.
Half a year later, gradually and now definitely, I came to a sad conclusion. The camera system that Apple uses today and, according to all rumors, continues to use in the iPhone 16, conceptually a failure and ill-conceived.
It’s not even that the camera modules and frame processing algorithms in iOS have been learning the same in Android photo flagships for several years now. And it’s not that it’s better never to manually “zoom” a part of a frame if there was text on it.
The thing is, the way the company has spread out the focal lengths of these three lenses is so illogical, as if we were looking at a budget Android smartphone, not a $1,500 device.
What’s Wrong With the iPhone 15 Pro Max Cameras
The camera unit on the iPhone 15 Pro Max has three modules. I’ll list them all and highlight the problem right away.
▪ 0.5x ultra-wide: 12 MP, f/2.2, 13 mm
▪ 1x main: 48 MP, f/1.8, 24 mm
▪ 5x telephoto: 12 MP, f/2.8, 120 mm
These millimeters indicate the focal length from the center of the lens to the matrix, which determines the viewing angle of the frame. The smaller it is, the wider the capturing angle in photographs, and the larger it is, the larger individual distant objects. It can be increased in the resulting photographs by cropping part of the frame – that is, using “digital zoom”, “crop”. But it cannot be reduced.
Accordingly, the iPhone 15 Pro Max has designs of non-cropped distances – three: 13, 24 and 120 mm. In the example, they, together with the configuration of the lenses and the system calculated in each zone, give the minimum distance to the object before it is in focus: 3 mm, 10. cm And… 3 metersthere is. You can already see the problem, right?
Well, the question is. How can you take a close-up photo of an object on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, in the best quality, including an object or person approaching you at the most commonly used distance when shooting these very objects – one to one and a half meters?
The answer is simple, no way. More precisely, like this: terrible, with AI filtering, color merging and the result due to the need to heavily process the resulting “crop” of the main camera with a level of transparency and data transfer than those same 48 megapixels.
If only I could come up with something, who would be interested in that? Some made-up problem of fanatics’ photographs, no one is interested in that…
What problems does the iPhone 15 Pro Max camera create?
iPhone 15 Pro Max in all its glory, my review of the new Yandex Station Light. On the left is a photo with a “fake” 5x telephoto mode (crop of the main camera), the photo on the right is real on the telephoto lens. Just a person lies down completely on the floor, there is no other way.
You constantly have to move away from small objects at a completely inadequate distance.otherwise it either looks bad in photos, or the photos come out with artifacts and illiterate AI post-processing. iPhone 15 Pro Max owners, sound familiar?
Let’s say I want to take a photo cake. I have two phones. Either this cake will be shot almost point-blank from the main camera, and the geometric change of the lens will stretch it, turning it into an oval, and itself will objectively capture a lot of unnecessary things from the edge of the frame, no relationship is shown to the cake. We enjoy the next crop, fixing the change in the component editors and other uninteresting hemorrhoids.
The second option is me I move away from the cake by a whole 3 metersafter that, the iPhone will deign to turn on the telephoto lens, since its focal length has been successfully observed. Voila! The creators of the image used the main camera crop props, there is nothing superfluous there, it is not a shame to process it a little and post it somewhere, except for a social network, where the result can be seen not only on the 6-inch screen of the phone.
Thank you for at least Photo It doesn’t lie and correctly warns that the photo, taken not necessarily with the 3-meter telephoto lenses, was in fact taken with the main camera with its signature steps, loss of color depth and other song algorithms.
I just have to constantly butt heads and swear at the iPhone switch every time I move away from the subject of the photo. All so that the iPhone switches to telephoto mode, and the photo is launched optically, geometrically and very pleasantly, it was similar, at least to amateur level.
Do you know it’s convenient? Of course not. Not all of them provide the ability to move away from the object by 3 meters, not to mention maintaining the desired angle of the frame and composition after moving away. When you have to stand on a chair on an expensive smartphone with 3 cameras just to take a photo that you won’t be ashamed to post on the Internet later – this is collapseand not amazing.
In the meantime, keep the iPhone 15 Pro where it is for nowschIf you are creating a telephoto lens with a focal length of 77mm, simply point the phone at the side of the device at a natural distance from the subject of 1-1.5 meters when using it in the app. Camera 3x mode and press the shutter release. No need to go anywhere (with rare exceptions), everything looks decent, in focus, without documents and AI nonsense.
iPhone 16 Pro Will Also Have 5x, Get Ready
If you don’t have an iPhone 15 Pro Max, you’re not familiar with this pain. But the iPhone 16 Pro They will also install a 120mm telephoto lens focal lengths, just like the iPhone 16 Pro Max. More people will be doing acrobatics and stretching to take decent photos of things, I don’t know, on a table.
Personally, I will not buy new iPhones until the company decides on the prospect of objects at the most convenient shooting distance of a meter or one and a half meters being photographed only with the main camera’s “crop” and the terrible ugliness of AI algorithms on top. For the last three months, for the photos in reviews on iPhones.ru (for example, here), I have been much more often taking out my Android smartphone for some 35 thousand rubles – with a much better selection of cameras. And the result pleases me more than what the iPhone does.
Taking pictures of “products” on an iPhone can hardly be called a popular case. I am sure that most people will not take my indignation seriously, but they still thought it necessary to share. The top super flagship of Apple immediately ceased to be my working “machine” in this capacity, although for the last 3 years it has been such without problems. The chance that I would rather buy an even more advanced Android photo flagship than a new iPhone has never been so high.
But Apple Intelligence is coming soon! Now that’s what I call useful.
Source: Iphones RU
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
