wolfe with an e's blog
The straight poop on the iPhone 17 cameras.
Apple continues to improve the photographic ability of iPhones year-after-year with slightly-better cameras, slightly-faster processors and slightly-better computational software. I’m wondering if we’ve reached the pinnacle of that with the iPhone 17 Pro models.
iPhone Pro and Pro Max: Max pixels for all back cameras.
The big news on the iPhone 17 Pro is that the Tele lens has dropped a power and it’s picked up a 48mp sensor on both Pro and Pro Max. So now all back cameras on both 17 Pro models have a 48mp sensor. Dropping from 5x to 4x on the Pro Max Tele camera may seem a downgrade, but it’s probably not. There’s now an optical 8x option for both Pro and Max. This is accomplished the same way the 1x camera can do 2x: by just using the center 12mp of the sensor. So you can get a 12mp Tele image just as you did with the 16 Pro models but at a max of 8x instead of 3x or 5x. Optically you now get .5x, 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x primes from the three cameras before you have to rely on digital zoom. Another factor is that achieving a 4.5x image on the iPhone 16 Pro Max required a substantial amount of digital zoom from the 1x sensor. The iPhone 17 Pros won’t require as big a stretch.
If the dropping of Tele camera from 5x to 4x seems odd, it’s likely that there needed to be some compromise in focal length for the sake of physics when adding a sensor that’s a third-bigger in physical size. The Tele camera uses the Tetraprism lens system that was introduced in the iPhone 15 Pro. It’s a prism that bends the light between the lens and sensor. I point this out because the results of the Tetraprism Tele have always lacked contrast with the light bouncing around inside the iPhone. I would have thought this is something Apple would have cured during image processing to make the image look more consistent with the 1x images, but both the 15 Pro and 16 Pro Tele images look soft. It remains to be seen in real-world tests if the 17 Pro Tele images and software update improve things.
iPhone Air.
The new iPhone Air replaces the Plus model, which a large screen and super-thin design: More than 2mm thinner than the iPhone 17. But it only has the 1x camera so it can’t do macro as the two-camera standard 17 can. It also has about 10% less battery life than the standard 17 and costs $200 more.
If those numbers don’t add up, it’s likely that the iPhone Air is designed for a specific user, but not you. It will appeal to those who want the thinnest phone possible and use the front camera predominantly. So if your camera is mostly for selfies and video calls, the 48mp, 1x back camera (same as on all iPhone 17 models) may be sufficient for your photo needs. If you’re not using the back camera as much, there will also likely be less drain on the battery. As thin as it is, much of the Air is battery, but it doesn’t have the performance of the Pro models.
Like all the 17 models, Air gets an 18mp square sensor in the front that gives you the same number of megapixels horizontally and vertically so you can take a horizontal selfie with the phone held vertically. It also has Center Stage that keeps you in the center of the frame for video calls. I use this regularly on my iPad Pro for video meetings and it’s been great not to have to re-angle the iPad to fit two of us into the frame.
iOS 26 camera software.
Not much new here, but the shooting screen is no less cluttered. The shooting options are now just photo and video with the various still and movie options like spatial and slow-mo under a sub menu. Options like flash and timer are now under a sub menu as well. For most, this is welcome since there’s little to get in the way of basic shooting. I primarily cover the still abilities of the iPhone back cameras, so I’ll just say that video got an big upgrade in controls with adjustment for parameters like temperature control and exposure bias that had pro-video shooters relying on 3rd party apps.
My take.
Having three 48mp cameras on the back of the iPhone Pro models gives you a complete camera kit at high-resolution. It’s one more reason that the iPhone 17 Pros can now do everything that any dedicated camera system can do. In many cases, your iPhone will give you comparable or better results to pricier still or video cameras thanks to computational photography and a processor far more powerful than what comes in even the highest-end conventional cameras.
And note: Aluminum is back. In case you’ve forgotten, these look nice but are slippery. A case is pretty much a necessity.
The jury is not yet selected on whether the iPhone Air will be a success or not. If so, it’ll show that there definitely is a market for front camera users who value a big screen and super-thin design. I’m intrigued by the 1x, 48mp sensor in the Air, but a 4x, 48mp camera and the macro abilities of the Ultra-Wide camera make the iPhone Pro a camera that can do pretty much anything I need.
Maybe next year there will be no cameras and you can just describe the scene and Apple Intelligence will flawlessly create it.
Okay, maybe not.
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