iPhone 17 Pro 17 Pro zoom on small text vs 16 Pro

[jntdroid]

I can't get samples up right now, but I have a writing in a frame on one of my walls with very small text. I'm roughly 3-4 feet from it and it's up about a foot from my eye level. I've tried various zoom levels on both phones at 5x and above (and 4x once), and in each situation the 17 Pro comes out more readable than the 16 Pro, even though I thought this would be a scenario where the 16 Pro might excel. The 16 Pro seems to want to sharpen or process the text, and makes some of it unreadable, like a foreign language. The 17 Pro seems to leave it alone more, and while it might not be quite as sharp, it's all very readable.

I guess it's as simple as that - it's the software. Because the 16 Pro should produce a sharper and more readable image in this situation correct?

 

[yoheywut]

The sensor is physically much larger, and with more megapixels, on the 17 Pro. This more than makes up for it being 4x vs 5x. You could have a 10x optical zoom, but if the sensor is small, and only like 4 mp, it will look bad haha.

 

[jntdroid]

The sensor is physically much larger, and with more megapixels, on the 17 Pro. This more than makes up for it being 4x vs 5x. You could have a 10x optical zoom, but if the sensor is small, and only like 4 mp, it will look bad haha.

That makes sense. Just seems like the 16 Pro is unnecessarily sharpening. But maybe that’s to help offset the smaller sensor. This definitely isn’t a normal every day photo situation.

 

[jntdroid]

Just a quick follow up here - it's definitely the 16P's processing / software sharpening causing the issue. Just played with this again and for those few seconds before the final output after you take the picture, the photo looks as good as the final output in the 17P. Just interesting... software seems to be messing things up a bit in this scenario for the 16P.

 

[jntdroid]

This is exactly what I was seeing. I timestamped the link, but in case it doesn't work, it's at 11:42:

It's not that the 16 Pro can't see the text, it just adds so much sharpening to it that it becomes a bit of a garbled mess.