iPhone 15 Pro Max's 5x Optical Zoom Lens Enables 25x Digital Zoom

[TehFalcon]

Samsung has 10x optical. Apple 5x

nice, Optical is the way to go. I was referring to their 100x digital zoom

 

[shoehorn42]

Quite disappointed with 5x zoom. S21 ultra that has 10x is almost 3 years old. What a shame, not even 6x as it was rumored.

 

[Lcgiv]

Ok, I’m very excited about this, but I’ll admit I’m disappointed by an increase from 3x to 5x.
I thought the 6x rumors seemed unexciting.

Am I missing something? Is 5x going to be huge?

No it won’t lol

 

[solq]

I see no article and no one talking about its ability to do spatial recording? 🤯🤯 never would have guess we’d get that already… and how’s that even possible with such short distance between the lenses 🤔

The capability surprised me too. I just don't think many people will get a Vision Pro, it's way too expensive - hence the lack of reaction. I have no use for "spatial recording" until we can do Minority Report style 3D projection. I don't care in a dopey personal device that does it.

 

[Lcgiv]

It’s 125mm full frame, which is basically the end of the portraiture focal lengths. Going too much more beyond that and photos of people start to get unflattering. Once you get past 200 you’re talking about sports and wildlife, neither of which a phone is useful for. And it’ll come at a massive cost to image quality.

Big zoom multipliers are for spec sheet comparisons, in the real world they’re not that useful and will come at a cost on every photo you take.

People use zoom for taking pictures of things far away (as all of apples cool marketing pictures try to play on). Apple focusing on portrait mode most people don’t even understand is a non seller.

 

[macduke]

Samsung has 10x optical. Apple 5x

Samsung was also faking photos taken with their zoom, such as photos of the moon, by replacing them with stock photos. They are the worst.

 

[redbeard331]

It’s 125mm full frame, which is basically the end of the portraiture focal lengths. Going too much more beyond that and photos of people start to get unflattering. Once you get past 200 you’re talking about sports and wildlife, neither of which a phone is useful for. And it’ll come at a massive cost to image quality.

Big zoom multipliers are for spec sheet comparisons, in the real world they’re not that useful and will come at a cost on every photo you take.

There’s several things wrong with this post.

1. I’d say the vast majority of people with iPhones aren’t using them for portrait photography. Most people use them for random daily snapshots and a large zoom comes in handy for many things, especially landscape photography.

2. Nobody is forcing anyone to use the longest tele lens on a smartphone for portraits, the Samsung galaxy S23 has I believe a 1x, 3x, and the 10x lenses.

3. Go rent a 200 f2 lens and do some portraits and get back to me. I’ve used a Nikon D850 with Nikons 200 f2 on a model and you cannot convince me there’s anything better. People use 400-600mm lenses for portrait shots as well.

4. Landscapes are the #1 reason I wanted at least a 10x lens on the iPhone, there’s just so many things you cannot get close to without some sort of of big telephoto lens. Most of the time I use my iPhone for landscapes I end up between somewhere between 5-15x but then the picture is trash because it’s all digital. Who wouldn’t want more reach?

 

[JosephAW]

Well there's always next year to get the periscope camera. Think I'll hold off this year.

 

[fatTribble]

I see no article and no one talking about its ability to do spatial recording? 🤯🤯 never would have guess we’d get that already… and how’s that even possible with such short distance between the lenses 🤔

I’d definitely like to know more!
How much larger are the files?
Can I view them outside of the Vision Pro?

 

[Eldaerenth Faexidor]

The only thing about the 15 Pro that I like is the natural titanium color. Everything else is “meh”.

 

[drumcat]

Optical is all that matters.

 

[sunny5]

Who even said that iPhone 15 Pro Max will have a periscope zoom lens? FALSE.

 

[bobdobalina]

My guess is that this prism system will be more more reliable than a parascope design when it comes to long term optical alignment.

 

[bobdobalina]

Digital zoom is a waste of time that can basically be achieved by cropping in post, Or use an application like Topaz AI in post to increase the resolution of the image using AI. In my view digital zoom is a marketing ploy that means absolutely nothing but fools people into believing they are getting something worth having.

I don't really agree. Digital zoom is absolutely a marketing ploy. But if the end result of either digital zoom or using post production software to upres and crop are both mediorce, isn't it a waste of time to not do that in-camera?

 

[thegerman]

This periscope thingy is going to push peoples activity trends ⬇️. I mean, less steps right?

You might wonder if Apple is experiencing an existential identity crisis? Wasn’t turning Apple into a health company supposed to be Timmeh’s legacy? I mean what the hell is going on here?🧐

Next year’s keynote full of Obese people sharing their tragic stories about how they got fat because of periscope? Lmao!

Most American are fat right ?

 

[Eldaerenth Faexidor]

Most American are fat right ?

I don’t have the statistics on that and I also don’t like to generalize.

 

[cibonak]

Quite disappointed with 5x zoom. S21 ultra that has 10x is almost 3 years old. What a shame, not even 6x as it was rumored.

Wait for the comparison test before judging please....

aperture is nit the same

 

[sunny5]

Don't be fooled.

This is not optical ZOOM lens. It's just a prime lens with 120mm focal length.

 

[SFjohn]

Who even said that iPhone 15 Pro Max will have a periscope zoom lens? FALSE.

Patents getting in the way IMHO… 🙁

 

[Liquid Galaxy]

Don’t suppose anyone knows if this 5x zoom is for video too?

 

[falainber]

Samsung was also faking photos taken with their zoom, such as photos of the moon, by replacing them with stock photos. They are the worst.

That's not what Samsung does. And their 10x is real optical zoom. No need to confuse people.

 

[8KYUP]

If it's anything like my Pixel 7 Pro it would (from what I read) crop a 12MP shot from the main sensor, re-mosaic the shot and apply some HDR+ scaling for details. Anything up to 10x on these sensors look pretty good with good lighting and minimal motion). A tad soft in comparison to the 5x if you zoom in and pixel peep but solid shots nonetheless.

For "Zoom range" they compare the widest optical focal lenth to longest. On thew new Max that is 13 mm to 120 mm so it would really be 9.23 x but close enough.

 

[falainber]

Who even said that iPhone 15 Pro Max will have a periscope zoom lens? FALSE.

As I understand Apple does use a periscope lens. They just decided to call it ""tetraprism lens" in line with their tradition to use weird proprietary terminology (super liquid retina anyone?) to pretend that they use some unique technology when in fact they use what everyone else uses (just with a lag).

 

[sunny5]

As I understand Apple does use a periscope lens. They just decided to call it ""tetraprism lens" in line with their tradition to use weird proprietary terminology (super liquid retina anyone?) to pretend that they use some unique technology when in fact they use what everyone else uses (just with a lag).

That's not an OPTICAL zoom lens. If so, how come the range is only 120mm? It should be 24-120mm instead.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Digital zoom is a waste of time that can basically be achieved by cropping in post, Or use an application like Topaz AI in post to increase the resolution of the image using AI.

You might be surprised at the number of folks that don’t have an application like Topaz AI. For those (several million) people, having Apple do the AI work is better than nothing!