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iPhone 15 Pro Max's 5x Optical Zoom Lens Rumored to Expand to Both iPhone 16 Pro Models
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Shocker. Of course we knew this would happen. Apple just wanted to upsell more people to the Pro Max this year. Next year the Pro & Pro Max will have the same specs again.
I agree. 77mm is much better for portraits than 120mm. You’re gonna have to stand faaaar away from your subject now with the 5x 120mm tele on the 15 Pro Max. I kinda hope they add a 4th lens next year and bring back the 77mm. So then you’d have a 13mm ultra wide, a 24mm standard lens, a 77mm tele portrait lens & a 120mm ultra tele lens for sports & wildlife.
That would fool the millions who have used digital cameras and their optical zooms for decades! Compact zoom cameras (or travel zooms) have had a big following.
Just wait until Apple actually achieves 10-20x, even if it is a combination of a fixed lens and digital zooming or cropping. The ability to capture distant wildlife, natural settings, people, architectural details, and so on will be embraced by the masses and deservedly so.
That cracked me up! We should never generalize from an N of 1! (Or, a somewhat larger N of people you know.)
Here, again, there are millions of people who have used the “zoom” lens (and even pinch-zoom) in their iPhone and iPad photos. Even you confess to using it twice!
I’m sure if we looked through the “Taken on iPhone” galleries and videos that Apple has released, we’d find many examples of zoomed photos.
Oh ok. Well, I guess since I do use optical zoom quite a bit, I must be "no one".
"Hello everybody! I'm nobody! Nice to meet you."
👻
Comment of the Day Award! 🥇 ✅ 👍🏽 ✴️
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As to Apple's optical zoom claims… I chuckle each time I see Apple refer to 1/2x and 1x zoom. 1/2x is no “zoom” at all. Or, rather, it's a “zoom out”, or, more precisely, a wide angle lens.
For further chuckles, they even refer to the front camera in the current iPhone SE as having a “1x optical zoom range”. Wow! ‼️ LOL! 😅
See https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/
lol, how does that even explain how zoom lenses work? What you said is only how the lens work, not a zoom lens. I told you, it's NOT an optical zoom. If not, where is the zoom lens with multiple focal length or why does it even have 3 lenses instead of one? I said where is the optical zoom lens? There is none on iPhone.
You clearly missed the point.
Pointless semantics, but yes is a telephoto lens, not a zoom lens. Still you can “zoom” in software.
I think it really doesn’t matter. What matters is the final image quality. Quite possible that trying to fit more advanced optics in there would end up with a worse end result.
What Apple should be doing is showing comparisons of the 14 Max to the 15 Max in image quality, instead of misusing obsolete photographic terms. My guess is they don’t because the differences are going to be quite subtle.
I think it really doesn’t matter. What matters is the final image quality. Quite possible that trying to fit more advanced optics in there would end up with a worse end result.
What Apple should be doing is showing comparisons of the 14 Max to the 15 Max in image quality, instead of misusing obsolete photographic terms. My guess is they don’t because the differences are going to be quite subtle.
My current upgrade cycle is every three years from the iphone 6. Ths S years have increased since i purchased my 12 pro max the 13, 14, 15 have all come and gone and are all s for snoozer models for me.
I am hoping the 16 pro max or ultra breaks this s cycle with a larger and brighter display. In addition to a long overdue design overhaul.
The iphone 19 ultra or whatever Apple likes to call it, will be a epic upgrade much like the X being the first full screen iphone, hopefully sinking the dynamic island.
I am hoping the 16 pro max or ultra breaks this s cycle with a larger and brighter display. In addition to a long overdue design overhaul.
The iphone 19 ultra or whatever Apple likes to call it, will be a epic upgrade much like the X being the first full screen iphone, hopefully sinking the dynamic island.
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Just like they do with the iPhone vs. iPhone Pro.
The differentiation comes from using extremely expensive and cutting edge tech in the Ultra modules which results in much lower yields due to manufacturing complexities. For example:
•microOLED display 2 years before the Pro gets it
•Ultramotion (144Hz+) for the display 2 years before the Pro
•Extremely sophisticated internal cooling mechanisms
•A18 Ultra chip which is more powerful thanks to enhanced cooling or larger batteries in Ultras
•Both more and faster RAM for further enhancements to gaming and I’m talking the real console games like Resident Evil, not mobile trash
•Additional camera sensors
When we look at the price of Apple Vision Pro I think it’s very clear that you can make tech that’s so sophisticated for its time that it’s just exceedingly expensive. iPhone Ultra could have the tech that the iPhone would have gotten in a few years if the yields on said tech were high enough and cheap enough.
There's no point in trying to explain these things to people. The reality is, most people don't care. At some point, these 'specs' became norm and it is what it is now. For example, Apple advertises the main camera is 48MP 24mm f/1.78. We (photographers) know that's not true; or I've seen some manufacturer showing off sensor size with diagram of sensor and diagonal length showing XXmm; It's not just Apple - every other phone manufacturers do that.
I said, don't care does not mean it's ok to use misleading information. And what's up with the main camera? Do you know how lens perspective works base on the sensor size? I guess you don't.
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I agree. The 5X lens really should have been a fourth camera on the ProMax.
Actually, that would be quite the news! I was expecting 16 Pro features to migrate to the 17, not the other way around! Is Apple introducing a Time Machine this year, too?
Why sound so condescending? You sound like you're the only one in the world with camera knowledge. I do too, as well as many others. I do know how lens perspective works based on sensor size. iphone does not have 28mm sensor. It's FF equivalent, which is an arbitrary number. It does not have 28mm AND f/1.78 lens. f/1.78 is the size of the aperture based on native focal length, not FF equivalent of 28mm. So it's misleading to say the lens is 28mm f/1.78. That said, at the end of the day, most of the people don't cares. If you want to complain about misleading information, why complain here? Make a formal complain to Apple.
iPhone 15 pro is not even in the hands to the average consumers, yet we’re talking about next years 😂
It’s the same as if I leave the house with three prime lenses for my camera. Still not a zoom.
The Sony Xperia 1 IV has an actual 85-125mm optical zoom. That’s how zooms work on a smartphone.
I mean, are your three prime lenses all built into one camera? I agree Apple is being a little slippery here, but we don’t have to pretend like there is no optical element to this.
It's not an SLR camera. It's a mobile phone camera. The use of the word 'zoom' is different and refers to the ability to magnify the image you are trying to take without cropping the resolution. No one is gong to say 'let me just telephoto into my shot to get a close up', they're going to say 'let me zoom in to my shot to get a close up'. You touch a button on the screen that says 3x or 5x (on the respective camera) the shot gets tighter. From a User Experience POV, that's a zoom. Apple (and Samsung) are simply describing for people what result they're going to get.
At 3x on the 15P and 5x on the 15PM, you are 'zooming' into the image optically when compared to the field of view of the main camera. Anything between or beyond is digital. Since the user isn't actually having to change the lens physically like on an SLR/Mirrorless camera, the use of the word 'zoom' is appropriate.
Tetraprism = hardware lens.
Digital = software induced.
You can't call a hardware a software. To be clear, it is not your traditional optical lens like those you know from traditional cameras. But it is neither digital zoom either. It has a different method paradigm. The most important thing is it works just like optical zoom, but it is not digital zoom.
I'm going to try the Max for a year. We'll set if I can deal with it. Might go back to regular Pro next year, especially if the cameras are the same in both (I do a lot of photography with mine).
