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iPhone 13 Pro Max Still can’t switch lenses mid-shoot

U

UKapple73

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 13, 2014
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One of the frustrating things I’ve found about smartphone video shooting, is the fact that when you begin shooting in say 1x lens, and you then want to zoom in and press the 3x button, it then won’t switch to the telephoto lens, but will actually digitally zoom in 3x , obviously giving much degraded image quality
Why is this the case still? What’s the limitation? Why can’t it just switch to the telephoto lens on the fly? Maybe apple worried about white balance difference, or the slight jerk in the footage….but why not give us the choice to have that?
Oh yeah I forgot - it’s Apple !
 
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The 3x lens can't focus on things closer than... roughly 2 feet or 0,5m. Maybe it's that? I can switch them with no problems
 
UKapple73 said:
One of the frustrating things I’ve found about smartphone video shooting, is the fact that when you begin shooting in say 1x lens, and you then want to zoom in and press the 3x button, it then won’t switch to the telephoto lens, but will actually digitally zoom in 3x , obviously giving much degraded image quality
Why is this the case still? What’s the limitation? Why can’t it just switch to the telephoto lens on the fly? Maybe apple worried about white balance difference, or the slight jerk in the footage….but why not give us the choice to have that?
Oh yeah I forgot - it’s Apple !
Click to expand...
The limitation is that each lens has a different sensor.

Zooming by changing lens mid shot will cause numerous issues. Such as; Perspective shift, change in exposure, change in focus, change in depth of field, change in shutter speed.

It would look terrible to jump between the 2.
 
So if it works at 30fps, it can’t be the difference in focus, white balance etc
Strange
 
aue123 said:
i’ve been using 60 fps and it switches fine
Click to expand...
It doesn’t. It switches, but switches to digital zoom rather than the actual telephoto lens. You can see this by comparing doing that, or recording the same thing by starting on the telephoto. It’s noticeable and obvious it’s cropping in
 
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You can try if switching works when you select the 3x lens and then start the recording.
If you are on 60 fps you cannot go below 3x zoom as for lower zoom a switch to the 1x lens would be neccessary.
Once you click on 1x while filming with 3x the zoom-wheel is displayed and only 3x-9x is selectable.
 
EDIT: this is caused by having the lock camera option turned on under recording formats under the camera setting.

I originally turned that on because I didn’t want the macro mode to engage during video recording and be flipping back-and-forth between the lenses.

But in iOS 15.1 (I’m testing the beta) they have fixed that with a different option to shut off auto macro. So if you want to take a macro shot you just switch to the .5 camera; no more odd lens switching when you didn’t ask for it.

This solved the problem!


…

old:

I just noticed this today. If you go from one X to 3X while shooting it does a digital crop. I am nearly 100% positive that my iPhone 12 pro did not do this… It actually shifted the lenses. They were many times when I went between the lenses and there was no digital crop that I noticed but it’s happening on the 13. Very strange.

I definitely remember that I could go between all three lenses on the 12 promax. But I can’t do that on the 13.

I should note this is while filming 30fps 4k. It used to be a limitation of the 60fps and slow motion modes. And it didn’t crop for a 3x closeup.
 

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I think this issue is Apples choice of threshold on how much light is “acceptable” for the lenses. I’ve had recordings that switches lenses automatically back and forth between them.
The quality is lowered, but main lens is letting in more light so that lens is getting prioritised, even when zoomed in.
 
SteveJobs2.0 said:
Where do you see this setting? I don’t have it with iPhone 13 pro. I remember having it with my old iPhone 11 Pro.
Click to expand...
It’s in the camera settings under “record video”
It doesn’t solve the issue anyway. Not at 4k/60fps at least, tried it earlier and it still won’t switch to the zoom lens while shooting
 
Lens switching will not work at 4k60, it has always been like this on the current devices which allow 4k60 recording.
 
therealwumpus said:
Try starting the recording by holding the photo button while in photo mode, then switching the lenses
Click to expand...
No this doesn’t work either
I think Apple block the ability to switch lenses because it might be a jarring transition with differing white balance, focus etc but they allow it at 4k30 so that doesn’t make sense either
 
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