The Camera Plateau: What's New With the iPhone 17 Pro Cameras

[RSmith2023]

They seem to indicate that the dual capture will be limited to the 17’s. There’s no reason older phones can’t do dual capture natively since there are 3rd party camera apps doing it today. (Hell, the app for my wireless mics even does it.)

And I’m uncertain as to WHY you can’t get center-stage support for the front facing camera on some of the more recent devices.

Maybe they’ll quietly enable that (and a few other things) after the initial sales begin to taper off. Wouldn’t want to damper sales by enabling too much on the current models right away.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

so the A19 pro is in the The Camera Plateau? then its nice that you dont feel the heat with your fingers but with your head when talking on it? and second what vapour chamber cool since its the battery section ?!

The A10 Pro, in the 17 Pro and Pro Max, isn't in the camera plateau. The animations of the internals of the new models that Apple released show that it's somewhere near the rear middle of the phone, on its usual logic board. Word is that the A19 in the Air is indeed in the camera plateau, to make room for the battery, though I'd like to see confirmation of this.

 

[Populus]

Battery

Maybe I should’ve said inside the plateau…

 

[msackey]

The 4x zoom doesn't even reach the standard 110mm that is used for much portrait photography? And 8x is just the 4x image cropped? A lot of the photography I do is wildlife and I'm usually in the 400-600mm range there, so I'll be sticking with my Sony Alpha for now, that said, the 100mm equivalent of the telephoto will probably be good for casual snapshots around town, when doing a tour etc.

For wildlife photography, I think a proper DSLR is called for. Hard to imagine using a phone canners for that

 

[msackey]

Maybe I should’ve said inside the plateau…

Oh I see. I imagine all tins related to the camera

 

[MZBS]

I believe the biggest advances in smartphone cameras will come from AI and software updates rather than hardware.

An iPhone will never fully replace a DSLR, but with the right software tweaks, I’m confident we can achieve the best possible photos and resolution.

The thing is, even with iOS 26 we’re still far from what AI is already delivering on other platforms. I really hope Apple makes major improvements in this area for next year’s iOS.

 

[Reeneman]

I believe the biggest advances in smartphone cameras will come from AI and software updates rather than hardware.

An iPhone will never fully replace a DSLR, but with the right software tweaks, I’m confident we can achieve the best possible photos and resolution.

The thing is, even with iOS 26 we’re still far from what AI is already delivering on other platforms. I really hope Apple makes major improvements in this area for next year’s iOS.

There are different opinions on that. As it is right now apple doesn’t seem to focus on AI that much on the camera but trying to deliver a natural photo as much as possible while others like google not going for the latest spec lenses while trying to add more AI processing to their camera setup.
Both ways are fine.

 

[frou]

There's a little compartment inside the plateau to store drugs. Pro-only feature

 

[Hammerd]

I knew that 8x zoom was too good to be true. It’s a digital zoom from the 4x optical.

The 18 megapixels front camera is also a lie since that’s it’s resolution as a SQUARE. It’s then cropped to portrait or landscape, probably at 12mpx just like the previous generations of iPhones.

Finally, the flash and LiDAR are now far from the cameras for design purposes.
I expect poorer performances. The LiDAR scan will have a non-negligible offset with the actual picture.

 

[Reeneman]

I knew that 8x zoom was too good to be true. It’s a digital zoom from the 4x optical.

The 18 megapixels front camera is also a lie since that’s it’s resolution as a SQUARE. It’s then cropped to portrait or landscape, probably at 12mpx just like the previous generations of iPhones.

Finally, the flash and LiDAR are now far from the cameras for design purposes.
I expect poorer performances. The LiDAR scan will have a non-negligible offset with the actual picture.

It’s been since a while that they do heavy marketing with alle these lenses and the cropping.
But honestly in the end the results are what matters. If the pics look good I wouldn’t stick too much too all this numbers.
Furthermore a 4x zoom lens seems to be a pretty good value. The 5x in the previous gen’s was probably a bit too much because you relied on heavy cropping of the telephoto lens with 3x, 4x…

 

[winxmac]

ProRAW - A pro video recording option.

No one bothers to proofread before hitting Submit.

 

[Asthmatic Kitty]

In the ultra-wide section: “It supports taking close-up 48-megapixel macro shots, and has support for what Apple calls Hybrid Focus Pixels.”

Is this true? I thought macros were always a centre-crop of the sensor — so 12 MP — rather than a full-res 13mm focal length?

———

“The 48-megapixel wide-angle lens, or Fusion Main lens as Apple refers to it, hasn't changed much compared to the ‌iPhone 16 Pro‌.”

This sentence is frustratingly vague. “Much”? Has it changed at all? Which is it?

 

[jayducharme]

Why couldn’t the lenses have been flush with the plateau? Now there’s two layers of bump.

Sounds like Apple missed a great marketing opportunity there.

Something I’ve noticed with my iPhone camera is that taking a photo during an action sequence (like someone running) requires me to press the shutter after the shot I want has passed. If I press the shutter at the moment of the action I want to capture, I always end up with a photo from about a second before. I suspect that in photo mode, the iPhone camera is just shooting a continuous video and when you press the shutter button, it simply grabs a frame it previously took.

 

[hovscorpion12]

I'm curious. if 4K/120fps ProRes video recording is available with an external storage device attached. Does that mean we can do 4K/60fps ProRes without an external storage? I imagine the 2TB model should

 

[Fredo C]

Has anyone confirmed yet if the 17 Pro ultra-wide and telephoto can both output 24 MP images?
The 16 Pro ultra-wide could not output 24 MP images.
However, the 17 (non-Pro) ultra-wide can output 24 MP images.

iPhone 17:

View attachment 2546339

iPhone 17 Pro:

View attachment 2546340

I have the same exact question, and Apple support chat was useless. They actually just stopped responding as I kept pressing them for an answer to this. They even told me the 8X could shoot at 48mp which made me lose faith in their answers anyway.

I don’t want it if it can’t do this, but don’t think we’ll know before pre-order, so might just order it and return it if needed.

 

[hanske68]

Better design: shrink the lower 75% of the phone and rotate by 90 degrees.

 

[Hammerd]

It’s been since a while that they do heavy marketing with alle these lenses and the cropping.
But honestly in the end the results are what matters. If the pics look good I wouldn’t stick too much too all this numbers.
Furthermore a 4x zoom lens seems to be a pretty good value. The 5x in the previous gen’s was probably a bit too much because you relied on heavy cropping of the telephoto lens with 3x, 4x…

Cropping of the main* lens.
The telephoto is the 5x.
But yeah. Ideally the iPhone needs two 48MP telephoto (3x and 8x for instance)

 

[Egregius]

well, USB-A is limited to 5 Watts ...

Not true, there were already 10W chargers delivered with iPad many years ago. The limit is 12,5W

The 18 megapixels front camera is also a lie since that’s it’s resolution as a SQUARE. It’s then cropped to portrait or landscape, probably at 12mpx just like the previous generations of iPhones.

I thought it was a 24MP cropped to 18MP. Making a calculation from 24MP square to a 4:3 ratio confirms that.

 

[EugW]

Not true, there were already 10W chargers delivered with iPad many years ago. The limit is 12,5W

I thought it was a 24MP cropped to 18MP. Making a calculation from 24MP square to a 4:3 ratio confirms that.

There is no mention anywhere of a 24 MP sensor.

I have the same exact question, and Apple support chat was useless. They actually just stopped responding as I kept pressing them for an answer to this. They even told me the 8X could shoot at 48mp which made me lose faith in their answers anyway.

I don’t want it if it can’t do this, but don’t think we’ll know before pre-order, so might just order it and return it if needed.

Front line Apple support chat agents generally only know the basics. FWIW, Apple has this on their website:

"Like having 8 pro lenses in your pocket.
Super-high-resolution 24MP photos by default."

Hopefully that's referring to all three sensors (when not using cropped resolutions).

 

[sigmasirrus]

1. no 1" sensor or increase size. bummer

2. I wished they gave us an option for AI zoom at higher magnifications, like google did , it looks great imo

also it still uses smart hdr 5?

That AI zoom just makes stuff up. If you zoom in on writing, who knows what you’ll get, for instance.

 

[Unami]

First time I heard Apple's official euphemism for the camera hump/lump.

 

[unchecked]

That AI zoom just makes stuff up. If you zoom in on writing, who knows what you’ll get, for instance.

Yep. As far as AI is concerned, if they wanna use it for improving the quality of a photo like denoise or stacking to fake dynamic range then sure. But if it's generative to create details then it's a major red flag.

 

[EugW]

2. I wished they gave us an option for AI zoom at higher magnifications, like google did , it looks great imo

Samsung caught faking zoom photos of the Moon

A photo of a blurry image of the Moon revealed some telling results.

www.theverge.com

 

[Hammerd]

Not true, there were already 10W chargers delivered with iPad many years ago. The limit is 12,5W

I thought it was a 24MP cropped to 18MP. Making a calculation from 24MP square to a 4:3 ratio confirms that.

Right. It’s 24MP cropped to 18MP or 12MP
depending which cropping of the four available you pick I believe

 

[gregoryfu]

Isn't the 8x zoom called an optical zoom because it doesn't create pixels? Don't digital zooms create pixels? Before 2022, wasn't 12 MP the maximum optical resolution anyway?