iPhone 16 Pro The "valley" of digital zoom helps no one. Does the 5× lens help you?

[257Loner]

I watched the Apple Event on Monday. The interesting thing about the iPhone Pro’s 5× lens is that once you zoom past the 2× point, you’re just cropping the main lens using “digital zoom” until you reach 5×. That means anything from 2.1×-4.9× is just a digital crop of the main lens. In other words, you won’t get an optical boost to image quality until you reach 5×. In the older Pro models, you got an optical boost to image quality as soon as you reached 3×, and the “valley” of digital zoom was only from 2.1×-2.9×. The new iPhone Pro has a larger digital zoom “valley” of 2.1×-4.9×, and the optical boost to image quality comes much later at 5×.

So the 5× lens probably isn't helping a lot of people as much as the 3× lens was. Is your 5× lens helping you photograph, or do you wish you still had the 3×? On a related note, have you heard of the true zoom lenses on Chinese smartphones that have optical zoom from 3×-5×? Those seem pretty neat, but I doubt I'd expect anything that exciting from Apple. Their phones are pretty dull lately compared to the Chinese phones.

 

[cthompson94]

It really just depends on the user, you are right about the older models having the 1, 2, and 3x lenses, but your same scenario could be reversed and what if you need to go more and the older ones didn't have as many megapixels so the cropping would be even worse. The technical digital zoom between the 2x and 5x lens wouldn't affect the average user especially with current computational photography. I am sure there are plenty of specific lighting conditions that may look weird, but we are already at the point of either you like the sharpening and whatnot that Apple has been doing or you don't.

I could see the next iPhone or the one after adopting true optical zoom lenses and it isn't just the Chinese phones, but the Sony Xperia's have true Optical Zoom

 

[257Loner]

It really just depends on the user, you are right about the older models having the 1, 2, and 3x lenses, but your same scenario could be reversed and what if you need to go more and the older ones didn't have as many megapixels so the cropping would be even worse. The technical digital zoom between the 2x and 5x lens wouldn't affect the average user especially with current computational photography. I am sure there are plenty of specific lighting conditions that may look weird, but we are already at the point of either you like the sharpening and whatnot that Apple has been doing or you don't.

I could see the next iPhone or the one after adopting true optical zoom lenses and it isn't just the Chinese phones, but the Sony Xperia's have true Optical Zoom

You have a good couple of points. And yes, the Sony Xperia has a true zoom range.

One possible advantage to the 5× telephoto lens is that photos beyond 5× would crop the 5× lens instead of the 3× lens. However, with Apple's new 16 Pro model, you're still cropping a 12 megapixel sensor behind that 5× lens.

And you still have a "valley" of digital zoom between 2.1×-4.9×, which true zoom lens configurations could solve.

 

[Lotuskid]

as a hobbyist photographer i look at it mostly as a choice between prime lenses, ~50mm lens and ~77mm lens (2x and 3x respectively), or 120mm (5x)

generally if i have a 50mm lens on me i wouldn't pair it with an 77-85mm lens (the common portrait lens in that range). While they do offer different looks, they're too similar to use up bag space and weight

if i were to leave the house with some primes i might pair a 24mm (1x) with a 50mm (2x), alternatively i might use a 35mm (1.5x on the iphone) with an 85mm (about the 3x). With any of those pairings i have different looks to my shots.

this is why i don't mind the 5x lens. when i want a portrait shot with some natural bokeh i'm ok using the 2x option. the difference in range can usually be compensated with the feet, coming in closer for more of that 3x type look.

So for me its nice to have the 5x not necessarily as an indoor or portrait shot where its a little too tight, but as a zoom lens or short telephoto lens to get interesting frames i might not normally get

 

[jido]

I don't understand how it works.
Does the phone have a 1x to 2x zoom lens, a 5x lens and it uses cropping to bridge the gap between 2x and 5x? What is the resolution of the 4.99x image and the resolution of the 5x image, do you lose pixels if you don't go all the way?

 

[Lotuskid]

I don't understand how it works.
Does the phone have a 1x to 2x zoom lens, a 5x lens and it uses cropping to bridge the gap between 2x and 5x? What is the resolution of the 4.99x image and the resolution of the 5x image, do you lose pixels if you don't go all the way?

thats exactly it, the 3 lenses on the back correlate to the 0.5x, 1x, and 5x. At each of those points you're using the entire sensor behind the glass. Zooming in between, as in your example at 4.99x you're actually digitally zoomed really far into the 1x sensor, and as soon as you bump to 5x the phone will switch to the 5x lens

(with caveats because there's so much computational stuff behind the scenes it's not always this exact - for example at 2x it is essentially a crop in on the 48mp 1x lens, but apple has an image pipeline to try to make it so that there is no loss in quality)

 

[SteveJobs2.0]

I prefer the 5x because the only time I would use this lens anyways is to take a photo of something far away where more magnification is always better.

 

[FranApple]

thats exactly it, the 3 lenses on the back correlate to the 0.5x, 1x, and 5x. At each of those points you're using the entire sensor behind the glass. Zooming in between, as in your example at 4.99x you're actually digitally zoomed really far into the 1x sensor, and as soon as you bump to 5x the phone will switch to the 5x lens

(with caveats because there's so much computational stuff behind the scenes it's not always this exact - for example at 2x it is essentially a crop in on the 48mp 1x lens, but apple has an image pipeline to try to make it so that there is no loss in quality)

I had no idea that’s what it was doing. I thought I was free of digital zoom until after 5x. Are you sure? So you’re saying that we’re losing image quality for any zooming under 5x?

 

[1096bimu]

My prime lens collection usually go straight from 50mm to 100mm, I don't like 85mm lenses because they seem to be a "noob tube" for taking a full face portrait with nothing in the background so it's hard to mess up the composition.

When they first moved from the 2x telephoto to 3x I hated it because I never use 3x, not on a phone, not on my real camera.

Now that they're just going to remove the 3x and go to 5x I actually prefer this because for me, once you go past 50mm, longer is better, because you're just looking for maximum reach/zoom, which is also useful just as a utility/tool to examine something far away.

Focal length is also one of those things that's better measured in logarithms, in other words every 2x in focal length would yield you about the same amount of "zoom" subjectively speaking. 2x to 3x was never big enough of a jump to justify a different camera.

 

[Lotuskid]

I had no idea that’s what it was doing. I thought I was free of digital zoom until after 5x. Are you sure? So you’re saying that we’re losing image quality for any zooming under 5x?

Yes indeed. You’re right that after 5x it is a digital zoom. But it’s also a digital zoom in between any of the 0.5x/1x/5x that the camera app lets you quickly jump between. Each of those corresponds to one of the three lenses that are there on your phone

(again the 2x button is the exception, it’s there to make it seem like your iPhone has an extra fourth lens back there but clearly there are three lenses on the back of the pros)

However it’s not that you’re losing image quality under 5x - it’s only that anything in between the 3 fixes lenses are actually digital zooms on that sensor. And the worst image quality will likely be at the most zoomed you get before just switching to the next lens, which was OP’s point. So at 4.99x you’re actually zoomed way in on the 1x lens. If you zoom just a bit further to 5x you’ll see the image suddenly change as the camera has switched to the actual optical lens