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Tipster: iPhone 17 Pro to Feature 8x Zoom, Pro Camera App, and More
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Yeah, phone camera's really have been good enough for a number of years now. The camera on my 12 Pro is plenty good for me. In fact, I would prefer to keep that quality and either get TouchID back or a headphone jack (or both) with all that extra space they keep using to make the camera better, anything left over can go to battery.
and here I am not really caring. I have a 12 Pro, and the camera is good enough on this phone. The iPhone 11 was the last camera update where I felt it was a decent upgrade, and even then I waited a whole year after that before upgrading my 6S to the 12 Pro.
That seems a bit over the top now though. Phones have taken great photo's for years now. There is such a thing as diminishing returns.
Going from a 12 to 48 MP sensor seems significant to me.
Yup. I take "zoom" photos fairly often, and at higher zoom levels with a 12MP sensor, resolution can be poor. I'd like the resolution to be good enough so that things I photograph in the distance are sharper in the photo than they often are.
I mean, yeah. The number quadrupled. But that doesn't mean it's as noticeable as 3 to 12MP was. It's kind of like TV's. Anything more than 4K is kind of a waste outside of very specific circumstances. So yeah. diminishing returns. My 12 Pro takes great photos. I don't really find myself wishing they looked better anymore.
Exactly! I use all of the lenses regularly. The upgrades especially over recent years have been pretty noticeable to me. I hope they keep improving.
Where the cameras have continued to improve strongly is readout time.
That is how long it takes to read out all the pixels in the frame.
This is important for video for reasons that should be clear: if you haven’t read out all the pixels in the video frame in 1/30 second then you can’t shoot 30 frames per second video at full quality. You have to start skipping lines of pixels (taking a hit in quality), binning pixels together (ditto), reading pixels at shallower bit depth (ditto), cropping so there are fewer pixels in the frame (ditto, and now your lens is no longer a wide angle), etc.
Once you’re done with 24, 25, and 30 frames per second (the common ones for high-quality video), there is still value in reading faster until you can do 50/60, 100/120, and even 200/240 frames per second for slow motion video at full quality. Even the latest iPhone Pro models are a long way from achieving that.
Readout time matters much more to image quality than having enough pixels to do 8K video, and having enough pixels for 8K is in direct conflict with a fast readout time (more pixels = slower). This is why Apple has appeared reluctant to add 8K video or go beyond 12 megapixel sensors.
What may be less obvious is that readout speed also affects stills photography.
The computational photography features in phones rely on taking multiple pictures in short succession and cleverly combining them into one result. For several distinct reasons, doing that more quickly improves the result.
Moreover, autofocus speed / accuracy, subject detection / tracking, and the live view display while framing your photo are also greatly affected by readout speed.
Apple phones tend to be cutting edge by this important metric, often being the first to use an improved sensor available from Sony (the leading manufacturer of such sensors).
So when you hear about some Chinese company making an allegedly better camera, be suspicious. It’s usually just a camera with strong performance in a couple of axes at the expense of others … usually including readout speed.
That is how long it takes to read out all the pixels in the frame.
This is important for video for reasons that should be clear: if you haven’t read out all the pixels in the video frame in 1/30 second then you can’t shoot 30 frames per second video at full quality. You have to start skipping lines of pixels (taking a hit in quality), binning pixels together (ditto), reading pixels at shallower bit depth (ditto), cropping so there are fewer pixels in the frame (ditto, and now your lens is no longer a wide angle), etc.
Once you’re done with 24, 25, and 30 frames per second (the common ones for high-quality video), there is still value in reading faster until you can do 50/60, 100/120, and even 200/240 frames per second for slow motion video at full quality. Even the latest iPhone Pro models are a long way from achieving that.
Readout time matters much more to image quality than having enough pixels to do 8K video, and having enough pixels for 8K is in direct conflict with a fast readout time (more pixels = slower). This is why Apple has appeared reluctant to add 8K video or go beyond 12 megapixel sensors.
What may be less obvious is that readout speed also affects stills photography.
The computational photography features in phones rely on taking multiple pictures in short succession and cleverly combining them into one result. For several distinct reasons, doing that more quickly improves the result.
Moreover, autofocus speed / accuracy, subject detection / tracking, and the live view display while framing your photo are also greatly affected by readout speed.
Apple phones tend to be cutting edge by this important metric, often being the first to use an improved sensor available from Sony (the leading manufacturer of such sensors).
So when you hear about some Chinese company making an allegedly better camera, be suspicious. It’s usually just a camera with strong performance in a couple of axes at the expense of others … usually including readout speed.
I wish Apple would add a built-in hardware ND filter, whether mechanical (unlikely) or variable electronic (like the Sony FX6 has).
When you shoot video, the shutter speed should be locked to 1/(2×fps) seconds, where fps is the frame rate. So if you’re shooting 24p video, the shutter speed should be 1/48 second.
This amount of motion blur makes the video look beautiful, natural, and cinematic (because we associate high-quality video with the cinema).
But of course the shutter speed will actually be something ridiculous like 1/2000 second in typical daylight video with an iPhone, because the lens has such a low f-number. So bicycle wheels roll weirdly backwards, birds fly onto the electric pole in staccato jumps across the blue sky, and all the other anomalies we see in digital-looking phone video.
An ND filter would cure all that. It’s why cinematographers, documentary video shooters, and even most YouTubers use ND filters. But they’re annoying to use. You have to screw them on and off a lens as the light changes (and have somewhere to screw them, which on a phone means a bulky case). They’re kinda expensive, easy to scratch or break (drop), and worst of all, you have to know that you should be using one and how to use it – technical matters beyond most people.
If Apple automated the ND function to maintain a cinematic shutter speed in video, they would democratise high-quality video like never before.
When you shoot video, the shutter speed should be locked to 1/(2×fps) seconds, where fps is the frame rate. So if you’re shooting 24p video, the shutter speed should be 1/48 second.
This amount of motion blur makes the video look beautiful, natural, and cinematic (because we associate high-quality video with the cinema).
But of course the shutter speed will actually be something ridiculous like 1/2000 second in typical daylight video with an iPhone, because the lens has such a low f-number. So bicycle wheels roll weirdly backwards, birds fly onto the electric pole in staccato jumps across the blue sky, and all the other anomalies we see in digital-looking phone video.
An ND filter would cure all that. It’s why cinematographers, documentary video shooters, and even most YouTubers use ND filters. But they’re annoying to use. You have to screw them on and off a lens as the light changes (and have somewhere to screw them, which on a phone means a bulky case). They’re kinda expensive, easy to scratch or break (drop), and worst of all, you have to know that you should be using one and how to use it – technical matters beyond most people.
If Apple automated the ND function to maintain a cinematic shutter speed in video, they would democratise high-quality video like never before.
Other things that would make a big splash for photography or video:
- a lens in the 50 mm-e region. The main camera is too wide (around 24 mm-e) and the tele is too long (although rumoured to get shorter in the 17 Pro). Most important photography of the 20th century was done around this focal length
- wireless support for triggering a flash strobe. I guess the argument is “why bother?”, but I think photographers would find innovative uses for synching flash to an iPhone. And it would be practically free to include (at Apple volumes). The radio hardware is already in the phone. Just needs the right software and a little wireless receiver with a synch port for the flash to plug into
- wireless microphone support and an Apple lavalier microphone (that’s the little type that clips onto clothing below the neck). Wouldn’t even have to do anything clever if it takes the work out of synching audio, but since it’s Apple, why not make it clever too?
That’s the argument Apple uses, but I say it’s not close enough.
It uses one-quarter of the sensor area that was small to begin with.
Image quality drops off a cliff due to a 2-stop loss of dynamic range and signal-to-noise performance (before getting into the problem of the lens not adequately resolving the 12 megapixels, and the 12 megapixels not having a useful 12 megapixels of information because the original 48-megapixel count was ‘fake’ to begin with (quad bayer colour filter array).
I understand and somehow agree. For me, the 70mm-range is very useful. Never really felt the need for 50.
Most realistic guess is that actual telephoto may become 4x, instead of the previous 3.5x rumour. Then 12mpx 8x crop sounds plausible.
A true 48mpx 4-8x zoom lens seems off-limits for today. Yes, Sony Xperia may have similar one but they have small aperture and poor outcome at low light. It's not the best solution unless Apple has something exceptional up its sleeves.
Btw, hopefully the actual phone won't look like the image on this post. Is it me only, but gives impression as if two units on one piece about to fold & snap between. So irritating... Instead, a solid continuous design will be more Applesque.
A true 48mpx 4-8x zoom lens seems off-limits for today. Yes, Sony Xperia may have similar one but they have small aperture and poor outcome at low light. It's not the best solution unless Apple has something exceptional up its sleeves.
Btw, hopefully the actual phone won't look like the image on this post. Is it me only, but gives impression as if two units on one piece about to fold & snap between. So irritating... Instead, a solid continuous design will be more Applesque.
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Couldn't agree more, but still hoping we might be wrong and there will be an optical zoom.
Interesting...: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/27/iphone-200-megapixel-camera-rumor/
Could also be that...
Could also be that...
The problem with Apple's camera arrangement is that there is too large of a jump between the regular and tele cameras, and that jump needs to be fixed with AI which is a poor relacement for sensor cropping. That's one of the reason why I chose the 5X Pro over the 10X ProMax.