Seems like a fair amount of user error in this video. First thing he did was try to use the telephoto to take a picture of a close up object. It's well known that when you try to take a picture of an object inside the minimum focal distance of your chosen lens, the iPhone will drop back to the next widest lens and then crop and upscale the image to match the equivalent field of view. So, when he took a picture of his shoes (which was definitely too close for the 4x to focus on), the phone dropped back to the 1x main camera and gave him an upscaled image. That image was 12 MP by necessity and of course it didn't look great. BTW, had he tried to do the same thing with the 5x telephoto on the 15 Pro Max, he would have had the exact same thing happen.
My experience with the telephoto on the 17 Pro is that is a step up from the 5x on the 16 Pro, but not a dramatic step up. The improvements are much more subtle than what you would expect from Apple's marketing (and I suspect the marketing is driving some of the disappointment we are seeing). My observations (in no particular order):
- The 4x lens on the 17 Pro zoomed in to 5x captures more detail than the optical 5x lens on the 16 Pro. I attribute this to the higher res sensor on the 17 capturing more information. The 17 Pro also still produces a 24 MP image at 5x, which makes me think it's doing the same processing trickery that allows the 1x lens to still get 24 MP images at 28mm and 35mm equivalents. That's a nice bonus since the 16 Pro still captures a 12 MP image at 5x. Here's a comparison shot of the 17 Pro 4x zoomed to 120mm equivalent (the same field of view on the 16 Pro 5x). At first glance they look similar. But then as you zoom in, you see the 17 Pro was able to pick up things like the texture of the paper on the Da Vinci biography. It was able to resolve that the word Atomic is made of small dots in the next book to the right. And smaller letters and fine details are just crisper throughout the image. Much of that is probably due to the extra resolution of the 17 Pro sensor. There is also just less noise in the 17 Pro image. I couldn't post the full 17 Pro image here because it's 24 MP but here's the comparison of a sampled area of the image.
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- If you zoom both phones in to 8x in camera, the 17 Pro really pulls away. Both phones produce a 12 MP image at this point. But the 17 Pro again has more detail and less noise, likely due to the extra resolution and the physically larger sensor. The 16 Pro has to crop the smaller 12 MP sensor and then upscale and you can really see how much it has to rely on over-sharpening at this point. The 17 Pro goes a little too far in noise reduction, leading to a slightly soft image. But I still greatly prefer it to the 16 Pro image. The 17 Pro is simply working with more information. Here's a comparison of the 8x shot from both cameras focusing on the same set of books.
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- The 4x can give some decent optical bokeh if you focus on a subject right near the minimum focus distance of the lens. It's not DSLR quality by any means. But you can see some benefit from the larger sensor.
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- I am finding the 4x on the 17 Pro to be soft some of the time. But it's not consistently so. So, I am not sure if it is a case of the lens not having enough resolving power for the higher res sensor or if it is an issue with the sensor stabilization or the image processing pipeline that could be corrected in software later on.
- In general, I'm finding the telephoto on the 17 Pro to be an upgrade. It captures more detail and the 4x/8x option is more versatile than the 5x on the 16 Pro. I think people heard 48 MP in Apple's marketing and thought they were getting a DSLR. It's still a phone camera. But it can produce very nice images if you work with it.
I don't have a 14 Pro to compare the 1x cameras. In general, I have found my 1x shots to be about the same as the 16 Pro, which is to say very good. The 1x camera continues to be noticeably superior to the other cameras, though the gap has shrunk a little this year.
