Is there some reason you are stuck at 2x? For much further magnification the 16 Pro should be a considerable improvement.
Or consider trying the 15 Pro which has a 3x optical telephoto and might be closer to what you want.
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Variable Aperture Rumored to Bring Major Camera Upgrade to iPhone 18 Pro
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Or consider trying the 15 Pro which has a 3x optical telephoto and might be closer to what you want.
I have unironically been saying this for years. Of all the things the iphone does, the camera is by far and away the biggest feature in terms of utility and physicality. Apple should lean into this and make an iCamera.
Because you are in very bright sunlight and want less light.
That is wasting a lot of the flexibility of the camera, control over DOF is an important axis for creative control, but if that’s what you like…
Been wishing for this for a while!
Exciting news!
Every year I promise myself to get the pro (never had a pro iphone), but I end up saving the money.
2026 might be the year, if this rumour proves to be genuine.
Exciting news!
Every year I promise myself to get the pro (never had a pro iphone), but I end up saving the money.
2026 might be the year, if this rumour proves to be genuine.
Well no, megapixels absolutely do matter. The more pixels you have, the more detail you can capture, it's why the 48mp sensor bump from 12 was such a huge improvement to the images that we can capture now.
You are right that the sensors physical size does help with image quality, but if you're still limiting yourself to sensor resolution, there's only so much you can improve. And making the sensor larger doesn't improve the detail you can capture, it's more facilitating light capture and colour accuracy (so better colours and less noise).
Also, aperture is far from redundant. If you want more light sure, use the wider aperture, however you might not always want the trade-off of a shallower DOF. You also may be in a situation where you want less light anyway, like outside.
If you want "better sensor tech that can fit a huge sensor in a phone body" you're pretty much into the mirrorless camera market. What you want isn't possible with current optical capture implementations.
👍👍👍
I think that around 3 years will be the sweet spot. Tech is evolving, but not so fast like in prior years. If you are enthusiast - every or every 2nd year is fine.
It would likely result in a Pixel-style camera bar. The expense of developing such a mechanism would likely mean it only ends up on very high-end phones.
For those wondering why you'd want this: it would be a gamechanger for filming in the highest quality (ProRes + Log).
At present, the only way to do this outdoors is by attaching a large neutral density filter to the back of the phone (ie a dark filter that prevents most of the light getting through) - and you have to manually adjust it as the amount of light changes - eg sun going behind a cloud or walking between two differently lit areas.
That's because to adjust for light in video
i) shutter speed (which makes the video look choppy when dialled up - think fight scenes in Gladiator)
ii) amount of light (ie aperture)
iii) frames per second - but you don't want to mess about with this
iv) ND filter - typically used in video so that you can keep the aperture at the optimum setting to get the desired depth of field (how much of the background is in focus)
DJI's more expensive drones have variable aperture to avoid having to fiddle around with ND filters as much.
If iPhones did likewise, Apple could take advantage of the feature to deliver better quality video automatically AND prosumers could experiment more without having to turn their phone into a frankenstein device (apart from needing an external SD, microphone etc)
At present, the only way to do this outdoors is by attaching a large neutral density filter to the back of the phone (ie a dark filter that prevents most of the light getting through) - and you have to manually adjust it as the amount of light changes - eg sun going behind a cloud or walking between two differently lit areas.
That's because to adjust for light in video
i) shutter speed (which makes the video look choppy when dialled up - think fight scenes in Gladiator)
ii) amount of light (ie aperture)
iii) frames per second - but you don't want to mess about with this
iv) ND filter - typically used in video so that you can keep the aperture at the optimum setting to get the desired depth of field (how much of the background is in focus)
DJI's more expensive drones have variable aperture to avoid having to fiddle around with ND filters as much.
If iPhones did likewise, Apple could take advantage of the feature to deliver better quality video automatically AND prosumers could experiment more without having to turn their phone into a frankenstein device (apart from needing an external SD, microphone etc)
The surface area is indeed over 4x larger on the new 16 Pro. A 2x crop on the 16 will give you a 1/2.6" sensor area vs the 1/3.4" that the 2x telephoto of your XS does.
Since iPhone has cheap plastic lens incapable of real bokeh, what are we even talking about? They use computations to blur background. There is no point in having less blur in background since there is virtually no blur. They better focus on their cheap lens quality than trying “pro” gimmicks from 5 years old smartphones
Camera, camera, camera. I can safely say that the majority of people don’t use most of the features on the iPhone 16 camera
I’d rather see under screen face I.D which would eliminate the Dynamic Island or a unibody iPhone or a folding iPhone or some other hardware improvement from one of the many patents they hold
Apple has fallen behind.
I’d rather see under screen face I.D which would eliminate the Dynamic Island or a unibody iPhone or a folding iPhone or some other hardware improvement from one of the many patents they hold
Apple has fallen behind.
Another fun fact: I have S9. 6 year old and still going strong. No problems with the camera. Current uptime is more than two years (i.e. no reboots in the last two years).
Adjustable aperture could be very helpful in some use cases but depth of field is already very deep on such a small sensor size. There is no real further control to gain over it. The most you can do is be wide open, which is what these iPhone lenses already are. Any bokeh from your portrait mode photos is computational/fake.
I just had my Xs Max’s battery replaced. I love the cameras, but love 3D Touch sooo much. Can’t let go of this phone!
Hmm. That’s so far into the future I doubt we can really put much faith into the rumors (and it’s Kuo, who has made some... incredibly wrong statements this year, see his iPhone demand prediction based on Apple Store app shipping times), but I can explain really quickly why this would be nice.
Simply put, your iPhone has a fixed aperture now. We’ve been pushing towards bigger apertures for a while (curiously represented by as smaller number - f/4 is a smaller aperture than f/1.4)
A big aperture is nice: you collect a lot more light AND you get that nice natural ‘bokeh’, the sort of portrait effect you get when the lens can separate the foreground and background.
But you also collect more light and can’t ‘toggle’ that depth of field. Something will be in focus and something out of focus. Maybe you’ll want all of it to be sharp! That’s not possible right now.
Other times you might want to take video and have the motion be a little bit blurry so it looks more cinematic. Today, you have to use a sort of sunglasses lens for your iPhone for that called an ND filter.
That wouldn’t be quite as necessary with a variable aperture that can open and close to let in more or less light. I’d like it. It’s also a moving part in your iPhone that can break, though.
Simply put, your iPhone has a fixed aperture now. We’ve been pushing towards bigger apertures for a while (curiously represented by as smaller number - f/4 is a smaller aperture than f/1.4)
A big aperture is nice: you collect a lot more light AND you get that nice natural ‘bokeh’, the sort of portrait effect you get when the lens can separate the foreground and background.
But you also collect more light and can’t ‘toggle’ that depth of field. Something will be in focus and something out of focus. Maybe you’ll want all of it to be sharp! That’s not possible right now.
Other times you might want to take video and have the motion be a little bit blurry so it looks more cinematic. Today, you have to use a sort of sunglasses lens for your iPhone for that called an ND filter.
That wouldn’t be quite as necessary with a variable aperture that can open and close to let in more or less light. I’d like it. It’s also a moving part in your iPhone that can break, though.
👏 Agreed. 💯
Who would have guessed that single digit focal length lenses have depth of field (DoF) would be practically the same regardless of f1 or f8. If only we could calculate DoF to be sure.🤔😏
You have an f0.9 lens? I'm so jealous. I would sell your soul for a sub f1.0 lens.😁
I don't understand why someone would stop it down to f11, unless you're shooting an eclipse and those stacking ND 100000 filters ain't cutting it. Wut? You didn't pack your ND filter? Amateur.😘
Oh I can only dream😂 My current max is 1.8, maybe one day I will try 1.4. But I have seen photographs taken with it, it looks literally like human eye, especially 28 and 35mm ones. Surely the camera matters too, but I was literally blown away by how naturally soft and at the same time detailed images were.
Oh I played a lot with those nice little glasses back in the days. Made some of the best daylight shots of waterfall and river. Unfortunately one day I got too lazy to carry them around when my trusty tripod broke down.
I think when companies try to pull something like variable apertures they forget they are still dealing with fingernail sized sensors, and in practice it becomes almost useless to close the aperture down since the sensor is already not getting proper amount of light and it gets even less light after that which results in noise or (more likely in modern smartphones) watercolor-like noise reduction patterns and subsequent detail loss. I played a lot with my s10+ camera and almost always exclusively used the fully open aperture, probably also because Open Camera (my fav app for unprocessed shots) never had support for variable aperture and it was available only in Samsung pro camera mode which while was very good in terms of settings still applied processing unless RAW dng was used (which wasn’t bad either!)
My camera is basically for note-taking. It doesn’t need to be fancy. I’d be happy if they bring back the iPhone mini with a single, flush 48MP lens and a weight under 6 oz.
I'm holding out for iPhone 22. We all know that will be much, much better.
You should have bought the 17 Pro Max Ultra Slim PlusOh no. I have buyers remorse now for buying the 17 Pro Max Ultra Slim