Every year, Apple brings us a major camera upgrade with its latest iPhone and its Pro series is always at the center. We saw it with the upgrade to a 48-megapixel sensor with the iPhone 14 Pro models, but this year the big change is a 5x Telephoto Camera that’s exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
And the upgrades don’t stop there. If you’re ready to spring for the best iPhone with the best cameras, here are all the improvements you’ll get with the iPhone 15 Pro models.
5X ZOOM
Exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, the triple-camera system gets iPhone’s first-ever 5x telephoto camera with a 120mm focal length. The new camera has a 25 percent larger sensor than its predecessor and can be stopped down to f/2.8. The new camera makes the iPhone 15 Pro Max more than capable when it comes to portraits, close-up shots, or even sports events, and weddings.
Traditional telephoto lenses are often big and bulky, but Apple managed to replicate this telephoto capability with a “tetraprism” design where the camera system reflects light rays four times between the lens and the sensor to achieve a longer focal length. By comparison, the iPhone 15 Pro will only get a 12-megapixel 3x Telephoto camera.
BETTER NIGHT MODE AND SMART HDR
With the new A17 Pro chip, the iPhone 15 Pro models also get a boost to Night mode and Smart HDR photos. A new Photonic Engine and LiDAR scanner improve Night mode to deliver portraits with sharper details and vivid colors in low-light situations. Apple also made improvements with Smart HDR so that it could capture brighter highlights and deeper shadows, while still nailing the midtones. The Smart HDR option is also supposed to more accurately capture skin tones.
SPATIAL VIDEOS
Later this year, Apple says it will let its iPhone 15 Pro models record spatial video, which you can watch on your Apple Vision Pro. This feature may only apply to those who can afford Apple’s $3,500 headset, but it’s still an exciting inclusion for the future of video.
The iPhone 15 Pro achieves this three-dimensional effect by combining its main and ultra-wide cameras, making videos feel a lot more life-like when you rewatch them. Apple hasn’t said an exact date for this spatial video capability, though.
LOG ENCODING
If you’re taking videos for your TikTok or Instagram Stories this feature won’t matter much, but the introduction of Log encoding with iPhone 15 Pro gives amateur cinematographers more control over the look of the video in post-production. Apple also made the iPhone 15 Pro the first smartphone to support the Academy Color Encoding System, or ACES, which is a global standard for color workflows when it comes to shooting video.
