iPhone 15 Pro Max camera review: How Apple’s new iPhone stands up after one month
Apple has been playing catch-up with Android when it comes to its cameras. But it really has taken a giant step forward with the iPhone 15.
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For the past couple of years, Apple has been playing catch-up with Android when it comes to its cameras.
But it has taken a giant step forward with the iPhone 15 range in 2023.
Its flagship iPhone 15 Pro Max arguably beats its biggest rivals in almost every category of photography and video.
From its macro camera which can shoot the detail inside a flower just 2cm away to its 5 times optical zoom lens which can pull in the action of your dogs at play in the distance, this is the pro camera system we’ve been waiting for.
There are now 7 optical quality lenses at your disposal, starting with the 13mm ultra wide format, while the main camera has a native focal length of 24mm. There’s also a 28mm option, 35mm, the 2x telephoto 48mm, the 77mm three times optical on the iPhone 15 Pro and the five times 120mm on the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
While Samsung’s S23 Ultra offers a 10 times optical lens, shooting at 5 times and then zooming up to digital 25x on the iPhone produced some decent results, particularly if you’re only posting on social media.
Shooting in 4k video and zooming to 5 times captured some pretty cool scenes of whales breaching a couple of hundred metres from our lookout. SEE THE VIDEO ABOVE
Having a five times optical zoom at your disposal for both photos and video makes such a big difference in what you can capture.
I spotted an eagle on a branch while walking along a boardwalk. Normally, you wouldn’t get much of a video at that distance but with the 5 times zoom I was able to capture a nice little clip of it drying its wing in the morning sun.
There are, however, some scenes where the Samsung still comes out the winner.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max may be made of grade 5 titanium – the same used on the Mars Rover – but its camera doesn’t take you to the moon as well as the Samsung S23 Ultra’s huge zoom.
The iPhone struggled to lock in on the moon as well as the Samsung in our tests.
But the iPhone did an incredible job in capturing the night sky and stars in another of our backyard tests, arguably better than the Samsung.
In general, the iPhone produces more natural and realistic photos while the Samsung camera is more vivid, making your colours pop more.
But in both phones you can adjust your settings, so on the iPhone you can set it to a more vivid mode if you like that look.
For pro users, there are, however, more settings you can change on the Samsung phone.
The main iPhone 15 camera has a high resolution 24MP sensor as the default but you can capture 48MP photos directly in HEIF format and ProRAW.
You have to go into your camera settings to switch in the higher resolution mode, which is probably not as obvious as it should be.
But once you have turned on ProRAW and Resolution Control you can turn the higher resolution on and off in the camera.
Looking at the cameras from the outside you might wonder how the extra zoom is achieved, given the cameras look the same as last year’s model.
A Tetraprism design enables the light rays to be reflected four times inside the glass structure of the lens to create enough separation between the lens and the sensor to create the 120mm focal length. As expected with Apple, it’s pretty clever technology.
iPhone’s portrait mode has always been a favourite for Apple users and now it’s even better.
IPHONE 15 ALWAYS ON FOR TAKING PORTRAITS
You no longer have to go into portrait mode to shoot the great blurred background bokeh effect.
When the iPhone detects a person, dog, or cat prominently in the frame, it automatically captures depth information so you can turn on the portrait effect later.
You will see an ƒ icon on the bottom left indicating your iPhone is capturing depth. You can also tap on the ƒ icon to preview and enable Portrait effect immediately. If you want to capture depth in any photo, just tap to focus anywhere in preview — the ƒ icon will appear.
To turn on portrait after the capture, tap Edit and tap on Portrait to turn the effect on. You can also now adjust the focus point of your portrait photo even after the shot. You just tap edit in the Photos app, and tap where you want to focus.
You can even change where the bokeh effect is by tapping in the background, which will blur the foreground. When tapping in the background, you can see beautiful bokeh on the foreground.
The camera also has a new advanced 3D sensor shift stabilisation system that moves in all three directions for the first time, allowing up to 10,000 microadjustments as you are taking a photo, twice as many as the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
There’s also a long-range zoom guide when zooming in 8x or more to help you better frame your long shots, similar to what is available on the Samsung S23 Ultra.
Apart from the camera, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is faster, has a better battery life than most, features new softly contoured edges, and is even lighter than its predecessor – a nice bonus.
NEW IPHONE 15 CHIP IS GREAT FOR GAMERS
The new A17 Pro chip offers some major improvements for games, including mesh shading and hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
One of the most talked about new features is the new customisable action button which you can use to switch on silent mode or use for the camera, to record voice memos, or anything with shortcuts.
The iPhone now has USB-C connectivity with iPhone 15 Pro users getting up to 20x faster transfer speeds.
That is super handy for syncing photos or video with your Mac, using external storage while shooting high resolution video or outputting 4K60 HDR to an external display.
It also gives you the added bonus of being able to charge your AirPods or Apple Watch with a cable from your phone.
With USB 3, the iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max supports recording ProRes directly to external storage, making it an even more appealing device for pro content creators.
When it comes to battery life, Apple says the iPhone 15 Pro Max delivers up to 29 hours of video playback – 9 more than the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
For storage considerations, it’s interesting to note that 24MP photos average about 3 megabytes in size compared to about two for a 12 MP photo.
If you are shooting in 48MP ProRaw, you can expect your photos to take up as much as 60MB.
That resolution, however, will mean you have plenty to work with in editing, allowing you to crop in on a favourite part of your image and still print out a decent size photo.
It’s also interesting to note that capturing depth image for future portrait shots doesn’t take up any more space on your phone.
CAMERA SPECS FOR IPHONE 15 PRO MAX
- 48MP Main: 24mm, ƒ/1.78 aperture, second‑generation sensor‑shift optical image stabilisation, 100 per cent Focus Pixels, support for super‑high‑resolution photos (24MP and 48MP)
- 12MP Ultra Wide: 13mm, ƒ/2.2 aperture and 120° field of view, 100 per cent Focus Pixels
- 12MP 2x Telephoto (enabled by quad‑pixel sensor): 48mm, ƒ/1.78 aperture, second‑generation sensor‑shift optical image stabilisation, 100 per cent Focus Pixels
- 12MP 5x Telephoto: 120mm, ƒ/2.8 aperture, 3D sensor‑shift optical image stabilisation and autofocus, tetraprism design
- 5x optical zoom in, 2x optical zoom out; 10x optical zoom range
- Digital zoom up to 25x
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Originally published as iPhone 15 Pro Max camera review: How Apple’s new iPhone stands up after one month
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