iPhone 15 Pro camera: During its recent iPhone 15 presentation, Apple unveiled the new Pro models with custom 28mm and 35mm shooting modes. These modes technically offer a cropped view from the native 24mm primary lens, maintaining the same 24MP resolution as the default 24mm images. Apple claims that with the iPhone 15 Pro, you essentially have “seven pro lenses in your pocket.”
Benefits of 28mm and 35mm Modes
This feature is a boon for those who prefer a focal length narrower than 24mm. Switching to the 28mm (1.2x) or 35mm (1.5x) modes is as simple as tapping the 1x mode in the camera app, offering added convenience. You can even make either of these your default camera focal length of the iPhone 15 Pro camera.
Quality Comparison
But is Apple’s approach more than just cropping and upscaling the image? To find out, we conducted an experiment. First, we captured default 24mm shots with the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Comparison Results
We then compared Apple’s native 28mm shots, outputted in the default 24MP, with our manually cropped shots upscaled to 24MP using Photoshop’s Preserve Details 2.0 resampling method. Upon examining the results side by side, we couldn’t discern any significant difference between Apple’s 28mm shot and our simple crop-and-upscale approach.
Same Story for 35mm
The same holds true for the 35mm images. Apple appears to crop the 24mm shot and increase the resolution back to 24MP, applying some sharpening in the process. There’s no elaborate computational photography at play here.
Conclusion
In essence, the iPhone 15 Pro offers the convenience of having seven focal lengths, including three actual lenses and four crop modes. While this convenience is undeniable, it does come at the expense of image quality. Notably, this approach is not groundbreaking and has been employed by other manufacturers for years. In our ongoing review of the iPhone 15 Pro Max, we’ll delve deeper into Apple’s latest flagship offering.
Stay tuned for more insights into what Apple’s best phone ever has to offer!
