Apple dedicated a few moments of the nearly hour-long presentation of the iPhone 15 to the 28mm and 35mm custom shooting modes of the new Pro models. Technically, you get a cropped 28mm or 35mm portion of the native primary lens from 24mm and you get it at the same 24MP resolution as the default 24mm images. Apple says the iPhone 15 Pro is “like having seven professional lenses in your pocket.”
It’s a useful feature for those who prefer a focal length shorter than 24mm. Tap 1x mode in the camera to switch to 28mm (1.2x) and once again to 35mm (1.5x). You can also set the camera’s default focal length, which is very convenient.
But is Apple doing more than simply cropping the image and returning it to its original size? We did a little experiment to find out.
Before we get started, here are the default 24mm shots of both scenes taken with the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
The default focal length is 24mm
The images on the left are 28mm images captured by the iPhone’s native camera app and reproduced in the default 24MP format. We manually cropped the shots on the right and upscaled them to 24MP using Photoshop’s Preserve Details 2.0 resampling method. Looking at the results side by side, we’d say there’s no noticeable difference between Apple’s 28mm shot and our simple crop and enlargement.
28mm Native Camera • Cropped and enlarged from 28mm
Don’t forget to tap the compare button below the swatches to get a 100% enlarged look for yourself.
It’s the same story with 35mm images. Seemingly all Apple does here is crop the 24mm shot and bump the resolution up to 24MP, applying a bit of sharpening along the way. There’s no fancy computational photography going on here.
Native 35mm Camera • Cropped and enlarged from 35mm
There you have it: it’s like having three real lenses and four crop modes for a total of seven focal lengths. There’s no denying the convenience Apple offers. We are sure that many (including some here at the GSMArena team) will happily use a narrower default focal length for the native camera. But it’s not magic and comes at the expense of image quality. It’s also something others have been doing for years: Samsung’s default zoomed-in selfie, which expands when it sees more people in the frame.
This is just an observation we made while working on our review of the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Stay tuned for an in-depth look at Apple’s best phone ever!
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