Sebastiaan de With’s iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Review

Sebastiaan de With:

I will not quit until I have shown you an inordinate amount of comparisons between the main camera and its new, long 5× telephoto counterpart. Not because it’s just fun to see how much it zooms, but also to show you how differently you have to look at the world around you. [...]

This has a funny psychological effect: once I shoot at 5× for a while, the Main lens feels... wider somehow. I’ve had to double-check a few times if I am not accidentally shooting at 0.5×. I suspect that this is what led to Apple adding the 28- and 35mm “lenses” to the camera — once you are going between such extreme ranges, the change is just a bit jarring.

Is it a great lens?

It is, hands down, the sharpest telephoto lens Apple has ever shipped. “Of course!”, you could argue. “Why wouldn’t it be? It’s 2023 and technology gets better. Why wouldn’t it be sharper than the last one?”

Well, it’s a long lens. It is truly remarkable how nicely this new lens captures detail despite that length.

Illustrated with dozens of terrific photos. I had a similar experience testing the 15 Pro Max’s 5× lens: it requires an entirely different way of looking at the world. Consider my fingers crossed that this lens makes it way down to the regular-sized iPhone 16 Pro next year.

★ Thursday, 5 October 2023