This is purely looking at the iPhone 16 Pro from a photography perspective, so if you are expecting thoughts on battery life, or performance click away (no pun intended)… I’ve been rocking the iPhone XR for 5 years, which was a great camera, but in modern terms was ancient with its single lens. So this review is overall favourable because it is for me a huge leap from the XR, but I appreciate for many this is an incremental upgrade. Let’s delve in…
Camera Control
Without doubt one of the stand out reasons my interest was peeked in the iPhone 16 Pro was the new ‘Camera Control’ button. When I bought my Lumix micro four thirds camera one of my prerequisites was a viewfinder. I’ve never been a huge fan of touch screen photography, and that’s why this button grabbed my interest. It will be interesting to see how successful this is for Apple, given they have spent over a decade training everyone to use their touch screens…
– As mentioned above, we’ve become so accustomed to using the screen that it took some muscle memory to get use to the button. After a short period of time I found myself enjoying the button. Arguably it is slower than using the screen, for example if you want to change exposure, focal length and image style this would involve multiple clicks and swipes of the Camera Control. But it does free the screen up for composition and distractions.
– As for the button placement it feels for me a few millimetres too for away for landscape. However, I understand why Apple have done this, as placing it further down the phone would make it even more awkward in portrait. Portrait is where the button really suffers, it just feels awkward with its placement as you are both holding the phone and trying to free a finger to use the button. The penny dropped for me in my testing and I’ve found a very workable solution to this, and that is to flip the phone so the cameras are at the bottom, kind of reminiscent of holding a ‘proper’ camera, supporting the lenses underneath. You just have to watch, particular with ultra wide that your fingers don’t creep into the frame.
– To take a shot the button requires a generous ‘click’ which whilst this can be quite satisfying, it feels as though you are introducing camera shake. I’ve not noticed a huge issue with sharpness, but it is definitely a little disconcerting at times.
– Another issue I have noticed is having your finger ready on the Camera Control button and being on a setting, for example like exposure if you slightly move your finger you can inadvertently change the exposure before clicking the shutter.
The Cameras
– Wide angle, and macro were definitely selling points for me. Wide angle offers a fresh new perspective and macro is fun. I’m not sure what the minimal focusing distance is for macro, but its very close. Keeping still for macro can be tricky, especially with the aforementioned ‘click’ required on Camera Control introducing some movement.
– This isn’t inherent to the iPhone 16 Pro, but something that has been more evident certainly with macro. The below example I used 5x, but the phone wanted to focus on the background. It would occasionally flip to the berries, but never sharp on the berries. No amount of tapping on the screen would get them in focus. I seemingly cannot force macro mode, the camera will recognise when close to a subject and go into macro mode, but there have been times where it hasn’t recognised a close subject and refused to go into macro.
– Whilst you can select different focal lengths between 1x and 5x, I can see why people would miss the 3x of the previous iPhone 15 Pro. It’s quite a jump between these focal ranges, having said that I have found 5x useful.
Image Quality
– As much I as I have enjoyed using wide angle I was disappointed when looking at the images on the computer the images are soft when pixel peeping at 100%. I say pixel peeping, because with 48 mega-pixel resolution, you are not going to notice the softness in most cases. I even wondered if there was a fault with my iPhone and searched online, but sure enough Dxo marked the wide angle detail down on scoring. In fact, having reviewed different focal lengths I would say the 5x optical is sharper.
– Distortion is very evident with the ultra wide angle, but even Apple can’t deny physics.
– I’ve been shooting Apple ProRAW, and have found the file latitude to be good, given the small sensor size and number of pixels crammed into the sensor. Of course it’s not on par with a full frame camera, and nor should it be.
– If you shoot a shot with a ‘style’ applied in ProRAW the ‘style’ is simply ignored when reviewing the image. Which is frustrating, because Apple show you the ‘style’ when taking the shot, but the shot is normal when reviewing the image back. Now this is to be expected to a degree when shooting RAW, however my experience on Canon is you get a JPEG representation of the style you shot, even if shooting RAW. If Apple aren’t going to implement something similar they at least need to give you a warning that your style isn’t going to be applied in ProRAW.
Design
There is no denying the incredible engineering and design that goes into the iPhone, but I’m not a fan of the camera bump… Whilst my XR had a bump, once in a case it sat flush on a desk, this isn’t the case with the iPhone 16 Pro. Even placing the phone on a Qi charger feels clumsy (importantly it does still charge). It makes me wonder if the phone was a few millimetres thicker for a flush design would it be better? I’m guessing weight would then be an issue….
Summary
Apple probably feels they need to keep up with the insane number of megapixels in some phones, but I’d happily take 24mp for sharper wide angle images. I’m not sure what the technical limitations are, but I’d love to see some manual focus using the Camera Control button to slide between near and far focus. Some focus peaking as an indication of focus would also be very useful. Overall these are an impressive set of cameras for a smartphone, and Camera Control offers a new way for phone photography. I hope Apple hasn’t trained everyone to use their screens that Camera Control becomes a flop and is dropped in years to come. How third parties take advantage of the Camera Control will be interesting and might be a determining factor on its success. Yesterday when I was wandering around I had a smile on my face, I was enjoying myself…. Photography can get pretty serious sometimes and whilst I didn’t take any amazing images I was just in the moment, having fun.