At its "awe dropping" event Tuesday, Apple whipped the covers off its latest iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, which pack a whole host of updates, including a divisive new orange color. But as a professional photographer it's the cameras I'm especially excited about and the new Pro models boast a plethora of updates that have got the tech nerd in me quivering with excitement like a jelly on a balance board. Let's dive in and find out more.
Longer telephoto zoom
First up, the telephoto zoom. While the 16 Pro offered 5x optical zoom, the 17 Pro takes that to 8x -- the equivalent of strapping on a whopping 200mm lens to a regular camera. I love using a long lens with my Canon R5. It allows me to find more interesting compositions in a scene that would be lost if I simply stood there with a wide-angle lens. And while the 5x was a good sweet spot for many scenes, I often wanted that extra reach for more distant subjects, but didn't want to sacrifice image quality by just digitally zooming in.
Now, the Pro model offers the full camera bag, going from ultrawide at one end to super zoom at the other. The sensor for the telephoto lens now has 48 megapixels of resolution and is physically bigger than the previous model. This is great -- a bigger sensor captures more light and more light means better-looking images. I'm really excited to see how this larger sensor might allow for natural-looking telephoto images without the heavy-handed over-sharpening seen on many rival zoom systems.
Cinematic footage underwater? Check. Apple/Screenshot by CNET
I'd honestly have loved to have seen a larger sensor on the main camera too. I wanted to see Apple go big with a 1-inch-type sensor, like the ones found on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra and 15 Ultra, which can deliver stunning quality. It doesn't appear that Apple has changed the main camera hardware that much this time round and I guess that's fine. After all, it was already among the best phone cameras around, so why mess too much with a good thing?
As a professional photographer I've used my iPhone in place of my usual camera on many occasions when I didn't expect to need my camera. I've even published iPhone images in magazines. Did I need Apple to overhaul its main camera? No. Would I have liked to have seen it slap on a full-frame image sensor with interchangeable lenses? Oh hells yes. It does have "second-generation" sensor-shift optical image stabilizations, which should help for low-light images, while the ultrawide camera remains a healthy 48 megapixels.
ProRes Raw video
As well as a photographer, I'm a video producer, creating videos for CNET and producing YouTube videos for my channel about photography. I'm frequently working on location and creating videos that show how I take photos, which means carrying a lot of gear -- I need a camera to take photos and I need a camera to film me taking those photos.
Last year I shot a particularly cinematic video in the mountains of Wales (embedded below) and I had to haul a huge amount of gear on my back, including two cameras, two tripods, a monitor for the video camera and mics, lenses and filters. It's why I'm excited about Apple's other big upgrade to the cameras: ProRes Raw video.
Apple introduced the ProRes video codec to its iPhone 13 Pro back in 2021, which basically captured a lot more information in videos for a more professional look. ProRes Raw captures even more information, bypassing a lot of the built-in image processing (like sharpening) in order to give a lot more flexibility with the resulting video files in post-production. As Apple says, ProRes Raw is the industry-standard format on professional cinematic productions, so the fact that a phone can now do this is wild.
"But Andy, no serious filmmakers will use a phone for their filming," I hear you cry. Not so: The recent smash hit zombie flick 28 Years Later was filmed on iPhone 15 Pros and they didn't have ProRes Raw. They weren't even the most recent model available at the time. While an iPhone might not deliver the same quality as a huge cinema camera and lens costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, the iPhone's tiny size means it can be used in small spaces and for fast-paced action where bigger camera rigs will fail.
Sure, my little YouTube channel isn't exactly a Hollywood production, but I relish any opportunity to flex my creative muscles and try to create a video that's a bit more cinematic. And with the updates to the iPhone 17 Pro's camera, I'll be much better equipped to create better-looking videos without having to carry spine-crushing amounts of gear with me.