According to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro could get “the biggest leap in camera hardware” in some time. We're unable to see if there's any detail behind that claim as the article is paywalled, but at this stage the iPhone 18's exact hardware details will still be closely guarded anyway. The most widely rumored upgrade has been the addition of a variable aperture lens for the primary camera. While potentially useful in a few scenarios - being able to increase depth of field in macro shots, for instance - it's hard to argue that this would constitute a "big leap" in camera hardware. I've gone into much more detail about why a variable aperture lens really isn't a big deal in camera phones here. A physically larger, higher resolution sensor for the primary camera would be much more noteworthy, but I wonder whether Apple would want to move away from using 48MP sensors across all three modules just yet.

It's also been speculated that the iPhone 18 Pro's telephoto camera could receive a larger aperture lens. The 48MP 1/2.55" sensor was new for the iPhone 17 Pro, so that may well be carried over for the '18 Pro, but replacing the current f/2.8 lens with something faster would result in quicker shutter speeds, which is always a good thing when shooting at long focal lengths. However, what will likely be a small increase in aperture is also nothing like a leap in camera hardware. A more impressive hardware change for the telephoto camera would be to increase its zoom. Due to switching to the larger 48MP sensor for the iPhone 17 Pro's telephoto module, zoom was reduced to 4x (down from 5x in the '16 Pro). For context, the Oppo Find X9 Ultra (which is almost the same price as an equivalent iPhone 17 Pro Max) sports a 10x telephoto camera, with a sensor only marginally smaller than that in the iPhone's 4x telephoto module.

Other rumors point to the iPhone 18 Pro potentially having exclusive, pro-focussed camera software features. Quite what these could be is unknown - Apple already reserves its ProRAW image capture for iPhone Pro models. The speculation suggests that Apple "is looking to give the built-in camera app on its smartphone an upgrade...the existing iPhone camera app contains mostly basic controls."

A big leap in camera hardware for the iPhone 18 Pro would be very welcome though. Recent iPhone generations have offered incremental improvements where rival Android flagships, most notably those from Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo, have pushed camera hardware forward at a far more rapid pace. It's about time the iPhone started being revolutionary again, not merely evolutionary.

Story credit: 9 to 5 Mac

You may not have heard of Core Image RAW – but if you've shot or opened a RAW photo on an iPhone, you've already used it. Now, the software that Apple uses to process RAW photos is getting a key upgrade to reduce noise.

Apple has announced the latest updates to Core Image RAW, the software that processes RAW images taken on iPhones and handles RAW processing in Apple image editing tools. This software is used everywhere from the native Photos app to some third-party apps like Pixelmator Pro.

Core Image RAW 9 was announced in a YouTube video released earlier this week, and is slated for rollout as part of macOS 27 and iOS 27 across Apple devices and image editing apps in September of this year.

The major upgrade is the software’s ability to de-noise RAW images, now heavily driven by machine learning (ML).

By infusing ML, an artificial intelligence (AI) model, into demosaicing – the process of ensuring all image pixels contain the colors red, green, and blue – RAW files appear drastically less grainy, and unwanted color artifacts are reduced.

Above: Apple imaging engineer explains the updates coming with Core Image RAW 9

In the video, Apple imaging engineer David Hayward presents several examples demonstrating the denoising power of Core Image RAW 9, but it’s the close-up image of crayons that most impresses me.

First we see the image rendered with the previous Core Image RAW 8 model, which relies on traditional, hand-tuned algorithms for demosaicing. Then we see the same image processed by the latest software version.

To my eye, the results are significantly better, with fine details becoming much clearer and grain drastically reduced, albeit with some slight softening.

Above: swipe to see Apple Core Image RAW Version 8 vs Version 9

Core Image RAW 9 is the eighth upgrade Apple has made to its RAW processing engine, with the stack of programs currently able to process RAW files captured on 846 cameras across all the major brands.

While version 9 of the processing engine is more resource-intensive for devices, iPhone photographers and people who edit RAW files in Apple applications can expect much crisper images.

In the video, which came out as Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2026 kicked off, Hayward also mentions that activating Core Image RAW 9 requires making some slight adjustments to the underlying code of some image editing apps.

However, he doesn’t state whether this will be the case once the latest iOS and macOS versions are released later this year.

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At WWDC Apple announced Spatial Refeaming, one of two new imaging tools for its iOS 27 operating system used on iPhones and iPads.

The other significant AI update was AI generative improvements to the photo editing, but the idea of being able to move the camera after taking the picture.

Rather than just AI reframing that extends the image – such as many of us have become used to in Photoshop – what Apple showed was a feature that allowed the camera to be re-positioned around the subject, with the AI re-shaping the subject using AI, and generating a suitable background generated using AI.

You can see the effect working in this example from Apple. For an example of the extend that AI is involved, look closely at the boy’s legs, and you’ll see that it has clearly created a 3D model and adjusted the image according to the spatial position that the camera would be in.

However, current iPhone users will have experienced a feature a little like this before – I know I have. Above, my wife is holding her phone with one of our wedding pictures as the background. When she chose it iOS 26 automatically added layers of depth unprompted.

The effect is more subtle, but it's effective; the AI correctly picked her and I out from the elements of the background that are further behind (the door) and kept us more or less at the same apparent distance as the flower arch, and the effect is shown whenever you tilt the phone.

So everyone is getting rightly excited about the progression – but I woudlnt' call it 'new'.

Apple also mentioned in passing that AI generation will be used to turn panoramas into Spatial Scenes for the Vision Pro, but presumably, given the product’s relatively low sales this clever bit of AI didn’t warrant a lot of discussion at the WWDC announcement!

iPhone users will likely be a lot more excited by the news that photos will load “up to” 70% faster and AirDrop will be 80% faster, with work on the CPU scheduler that should make even older phones (as far back as the iPhone 11) faster.

Check our guide to the best iPhone for photography and the best camera phones.

The launch of the new iPhone 18 is likely only a 3-4 months away, and the rumor mill is spinning up with chatter about what camera hardware it may ship with. The latest tip reiterates previous speculation that the iPhone 18 could feature a variable aperture lens for its primary camera module. The rumor comes from respected industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, though it has also been reported by a separate source in Apple's supply chain.

In the current climate where phone manufacturers often prefer AI image processing improvements over camera hardware upgrades, the news that Apple could be developing a new lens for its next iPhone seems welcome. However, I remain to be convinced that such a feature will have a noticeable improvement to camera usability or image quality.

A variable lens aperture is essential in a lens designed for a conventional, large-sensor camera like a full-frame DSLR or mirrorless body. This is because the larger the sensor, the shallower the depth of field at a given aperture. With a full-frame camera, if you want a subject close to the camera and a more distant background to both be in focus, you'll need to significantly reduce the lens aperture. But shrink the sensor down to 1/1.28" - the size of the sensor in the iPhone 17 Pro's primary camera - and, even at the module's native f/1.8 aperture, there'll still be a huge depth of field.

As background detail is almost always clearly visible behind a subject snapped by a camera phone, we've seen the implementation of portrait modes which use software processing to artificially blur background. The aim here is to emulate the shallow depth of field effect you 'naturally' get from a large-sensor camera/wide-aperture lens combination.

So if a camera phone is inherently good at producing a deep depth of field, there's little reason for having a lens with a variable lens aperture. You may as well fix the aperture to be as large as possible to get the maximum amount of light through to the sensor, thereby keeping shutter speeds high and ISO sensitivity low - the ideal recipe for sharp, low-noise shots. Having a variable aperture lens sounds impressive, but the benefits are few and far between when it comes to real world use in a camera phone.

What's more, a variable aperture lens could actually be a bad thing for iPhone 18 buyers. Kuo's tip also states that a variable aperture lens could costs as much as 50% more than the current fixed aperture glass used in current iPhones. At a time when flagship phones are likely to increase in price on account of continual rises in the cost of flash memory, paying even more for an iPhone in order to get a new camera lens with limited practical benefit is a bitter pill to swallow.

Story credit: 9 to 5 Mac

"[Equipment] doesn’t matter at all. People say what’s the best camera, I always say the one in my pocket or the one round my neck. It’s not the camera that takes the picture, it’s the person."

Those were the words of David Bailey, speaking in a radio interview over a decade ago. It's a spin on the well-worn photography cliché, 'the best camera is the one you have with you' – but clichés exist for a reason.

Case in point, the photographs on this page. I want to make clear, first of all, that I'm not saying these are works of art. They're not. But photographing lightning strikes can be tricky – and the point I'm making is that I wouldn't have been able to take these pictures if I didn't have my iPhone in my pocket.

My iPhone 13 Mini, at that – a phone that's 5 years old at this point, with an ultra-wide camera that only has a tiny 1/3.4-inch sensor and a measly 12MP resolution.

Could I have taken better pictures with my Canon EOS R5 or Hasselblad X2D II? Absolutely. And I could have taken the best pictures of all with my OM System OM-3, which has a Live Composite feature that is perfect for photographing lightning strikes.

But I didn't have those cameras with me when I was driving home through this storm. (Okay, the OM-3 was in the trunk. But I'll be honest; pulling into a layby surrounded by trees, while the gods hurled thunderbolts that lit up the entire sky, getting out of the car wasn't my top priority.)

So I pulled the phone out of my pocket and spammed that little white button until I got my shots. Low resolution. Crappy quality. Fully automatic. But I got the shots – and under the circumstances, I wouldn't have got them any other way.

As if there was any doubt, Bailey was right: the best camera really was the one in my pocket. Because the one in the trunk and all the others sitting at home did me no good whatsoever!

So buy all the gear you want. But at the end of the day, if you don't have it with you, that creaky old phone with a crappy camera that you turn your nose up at might just be the one that snaps the decisive moment.

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Apple announced that John Ternus, Apple's existing senior vice president of Hardware Engineering, will be taking over from Tim Cook as CEO on September 1, putting an end to months of rumor and discussion.

The official Apple statement is out. Now we can look back at some of Tim Cook's successes and most notable missteps (cough Apple Vision Pro, anyone?). He has been at the helm of the company since the single-camera iPhone 4 was the company's leading product, but had only just started to have an impact on compact camera sales.

Tim Cook has overseen Apple's release of the iPhone 7 Plus in 2016 – the first with multiple rear cameras – and taken the stage to announce every subsequent iPhone, but during his tenure, John Ternus has been rising the ranks and overseeing the development of some of those devices.

Apple fans, and perhaps investors, will no doubt be reassured to know that Ternus is a longtimer at Apple – explaining why in his own statement, the quote: "Having spent almost my entire career at Apple, I have been lucky to have worked under Steve Jobs, and to have had Tim Cook as my mentor" appears.

The legacy of Steve Jobs is strong at Apple amongst fans, while Tim Cook's success in steering the company through a value of $1bn right up to $4bn has pleased investors. Jobs was something of a risk-taker, Cook the steady-as-she-goes.

Perhaps some might see them as the personalities of Kirk and Spock?

Things are different now, however, with Cook being seen by many as having failed to anticipate the significance of AI, there is pressure on the former 'hardware guy' to solve Apple's apparent delays there out of the gate.

What will his personality be? Scotty the engineer? That is the roots many used to feel Apple should listen to. Given Ternus' recent experience developing hardware, he might be well placed to pull the realities together. One such example is computational photography – the processing behind getting phones to emulate shallow depth of field, for example, or take maximum advantage of their multiple cameras.

In the space of cameras, it's worth remembering that Ternus is very familiar with the cameras, but members of his team have long been all about mixing hardware and software. "We apply deep learning models for demosaicing, which constructs the image from the raw output" said Patrick Carroll, manager of iPhone camera architecture, of the "Photonic Engine" – and this may be increasingly true with devices like the iPhone Air which has fewer physical cameras.

Apple's press release notes that before joining Apple in 2001 Ternus worked at Virtual Research Systems, though the phrasing of Apple's release is careful only to link the Vision Pro to Tim Cook, even though it was one of the things he oversaw at Apple. That's as close as it'll come to Apple admitting the Vision Pro was not a success.

It does connect Ternus to a lot of Apple hardware, including the Apple Watch and AirPods. The text also links him to the aforementioned iPhone Air – which might yet prove to be the underpinning of a rumored folding phone – and explicitly highlights Ternus's involvement in reliability and durability.

That, then, will be the basis of Apple's play for the future. The company seems keen to explain how it will continue to grow now Cook has helped it reach $416 billion yearly revenue, and a sensible play will be trust – Ternus, Mr reliability & durability, won't be the end of that.

Ternus is one of Apple's more publicly friendly figures. He is seen above presenting the new cheaper MacBook Neo, and was outside the London Regent Street Apple Store, greeting customers, at the launch of the iPhone 17.

That suggests, I suspect, a tenure more like Cook than Jobs is coming up, but we won't know until September.

Apple offers significant improvements to its entry-level iPhone with the new iPhone 17e, just announced, doubling the storage to 256MB, bringing the A19 processor, and adding MagSafe support.

The new phone sports the same 6.1-inch OLED display as its predecessor, the iPhone 16e, is available in three different colors (Black, White, Soft Pink), and will go on sale at a starting price of $599 / £599 / AU$999.

This is the same price as the previous 16e – so buyers won't face the jump that customers had to swallow last time Apple upgraded this category (from the 2022 iPhone SE to the iPhone 16e).

The single rear camera is a 48MP wide-angle (Apple's 2-in-1 hybrid focus pixel system). This upgrade was introduced with the 16e, and is a 26mm ƒ1/6 aperture camera capable of delivering 24MP at 2x (52mm EFL) in the camera app. Apple calls the 48MP 1x images "Super-high-resolution photos".

Photographers also get the benefit of Apple's 'Action Button'. Video is recorded at 4K60fps with Dolby Vision, and there is a 240fps slow-mo.

The selfie camera is also unchanged at 12MP ƒ/1.9.

On the slightly disappointing side, it only has 60Hz screens, leaving 'ProMotion' to Apple's premium models. The 'Dynamic Island' has also been eschewed in favour of retaining the older 'notch'.

My bet is that these choices will not upset the upgrade market too much – those looking for a cheaper new iPhone will likey be happier about the improvements to the handset's processing power in the era of AI.

The other significant upgrade, MagSafe, brings the phone in line with a lot of Apple accessories that many Apple-reliant homes might already have around.

Pre-orders will begin on March 4, after Apple's big Wednesday event in New York, and the handset will be available from stores a week later, on Wednesday March 11.

Apple has also announced a new M4 iPad Air, today, but so far we've heard nothing about the (also rumored) base model iPad.

Apple has announced an event for March 4, which might be where metaphorical daylight reaches some of the many products that have been rumored over the last few months and even years.

Apple, as expected, has not shared any details in advance, simply issuing an invite with a stylized version of the Apple logo – the only suggestion that things are slightly out of the ordinary is that this "special Apple experience" is going to be in New York rather than the company's Cupertino home.

What are we expecting from Apple on March 4

• MacBook – but cheaper The talk of the town is a MacBook with a phone-like (A18) processor coming in at about $599.
• iPhone 17e Yes, that time in Apple's product cycle for a cheaper flagship-ish phone.
• M5 MacBook Air Update to the faster new CPU, but the same old outsides, for the popular Air.
• iPad Air 8 M4 processor marking a small internal update.
• MacBook Pro M5 Max & Ultra The premium chips are still awaited for the top of the line MacBooks too (only the bottom MacBook Pro has an M5 thus far).
• iPad 12 Internal update also expected for the cheapest iPad.

Apple has long had a cheaper iPhone, so it is easy enough to remember the iPhone 16e from last year, for example. We don't expect to see any changes in the price, which starts at $599. The insides might get the upgrade to the A19 chipset and Apple's C1X and N1 wireless chips – which both improve battery life and potentially save Apple from needing to buy chips externally.

Wireless charging is expected to be upgraded to MagSafe with speeds of up to 25W.

An Apple laptop at the same $599 is potentially achieved using a A18 Pro chipset, and a 12.9-inch display, though recent developments in Apple Intelligence suggests that a minimum of 16GB RAM might be a starting point. I have to say that seems a little higher than the memory point that Apple aficionados might be used to for entry-level machines, though, and rumours can drift into wish-listing, so we shall see!

Potentially, though, this level of power should be enough for basic photography tasks. Oh, and would you really want an iPad if you could have a MacBook for less?

In terms of devices that we know and recognize on the outside, the upper MacBook Pros (Max & Ultra chips) are still awaiting the M5 treatment, and the assorted iPads are also due a minor chip refresh. None of these are 'new products' though. The other items in the rumor mill – so the ones that attract the attention (especially as Apple has picked a different venue), must be either the 'pendant' – something like an AI Star Trek communicator – or Apple's other rumored and much expected release, some kind of affordable glasses.

Affordable, that is, in comparison to Apple's $3,499/£3,199 Vision Pro.

The Rayban Meta has been spectacularly successful, with actual sales clocking up over 7 million unit sales in 2025 (which will represent around half the $1.1 billion per quarter the entire division pulls in), and CNBC reporting production being pushed to 20 million.

Inevitably, there are plenty of rumors of greater or lesser credibility suggesting that Apple are working on its own competing product which, like the Meta RayBan, will have a camera in the frames to capture video.

The project is reportedly codenamed internally 'N50', but that doesn't mean they are close enough to completion that we'll see them this March. I've also heard 2027 and 2028 as public release timing, so it's fair to say it's not exactly nailed down (though it is likely that an updated version of Siri will need to at least be involved, which would be iOS 27, this year's edition, which also isn't out yet).

And on the subject of updating Siri, the other thing, perhaps a little more fanciful, is the idea of a device you speak to and make requests of Siri like any other AI chatbot. This would be worn around the neck like a pendant, or pinned to clothing like Captain Picard's badge.

It, too, might have a camera so it can perceive its environment, to help it answer questions.

Former Apple chief designer Jony Ive has also been rumored to be working on a device like this for an AI startup, IO, now acquired by OpenAI (of ChatGPT fame).

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Leaks have revealed that versions of the iPhone 18 Pro, currently undergoing testing and expected to be released in September, boast a variable aperture for the first time in the iPhone's nearly two-decade history.

A manually adjustable aperture is seen as a significant step toward making a camera more professional, allowing control of the amount of light that gets to the sensor and artistic changes through the manipulation of the depth of field (how much elements of the picture other than the main subject appear out of focus).

These are all things which photographers tend to consider the preserve of what they would describe as a 'real' camera, although in reality the tech has been shrunk to the size of phones and other compact devices – the DJI Osmo Action 6 and, further back, the Samsung Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S10 (from 2018 and 2019, since you ask).

Interestingly enough, MacRumors is now reporting that Samsung has seen the rumors about Apple and is intending to get back in on the variable aperture game for the first time in years, asking its manufacturers to deliver a camera unit that can compete.

The iPhone 14, 15, 16 and iPhone 17 Pro Max have all used a fixed aperture of ƒ/1.78, with the lens open wide while shooting. The relative manufacturing advantage of fixed aperture cameras is simplicity (less to go wrong) and size – more parts tends to mean thicker devices, which is anathema to phone design.

Apple, however, has shown some interest in changing perspectives about the phone range. The iPhone Air, for example, encourages consumers to buy a much thinner phone – and some seem to like the style (and be prepared to pay top dollar for it) even though in terms of specifications the device is actually a bit behind alternatives.

I have speculated – and I'm not alone – that the iPhone Air is just a way to claw back some R&D money on what might eventually come in terms of a folding iPhone, which would need to be very thin.

But if Apple are prepared to convert a "test" product at this point in the range, why not go for something that is a hybrid of a serious camera and phone?

The "Pro" already makes that pitch with its name – so adding premium features like an adjustable aperture shouldn't even be a concern.

Because a "Real camera" is just the term people use for a professional one, and if Apple can occupy that space, that'll be great news for them in terms of premium pricing as well as owning an ever-larger market share.

The regular – and reasonably reliable – leaker Digital Chat Station – on Chinese social media platform Weibo has let slip that the Apple iPhone 18 generation has begun test production and that the iconic 'dynamic island' feature is going to be replaced by – something else – at least for the Pro series.

There are also a series of rumors about colors going around – red, purple, and brown, hence the mock-up above – but for now I'll concentrate on the camera news.

It's also more than a little interesting that many see the punch hole as a step on the way toward a more special twentieth anniversary phone with a fully invisible front camera.

Sample production matters because it is the point at which many of the features we expect in the final product do tend to stick. What is staying the same is the size and refresh rate of the screens, 6.27-inch for the Pro, and 6.86-inch for the Pro Max, both at 120Hz.

What is being discussed – and looks different in various YouTubes and reports – is the "new under-display area". Some think that we'll see a smaller pill shape, a little like the one that exists now, that contains Apple's FaceID system and camera.

Others think that a hole punch – similar to some other phones – is likely to appear. The Samsung Galaxy S25 has a hole near the centre of the screen, for example. Other mock-ups have shown Apple's in the corner, but that feels unlikely to me.

Sample production is the point at which most of these decisions get set in stone, and of course, a lot of aesthetic decisions will be required of the operating system if there is a hole punch in a different spot to the existing pill, so that will be a factor in Apple's next steps too.

There is also discussion as to whether the feature will immediately apply to the whole range, go to the Pro phones first, or the Pro and the 'Air 2' on the grounds that it is a premium model. Apple has managed to start a lot of debate among the community, but we're not expecting to know anything for sure until Apple's traditional September announcement window.

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Check our guide to the best iPhone for photography and the best camera phone. Are they aligned?

I've been an Android phone user for years. Not because I'm anti-Apple (I'm not tribal), but because the maths simply never added up. Why spend iPhone money when a Pixel or Galaxy gives you everything I needed for hundreds less?

But the latest leaks about the iPhone 17e have me reconsidering everything. And I suspect I'm not alone. Apple appears to be planning something unusual for March. It looks like the iPhone 17e won't just another iterative update.

If the leaks are true, this thing will pack the A19 chip from the flagship iPhone 17 series into a body that costs from around $599 / £599. That's the same processor powering phones costing twice as much. And that's significant. Apple typically saves its latest silicon for premium models, drip-feeding older chips into affordable devices. But here, reportedly, they're throwing their newest processor into their cheapest phone.

The front-facing camera is reportedly jumping to 18MP with that clever Centre Stage technology from the flagship models. For anyone doing video calls, social content, or even just better selfies, that's a meaningful upgrade. The rear camera situation seems a bit more complicated, though.

Leaks suggest a single 48MP sensor, which sounds limiting until you remember that computational photography has largely closed the multi-lens gap. Yes, you lose optical zoom and ultra-wide versatility, but for everyday shooting? A single excellent sensor with Apple's image processing might well outperform the mediocre triple-camera arrays scattered across mid-range Android devices.

Why this matters

It also sound pretty promising. Apple recently killed off their SE lineup, leaving a gaping hole in their range. But now the iPhone 17e appears designed to fill that gap whilst simultaneously raiding Android's mid-range territory. For someone like me, who appreciates iOS polish but balks at flagship pricing, this could be the entry point that finally makes sense.

The A19 chip matters beyond raw speed. It means years of iOS updates, smooth performance as apps grow heavier, and better computational photography processing. That's future-proofing at a price point where Android manufacturers usually offer compromises.

Before we get carried away, though, some scepticism is warranted too. That 60Hz display will feel sluggish compared to the 120Hz panels now standard on mid-range Androids. And the single rear camera, however capable, won't match flagship versatility. There's also the fact that switching to iPhone means embracing Apple's walled garden completely – iCloud, iMessage, the works. That's probably brilliant if you're in it already, constraining if (like me) you're not.

Of course, none of this is confirmed yet. Apple hasn't said a word officially, and they won't until they're good and ready. But if these leaks prove accurate, the iPhone 17e represents something rare: an affordable Apple device that doesn't feel like a compromised afterthought.

The main thing, though, is that I've started to make the mental leap. This could be the phone that finally breaks my Android habit. Not because it's revolutionary, but because it's sensible. And sometimes that's actually more disruptive than innovation.

So... will I switch? Ask me again in March. But most importantly, for the first time in years, I'm genuinely tempted.

Check out the best iPhones for photography available right now

Smartphone accessories specialist Sandmarc has unveiled what it says is the first add-on telephoto lens designed specifically to mount on iPhone's periscope-style tetraprism camera, rather than the main wide-angle lens.

Available from Sandmarc's website for $269.99, the Telephoto Tetraprism Lens for iPhone is a 48mm attachment that provides 2x magnification of the built-in telephoto lens. This allows the iPhone 17 Pro models to achieve 8x optical zoom at full 48MP resolution, or up to 16x magnification at 24MP (384mm equivalent). On iPhone 16 Pro models and the iPhone 15 Pro Max, meanwhile, it can reach 10x optical zoom (240mm equivalent).

While add-on lenses for phones aren't new, Sandmarc's strategy of targeting the dedicated telephoto camera rather than the main sensor is a big departure. Most third-party smartphone lenses mount over the primary wide-angle camera, which limits their effectiveness when trying to extend telephoto reach.

Unique design

This approach follows similar thinking from Chinese manufacturers Oppo and Vivo, which have recently showcased add-on telephoto attachments for their flagship phones. However, Sandmarc's lens seems to be the first commercially available product designed specifically for iPhone's tetraprism periscope system.

The tetraprism telephoto camera, introduced with the iPhone 15 Pro Max and now featured across the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro lineup, uses a folded light path to achieve longer focal lengths within the constraints of a thin smartphone body. Apple's native 5x optical zoom (120mm equivalent on iPhone 17 Pro Max) provides the starting point for Sandmarc's magnification boost.

The Sandmarc lens features multi-element, multi-coated glass construction designed to minimize flare and maintain color accuracy across the extended zoom range. At 143g, it adds noticeable weight to the phone, although this is obviously typical for add-on lenses.

The mounting system uses a dedicated case that aligns the lens precisely with the iPhone's middle telephoto camera. Sandmarc has designed the attachment to work with its existing filter system, allowing photographers to add polarizers or neutral density filters when needed.

Importantly, you can only use it with recent Pro and Pro Max models (iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, and iPhone 15 Pro Max), as these are the only iPhones equipped with the tetraprism telephoto system. Each iPhone model requires its own specific case for proper alignment.

Practical issues

It's an intriguing approach that holds a lot of promise. The 52-degree field of view and true optical magnification should theoretically deliver sharper results than digital zoom alone, particularly for subjects like distant architecture, wildlife or sporting events.

On the downside, adding an external lens will increase the phone's bulk, and the 57.3mm height means it will protrude significantly from the device. Stabilization becomes increasingly critical at longer focal lengths, and while recent iPhone models feature impressive sensor-shift stabilization, handheld shooting at 16x magnification will test both the technology and your own technique.

Could there also be a trade-off in image quality? Adding glass elements inevitably introduces potential for aberrations, vignetting or light loss, though Sandmarc's multi-coating should mitigate some concerns.

A review unit is currently with our testers, so watch this space and we'll soon let you know what it's actually like to use in practice.

Check out our guide to the best add-on lenses for iPhones and Android phones

To be honest, as a long time Apple customer, I've been starting to get a bit disappointed in Apple. I love tech, so much so I've got some Google Glass Explorer Edition rotting in a box in the loft, and it's disappointed me that – as Meta announce the Ray-Ban camera glasses with display, and Google is waiting in the wings – Apple has seemingly done nothing with all it has learned from the Vision Pro.

In fact, it has been reported by Bloomberg (paywall) and long-time Apple predictor Mark Gurman – a source who has got a fair few things right about Apple in the past – that the company is pushing harder into its iPhone line, at the expense (perhaps) of these new technologies. And perhaps – thinking from a photographic perspective – Apple has a point.

I have bought a new iPhone every year and lamented the lack of innovation of late – though I'll admit that iPhone 17 cheered me up more than the 16. The snazzy orange color was not what did it for me. To be honest the external re-design left me feeling a little hurt, like Tim Cook had lied to me about Titanium. He'd only just convinced me it was a brilliant idea and, all of a sudden, it's back to aluminum. (Leaving aside the seeming dishonesty, this is a metal which is all the more frustrating for someone writing for both the USA and the UK!)

No, my favorite generational improvement with the iPhone 17 was the arrival of a 48-megapixel sensor in the tele lens, meaning it produced good-looking photos across the creative range that I chose to use. I don't like the effect of 'digital zoom' and now it is less of a worry.

That's because my iPhone is my 'compact camera', and it has been for a long time. My other camera is a Sony A7 iii – and an assortment of Action cameras, 360 cameras and drones – flying cameras – which means most of my day-to-day life will get caught with my phone. And I think that the level of control involved is just right.

Sure, the upcoming generation of glasses with cameras will have ever more AI and, crucially, a display. The $800 Meta Ray-Ban Display's screen (visible only to the wearer of the slightly thick sunglasses) could, my colleague noted, serve as a possible viewfinder. But will this tech be ready to take most of the photos we want soon?

Honestly, I think not. I remember this from my Google Glass, so I'm aware that the quality will have moved on a little – I have not personally tried the Meta Ray-Ban Display Glasses – but, conceptually, you need to capture an image or video by pointing your head in that direction.

That's fine for a bit of clumsy sharing of circumstances and funny things, but I think the average person wants a little bit more control over the pictures they share. Framing the picture – composition – is a lot easier with something you can hold in your hand and see a screen.

Next many people don't like to share an image until they've tweaked it and that's definitely a lot easier on a 'real' screen – glasses displays are transparent, even if the tech was as quick and as powerful as your phone. Not to mention the fact that there just isn't the range of apps, and won't be for a long while. Living in the metaverse sounds very limiting to me.

That's not to say that I don't still want them. I mean it's high tech and futuristic and different.

There are definitely a lot of scenarios in which it seems an awesome tech that Apple just doesn't have an answer for. And I still think it should.

But if I were Apple, and I would definitely (especially to my friends at an investor-friendly publication like Bloomberg) be wanting to talk more about the iPhone because, if we're honest, the vast majority of people are still going to feel more comfortable with phones for most things.

And that is going to include photography and videography. Apple is absorbing the high end there even if some of the lower end is drifting off to smart glasses.

So the news – or at least strong rumors – says that Apple is putting even more into phones makes a lot of sense. And that we'll see the folding phone (the iPhone Air was really just a "technology exercise" to prepare the supply chain, suggests Gruman), and up to five or six new models a year – possibly spaced out so the company doesn't have to rely on one big event.

Check out our guide to the best camera glasses you can buy right now

It seems like only yesterday that the iPhone 17 dropped, but we're already getting rumors about the camera set-up in next year's iPhone 18. The latest tip suggests that Apple's next flagship iPhone could feature a variable aperture lens for its primary camera module. This speculation isn't actually new - it was previously suggested by the prevalent industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo - but the rumor has been given more credibility by a recent confirmatory report originating from Apple's supply chain.

In the current climate where phone manufacturers often prefer AI image processing improvements over camera hardware upgrades, the news that Apple could be developing a new lens for its next iPhone seems welcome. However, I remain to be convinced that such a feature will have a noticeable improvement to camera usability or image quality.

A variable lens aperture is essential in a lens designed for a conventional, large-sensor camera like a full-frame DSLR or mirrorless body. This is because the larger the sensor, the shallower the depth of field at a given aperture. With a full-frame camera, if you want a subject close to the camera and a more distant background to both be in focus, you'll need to significantly reduce the lens aperture. But shrink the sensor down to 1/1.28" - the size of the sensor in the iPhone 17 Pro's primary camera - and, even at the module's native f/1.8 aperture, there'll still be a huge depth of field.

As background detail is almost always clearly visible behind a subject snapped by a camera phone, we've seen the implementation of portrait modes which use software processing to artificially blur background. The aim here is to emulate the shallow depth of field effect you 'naturally' get from a large-sensor camera/wide-aperture lens combination.

So if a camera phone is inherently good at producing a deep depth of field, there's little reason for having a lens with a variable lens aperture. You may as well fix the aperture to be as large as possible to get the maximum amount of light through to the sensor, thereby keeping shutter speeds high and ISO sensitivity low - the ideal recipe for sharp, low-noise shots. Having a variable aperture lens sounds impressive, but the benefits are few and far between when it comes to real world use in a camera phone.

Story credit: Electronic Times

The iPhone 17 Pro Max is Apple's top-of-the-line phone and, this time, Apple has chosen to make that distinction by adding a little bit more bulk. A cynic might suggest that is being done to emphasize the svelte nature of the new iPhone Air – the thinness of which is, if we're honest, the only real selling point for that device.

It matters not. The normal 'non-Pro' iPhone 17 (which at least has two main cameras) has also got a good few feature bumps this generation which have – for some years now – been held away from the lesser iPhones by Apple simply to highlight which phone is 'Pro' and which is not. That means this, as the premium model, needs to distinguish itself any way it can because it no longer has the leg up of being the only iPhone with a 120Hz screen, for example!

The main thing it does – as well as some very striking new case designs – is with a third camera. Better still, and new for the iPhone 17 Pro Max series – there is a wholly new telephoto camera. The camera cluster is affixed to some extra bulk, but that isn't just show – being devoted to battery life I've struggled to challenge in my days testing (and weeks because I've been trying the phone rather too long before turning in these words!)

Price

The base iPhone 17 Pro Max launched on September 19 2025 and comes with 256GB (like its predecessor) and starts at $1,199 / £1,199 / AU$2,149. You can also pay $1,399 / £1,399 / AU$2,599 for 512GB of storage, $1,599 / £1,599 / AU$2,999 for 1TB of storage, or – new for the iPhone 17 – $1,999 / £1,999 / AU$3,799 for 2TB of storage.

Specifications

Build and handling

In a way, the iPhone 17 Pro Max is very different to its predecessors. For one thing, despite spending two generations telling us about the amazing new metal that was titanium, Apple has returned to aluminum for the new model. This affords the option to create a 'unibody' style housing which would be a very different look alone, but is topped off by the new full-width camera bump at the top.

On the other hand, continuity is retained by Apple's retention of the three-camera triangle arrangement so despite a different metal, a matte glass back with the Apple logo and covering the MagSafe charging, and some very different colors, the device is still recognizably an iPhone. Cosmic Orange, incidentally, was my choice, being the most different color, but Deep Blue stands out too while the Silver is a bit more average Apple.

The iPhone 17 Pro Max has a screen with the same 6.9-inch size and 460 pixels per inch resolution as its immediate predecessor, and both feature Apple's Dynamic Island. Both, too, support Apple's 120Hz 'ProMotion' refresh rate, though that is no longer quite the claim to fame it once was in the iPhone range as the standard iPhone 17 also finally has this feature.

Where the screen does push past its predecessor is with 3,000 nits of peak brightness – comfortably beating the 2,000 nits of the iPhone 16 Pro Max. The screen also has a new anti-reflective coating, the best about which I can say is that I didn't find this interfering with my daily use; the phone seemed very contrasty (hard to vouch for 2,000,000:1 by eye!)

The speed of the A19 Pro processor and quality of the screen make for big changes, and (though not as visible as the exciting new Cosmic Orange color), a new vapor-chamber supported heat-management system keeps the system very fast, and helps support the new cameras crop the center-area from each of the three 48MP lenses (including the new 48MP 4x optical zoom). For those who see aluminum as an engineering downgrade, the metal is better able to support anodized colors, so it is also the reason you've got the exciting new orange.

The new design gives the phone a mixture of a matte glass back which nearly, but doesn't quite, match the color of the anodized aluminum which makes up the now full-width camera bump (though you can see a little antenna cutout). On the flip side the Ceramic Shield 2 screen is, Apple tell us, has better protection from scratches (I haven't had one in the first few weeks, but I'm not sure that's enough to say given my phone lives safely in a clean pocket of my Levis).

Selfie Camera Performance

The selfie camera represents a big change for the iPhone 17 Pro Max (and other iPhone 17) against its predecessor. With a new square sensor and AI to choose then crop in on the subject, the camera is notably easier to use than my previous iPhone 16 Pro Max, both on my own and with others.

The AI was (for the most part) prompt to find me and my fiancée or other co-subject, so I had few complaints, and in general a system which makes it easier to get a selfie because aiming is that bit easier feels like a win. That said, I think in the restaurant photo I felt we were the obvious subjects but I get the distinct impression that the sharpest focus is on the diners at the back, so the system could stand a few software improvements.

Main camera performance

The main cameras are essentially the same as those we've seen before (48 megapixel sensors on both the wide and the main cameras, meaning they can act as hybrid cameras at two different lengths). The exception is the telephoto which has also finally got an upgrade to 48MP, meaning Apple has felt safe in reducing it from 5x to 4x and, in so doing, effectively given the camera a fairly decent 70-200mm EFL capability (because it's now got the resolution to serve as 4x and 8x).

To really see the performance of the camera cluster, I stood on one side of the Royal Albert Wharf in London's docklands and took some pictures of Cafe Spice Namasté on the other side at the different default camera lengths. Some are the full pixel resolution, some are the result of processing – hybrid zoom – because along the bottom of the camera app I was offered 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x (2x and 8x are hybrid crops of 1x and 4x).

Overall verdict

The iPhone 17 Pro Max (and smaller Pro) is, finally, aimed at being the no-compromise phone that something for 'professional' phone users ought to be. For me, at least, that means the camera should make a decent attempt at simulating a professional camera – in fact an entire kit bag – even though the entire device needs to successfully fit into someone's pocket. Oh, not just that, but it ought to be able to carry on working for a good portion of the day, perhaps longer.

That is especially true in 'Apple-land' where the Pro soubriquet is attached to the more powerful laptops and other computers, and, to be honest, traditionally made more sense than on phones. Now, though, this feels like the breakthrough iPhone. This is a handset with the compute power, the battery, the camera tech at every reasonable tele level. Why shouldn't it be a "Pro" phone?

There are definitely quirks that might irk some – the orange, especially, as it happens, but also the whole choice of colors did not impress my fiancée for a start (who preferred the look of last year's iPhone 16 Pro Max). The Dynamic Island is still around, too, and some do not appreciate that for some reason.

Overall, though, this feels to me like the kind of distinction that a 'Pro' phone deserves and the storage options are very much enough for serious creatives. Should any of the styles appeal to you it feels like an easy choice to me, while you might also want to hunt down the best iPhone 17 Pro Max case to alter the look and feel a little if Apple hasn't got the coloring quite right for you!

Alternatives

How I tested

I tested the iPhone 17 Pro Max by buying one, with my own money, on day one and then living with it for a month. I decided to be extra brave and trust the insurance rather than a case (which is also the fairest way to test the cameras, because a lot of modern cases seem to have nasty bits of glass or (shudder) cheap plastic over the lenses, which does not seem a very fair test.

I made it my business to take photos and videos in every day life, daytime and nightime, at every one of the tele levels, as part of the testing, and give the battery a good run out.

I've had an iPhone since the 3GS back in 2009, and I've always made sure that, as soon as I received my shiny new phone, I bought a case for it. After all, these are expensive devices, so it's vital to protect them from the daily rigors that life can throw at them. But I've never bought an official Apple case. Why? Because they're so darned pricey and, to be honest, really don't seem to be anything particularly special to demand their top-dollar price tag.

The third-party alternatives, on the other hand, come in all manner of interesting designs. There are eye-catching patterns that exude personality, ultra-thin ones woven from the same hi-tech material as bullet-proof jackets, models with built-in kick-stands for watching video in comfort, and cases with a twist-lock for secure attachment to running armbands, bike handlebars, and a whole lot more besides. Heck, I have written a whole buying guide to the best iPhone 17 cases I've personally tried and tested for my latest baby.

But there was a problem with one of the cases I had on test: its pass-through camera control button behaved erratically, activating the camera without warning, not zooming properly, and taking a lot of unwanted photos of my feet.

The big advantage Apple has over its rivals is that it can properly test its cases with each new model phone. The third-party manufacturers (allegedly) rely on all manner of nefarious means to obtain the blueprints to ensure that they have the correct dimensions and precise button placements for the new phone models, but has no opportunity to actually properly test them. And as the greatest demand for cases is around the launch of each new iPhone model, it's essential that their cases are manufactured and ready for sale on day one

Quad Lock, the company behind the case in question, acted immediately and advised users to pop out the faulty camera control button as an interim measure, and has promised a replacement to be mailed to everyone who has purchased the iPhone 17 version of their case. Despite this teething issue, I still rate this as the best iPhone 17 case for sporty types, as this is the one with the twist-lock mechanism, which I've found to be completely reliable and absolutely brilliant, and I have no qualms whatsoever running with it strapped to my arm, or mountain biking down unforgiving trails to record my downhill adventures.

So when you buy an Apple own-brand case, you know it's going to work, and that's a very good reason to buy one. But there are still lots of reasons to get a third-party case instead, so don't miss my guide to the best alternative iPhone 17 cases.

But if only an Apple-branded case will do, here are the best iPhone 17 Silicone Case deals we could find!

You might read the headline to this article and assume I'm an Apple hater. But it's actually the opposite; I think the iPhone 17 is pretty darned brilliant.

With its latest series, Apple has finally delivered what we've all been screaming for. A 120Hz ProMotion display on the base model. An 18MP Center Stage camera that actually makes group selfies work properly. Dual 48MP rear cameras that excel in low light. And at $799 / £799 with double the storage, it's arguably the best-value iPhone Apple's ever made.

Yet despite all that, I think you'd be absolutely mad to upgrade right now. Not because the iPhone 17 is bad (it's not) but because something far more revolutionary is lurking just around the corner.

Why waiting makes sense

Here's where I'll sound like that friend who always tells you not to buy the current model because "the next one will be better". Except I reckon the next one won't just be better; it'll be transformational.

The reason is, Apple is working on a foldable iPhone. And these aren't the typical made-up rumours; the industry whispers are deafening and all signs point to a foldable phone launching as part of the iPhone 18 series.

So, picture this: you're editing photos on location but, instead of squinting at a 6.3-inch screen, you unfold your iPhone to reveal a tablet-sized display. Suddenly you can see histogram details properly, make precise color adjustments and actually judge whether that architectural shot is level. No more "I'll fix it in post because I can't see properly on this tiny screen."

Or imagine you're reviewing a shoot with your client but instead of everyone huddling around a phone screen like cavemen around a fire, you unfold the device and suddenly you've got a proper presentation display.

I'm also excited by the idea of reviewing RAW files on one screen while updating your shot list on the other. Managing social media posts while keeping your editing app open. Video calls with clients, while your portfolio remains visible. I could go on, but you get the point. The productivity possibilities are staggering.

The workflow revolution

And here's the kicker: I don't believe Apple would halfass a foldable. We're talking about the company that took seven years to perfect Face ID; one that obsesses over millimeter differences in device thickness.

So it stands to reason that when Apple finally releases a foldable, it won't be some clunky proof-of-concept; it'll be the foldable that makes everyone else's look like prototypes.

Okay, I get it. If your current iPhone is running really slow and crashing a lot, you may well have little choice but to upgrade right now. In which case the iPhone 17 represents everything you've been waiting for, for a reasonable price.

But if you can wait a little longer, you can avoid being locked into a two-year (or more) cycle, just as the most significant iPhone innovation since the original launches. Which means you won't have to watch from the sidelines as everyone else experiences the future of mobile photography.

Yes, the iPhone 17 will still be brilliant in a year's time. But the foldable iPhone 18 – if the rumors are true – will make today's devices look as dated as a 2002 Nokia. So my advice is to keep that upgrade urge in check and start saving for what promises to be the most exciting iPhone launch in over a decade. Your future self will thank you.

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See how the best iPhones for photography stack up against the best camera phones from all manufacturers.

The new iPhone 17 series has just started shipping – but before the latest Apple smartphones even became officially available, one tech journalist spotted something curious: black boxes and darkened splotches occurring in a handful of shots taken at a concert.

CNN Underscored spotted the issue when writer Henry T Casey took both the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro Max to a concert where, behind the musicians, the LED wall had dark splotches in some images and black boxes in others. (You can view the offending photos here.)

Apple has said the issue occurs only rarely and that it is already working on a software fix. But both the images of the glitch and Apple’s comment have me suspecting that there are actually two different errors happening in the series of photos – and one of them isn’t the camera’s fault.

The series of images show one image with black splotches appearing in the brightest parts of an image, which is a white squiggly design on a bright LED wall at a concert. Two photos show boxes of black over the LED screen, rather than irregularly shaped splotches.

The black splotches are likely an anti-blooming artifact

An Apple spokesperson said that the blacked-out portions happen when “an LED light display is extremely bright and shining directly into the camera.”

That phenomenon of an extremely bright light source wreaking havoc on a photo is what is happening in the image with irregularly shaped black splotches. I suspect what is actually happening in this case is an artifact created from anti-blooming.

When light hits a camera sensor that is too bright for the camera to record, it becomes a white spot in the image. This white typically bleeds into the neighboring pixels as well. CMOS sensors are far better at reducing this blooming effect than older sensors, but some cameras still try to reduce the intensity of blooming with software.

Blooming creates white spots, not black – but some cameras use anti-blooming algorithms to correct the issue with software. The newest iPhone 17 series uses more computational photography than any previous model and, while I can’t be sure, I suspect that’s what’s happening here with these irregularly shaped blotches.

When Apple said the iPhone 17 series has more computational photography than previous models, I felt more disappointed than excited – and glitches like this are one of the reasons why.

The good news is that the anti-blooming artifact is a software issue – and, as Apple says, a fix is already in the works.

Black boxes in the photos are likely a fault of LED technology, not the iPhone

But two of the images in the series don’t have irregularly shaped splotches, but entire boxes of black. I suspect what’s happening here isn’t a glitch in the camera at all, but a challenge in photographing any type of LED technology.

LED lights flicker, which happens too fast for the human eye to see. But when the camera freezes time during one of those flickers, LED lights appear to be off in the photo. This is an issue that I first ran into when trying to photograph a Christmas tree, and I embarked on a deep dive into why half my Christmas lights appeared to be off in some photos and not others.

LED flickering can also cause dark bands in an image. Electronic shutters – like the ones used on smartphones – expose one row of pixels at a time. Occasionally, you’ll wind up with a row of darker pixels because the LED lights briefly flickered as the camera was exposing that row of pixels. This is commonly referred to as banding.

But, the blacked-out portions on the sample product photos aren’t a dark vertical line of pixels, which is what banding looks like. So what’s happening? The key is that the photos where the glitch occurred were during a concert that used a large LED wall as a background.

LED walls are typically built up of smaller panels arranged together to make one large wall. The boxes in the images of the iPhone camera glitch suggest that the individual panel in that LED wall was in the off part of its flicker cycle when the photo was taken. This is supported by the estimate that those black boxes only appeared in about one in every ten photos.

Essentially, those black boxes are caused by the same thing that causes my Christmas tree to appear half-lit in some photos: a poorly timed flicker. That black box is probably just one LED panel in the LED wall that’s mid-flicker.

While this glitch is actually the inherent flickering of LED lights and not the camera’s fault, cameras can fix this issue. Some cameras have built-in anti-flickering modes that time the shutter to the frequency of the light flickers.

Another solution is to use a slower shutter speed as, when the shutter is open for a longer stretch of time, you reduce the odds that the picture will be taken during an LED flicker.

I can’t be 100% sure that anti-blooming and LED flickers are to blame for the iPhone 17 camera glitch – earlier iOS systems had black box issues too, and they had nothing to do with LEDs.

But based on the concert images, Apple’s comment, the location of the errors on an LED wall, and my frustrating journey with learning how to photograph Christmas lights, I suspect the issue is due to anti-blooming processing and the inherent difficulty that comes with photographing LEDs.

Neither issue requires new hardware to fix. I wouldn’t let the issue dissuade me from the new iPhone 17 – but maybe don’t use it to photograph a concert with an LED wall until Apple comes out with a software bug fix.

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As I watched Apple announce the latest line of iPhones last week, I couldn’t help but think of the toilet paper math meme – you know, the one where photos of the packaging say that 12 = 52 but also 12 = 72.

Because, as I was looking at the specifications and photos of a rear camera system that clearly used 3 lenses, Apple said that the iPhone 17 Pro is like having “8 pro lenses in your pocket.”

Perhaps someone at Apple’s Marketing team has been in contact with someone at Charmin, because while 3 = 8 on the iPhone 17 Pro, 1 = 4 on the iPhone Air.

Even worse, Apple says the iPhone 17 Pro has the longest “optical quality zoom ever on iPhone at 8x,” yet the iPhone 16 Pro had a 5x lens on its telephoto camera, while the iPhone 17 Pro actually only has a 4x optical lens.

I may have been an English major with a deep-rooted hatred of math, but I didn’t need to suffer through pre-calc to know that something doesn’t add up here. So what’s actually going on with the iPhone 17 Pro cameras, and why is Apple claiming more lenses than are really there?

Apple’s camera math mixes the actual physical lenses that are there with the capabilities of the camera’s sensors in order to multiply the camera’s capabilities without physically adding more lenses. It doesn’t say that the iPhone Pro 17 actually has 8 lenses, but adds the all-important “like.”

Similarly, Apple doesn’t say that the iPhone 17 Pro has 8x optical zoom, but “optical-quality” zoom.

The trick to getting the look of eight lenses in three is actually in the iPhone’s sensor, not the lens.

The iPhone has used a Quad Bayer sensor on the main camera since the iPhone 14. In a standard camera sensor, each pixel has its own red, green, and blue filters that enable the sensor to see in color. But, on a Quad Bayer sensor, pixels are grouped into four, and each of those four has a different color filter, rather than using all color filters on every single pixel.

Those groups of four are key to the Quad Bayer sensor’s features, as well as the convoluted lens math Apple is using here. All 3 of the rear cameras on the iPhone 17 Pro are now 48MP Fusion Quad Bayer cameras. Because pixels are grouped into quads, the sensor can take 48MP high-resolution shots, or it can use those pixels in quads to take 12MP shots.

Mixing the lenses with those of different resolutions is how Apple is getting eight “lenses” from three on the Pro and four “lenses” from one on the Air. The 8x “optical-quality” zoom on the iPhone 17 Pro just uses the 48MP camera with a 4x optical zoom lens to crop the image in half, doubling that zoom range.

Yes, the trick to Apple’s strange lens math is using digital zoom, or cropping, rather than optical zoom. Yet Apple says this still delivers “optical-quality” zoom, so what gives?

The trick is, in part, due to that Quad Bayer Sensor. The image quality on a 48MP Quad Bayer Sensor isn’t going to be quite as good as a standard 48MP sensor because those pixels only have a single color filter. The camera fills in missing color data in the processing stage, which can make a Quad Bayer photograph look a bit more overprocessed with smoother details compared to a standard image.

When you group those four pixels together instead, using the lower resolution mode, the colors will be a bit more accurate, the details less overly processed and the grain from low light lower. So while the 8x zoom on the newly upgraded 48MP camera on the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max may be a crop, it’s a crop using a sensor that has some advantages when using a lower resolution mode.

The other reason Apple says the digital zoom has “optical-quality” likely has to do with the so-called Fusion camera. A Quad Bayer Sensor organizes pixels in groups of 4, and a 48MP camera divided by 4 is 12MP – not the iPhone 17’s default 24MP resolution. That’s where “Fusion” comes in. The 24MP photos are created by combining a 48MP image and a 12MP image. (DJI also uses Quad Bayer sensors.)

This all happens under the hood of the iPhone, without any input from the user. That means part of the reason that the 8x digital zoom has “optical” like quality is from computational photography, which is a term that refers to improving the quality of an image using software, rather than physical components like the lens and sensor. Computational photography is how modern smartphones balance the need to fit cameras into increasingly thinner devices.

All that boils down to one big question: Is the quality on Apple’s new digital zoom really going to look like optical zoom?

I haven’t got my hands on a new iPhone yet to test the theory. I suspect images from the 8X “optical-quality” zoom won’t be quite as good as a 48MP shot from the main camera using real optics, but may be close enough when compared to the 24MP default resolution. With the upgrade in sensor, I suspect the 4x on the new iPhone 17 Pro may even look better than the 5x telephoto lens on the previous generation.

Using that Quad Bayer digital crop, the iPhone 17 Pro’s trio of rear cameras create the look of a 13mm, 24mm, 28mm, 48mm, 100mm and 200mm lens. The eighth lens is the iPhone’s macro or close-up capabilities. Similarly, on the iPhone Air, that single camera is using the different resolutions of the camera sensor to turn a 1x lens into a 2x “lens.”

I’m less annoyed by Apple’s confusing camera math than I am about that word “pro” when Apple says the iPhone 17 Pro is like “having 8 pro lenses in your pocket.” Computational photography and the design of the Quad Bayer sensor may make the three lenses pass for eight on the lower bar for smartphone image quality, but even a smarter digital zoom isn’t going to look like a real pro lens.

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Tomorrow is iPhone 17 launch day – the day when customers around the world get Apple's latest product in their hands. And when they do, I think the industry is going to realize exactly the criminal masterstroke of this phone – because it hijacked the most must-have feature in the world of mirrorless cameras.

Most people have slept on the fact that the iPhone 17 family has adopted a square sensor on its selfie camera. But the fact is that what Apple is calling Center Stage is, in principle, open gate capture. And much like open gate, until mainstream consumers get the product in their hands, they won't realize quite what a huge deal it is.

If you've managed to miss it, open gate is a technology featured on more and more video-oriented cameras. Brought to the consumer market by Panasonic with cameras like the Lumix S5II, and now making its way into other systems like the Canon EOS C50, it has transformed the way content creators capture video.

Rather than capturing a narrow horizontal 16:9 video, which crops into the image sensor and also reduces resolution, open gate captures video using the entire sensor area – so you record a much larger area, usually 3:2. With so much more headroom, you can then crop into your footage to create 9:16 vertical video, 1:1 square video or anything you like – all without having to reorient your camera or change any settings.

While Center Stage doesn't do quite the same thing, the effect is the same; because the sensor is square, it doesn't matter which way up your phone is – it crops into the sensor to give you a 4:3, 3:4, 16:9, 9:16 or obviously a 1:1 square, whether it's horizontal or vertical.

What does this mean? Well, take a look:

Why does this matter? Why is something that feels like such a disposable feature so important? The same reason open gate video is important for mirrorless cameras: convenience, speed, flexibility and workflow.

Most people are going to feel the effect in a few different ways. Firstly, when taking selfies, you no longer need to worry about having to hold the phone in an awkward way when you take selfies and group shots – you can take a horizontal and vertical image without turning the phone at all.

And when you're making Facetime or WhatsApp calls, you'll no longer need to turn your phone to match the orientation of the person calling you. And video is where this feature really comes into its own.

Even though you're not supposed to, the vast majority of people film their selfie videos – whether it's for TikTok, YouTube, Instagram Stories, snippets to send on WhatsApp or anything else – using the front camera. And everyone knows the faff of trying to prop your phone up the right way, or wrestling with a tripod that's set up in the wrong orientation.

No more. Now you can keep your phone set up in your preferred orientation and simply tap the screen to change the aspect ratio – all without losing quality.

Again, to anyone who hasn't used it, this might sound like a gimmick at best and a barrel-scraping feature at worst. But there's a reason why creators have been fawning over Lumix's latest cameras – and why Canon thought it was so important to put open gate into its latest $3,900 camera.

Just wait until you've tried it… I think in six months, you'll wonder how you ever got by without it.

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Take a look at the best iPhones for photography and, if you want to know more about open gate, check out our Canon EOS C50 review and Panasonic Lumix S1II review.

OK, actually, I've spent a lot more on my iPhones. I'm based in the UK, and haven't always gone for the base storage option, but I've always had the 'Pro Max' or nearest equivalent – that's £18,200 in UK money, where I am, before we even think about how much I've given to the cellular networks for the privilege of using the phone!

But am I going to carry on buying new shirts for Tim Cook and friends – not to mention funding the cost of cleaning the glass on Apple's preposterous glass donut in California? Well, I like to think that I'll make my decision based on real value of the camera that I always have with me (against the re-sale value for last year's iPhone 16 Pro Max).

Actually, that's a good point – most of that money has come back to me because Apple products do hold their value if you look after them, and I do. Admittedly, the only bad case I ever bought – and the most expensive – was an Apple one, so I'll probably just trust the company with the phones.

Which brings me to this year, and trust. For the last two years Time Cook has spent a lot of his time telling me how much Titanium is a better material than Aluminium for phones, and (if you look at my credit card statement) I lapped it up.

Yet this time things are a bit different. The new iPhone Air, presented before the Pro phones, is made of Titanium but the Pro phones are not. So it's probably not as good, right? After all, the Air did not attract my attention as a photographer.

It's thin and light, except for the camera bump, so it isn't thin really, but it definitely does only have one actual camera (whatever Apple say). By which I mean one actual image sensor. They manage to describe it as two – sort of – because it can be used in a crop mode. This isn't doing a lot for my trust.

But apparently I can have the most pro 'Pro' phone ever now that the thinness isn't the worry that it used to be? Er...

Fine. Actually the iPhone Unibody does sound pretty cool as an idea. Literally, as it will be 'thermally efficient' – the aluminum (or aluminium as I'd prefer) will channel the heat away, and to be fair I'm pretty happy with my MacBook Pro M3 (not so much the intel MacBook Pro 2019 I'm also regularly required to deal with, but that's a whole other story).

But what about the cameras that project out on that big new bump (or 'plateau' as Apple seem to prefer)?

I do wonder – will that big bump get scratched more easily? Is this a trick to reduce the chance of my iPhone remaining spotless for a year? Will the best iPhone 17 Pro Max cases cover the bump?

Ultimately, I'm mostly looking with my photographer's eye, and the long optical zoom and the fact there is finally a 48-megapixel sensor on the telephoto camera is the change that I've been looking for. It's frustrated me that the telephoto has been the worst sensor on previous iPhones and, while I don't buy the idea that it is "the equivalent of 8 pro lenses in my pocket," I am sure a better sensor on the tele will actually make a difference that I can see to the images that I capture.

ProRes Raw is also appealing – though I worry about my need for more and more external hard drives when shooting video and whether I actually will ever do the grading from the 10-bit log video! But that's my problem!

What about some of the other new features? Well, apparently, the screen is a lot tougher? Hmmm... never scratched the previous one. That's why I'm hoping I'll still get a decent amount for it on eBay!

Because, yes, as I type I'm watching Apple's pre-order page tell me "We love that early energy" even though it's already five minutes after the time it was supposed to start accepting pre-orders.

I don't think I'm the only one tempted this time.

I wonder, though, if it's the Air or the striking orange iPhone Pro that's luring other people into the queue?

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I'm not the only iPhone user at DCW wondering about the best iPhone upgrade this time – check my colleague Adam Waring, who says "I think I've decided on which iPhone 17 I'm going to buy, but am I making the same mistake again?"

The iPhone 17 pre-order deadline is looming, and I don't know which one to buy. What I do know is that I want to get one of them. It's not because I'm an Apple fanboy who has to have the very latest iPhone the moment it comes out. But I am firmly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem: as a journalist, I've used Macs for years, I use my Apple Watch to pay for everything and leave my wallet at home, and I never go out without my AirPods planted firmly in my ears.

No, the reason it's time for an upgrade is that my current phone is the iPhone 13, and, at four years old, it's beginning to show its age with the battery starting to conk out before I'm done for the day, so it really is time to get a newer model. Plus, I've been meaning to upgrade my 'standard' AirPods to the Pro version after trying a friend's and being blown away by the sound quality – and noise cancellation in particular – and pre-ordered the AirPods Pro 3 on the day of the announcement.

But something else caught my attention with the latest ’Pods, and that's their ability to translate languages automatically. I'm a keen traveler to Europe, and aside from a smattering of Spanish, I rely on pointing and gestures to get myself understood, usually with limited success, so that's a feature I definitely want to take advantage of, and for that you need a phone with Apple Intelligence…

So, I'm getting a new iPhone. I'm also a photographer, so which one is best for me? My one regret, when I bought the 13, was that the cameras on offer were a fairly wide 'standard' focal length, and an even wider one still. I'd upgraded to that model from the iPhone 8, which had standard and telephoto lenses, which I found much more useful.

Logic would seem to say that it has to be the iPhone 17 Pro, with its three-camera array claiming 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x, and 'macro' focal length options (or perhaps the Pro Max; with my eyesight not being what it used to be, bigger is better when it comes to screen size). But boy, are they expensive, and I've just shelled out on the new AirPods, too…

What about the new midrange impossibly thin 'iPhone Air'?. Yes, it looks stunning, but it only has one camera (even if Apple is claiming it also has a 2x optical zoom – but really just crops in), and has no macro facility, which is something I would definitely use.

Then there's the base iPhone 17 model. It has two cameras, but claims 0.5x wide-angle, standard, and 2x telephoto focal lengths (again by cropping, but what the hey!), and importantly, has the macro feature. And while it's not exactly cheap, it's a lot less expensive than models higher up the range.

So that's what I'm going for. The money I've saved on not going for a higher-end model pays for my new AirPods. And besides, the lack of telephoto reach on my older phone meant I always carried a 'proper' camera with me when embarking on 'serious' photography.

I just hope I don't regret it.

On my last vacation, I was taking quick snapshots with my iPhone at the top of an elevated lookout tower. My son looked down and said, Oooh, don’t drop your phone here. That conversation immediately came to mind when Apple launched its latest accessories along with the iPhone 17 series, a list that includes a crossbody iPhone strap that has seemingly divided the internet.

Apple’s Crossbody Strap is an adjustable strap designed to wear an iPhone at your hip. The strap connects with some of Apple’s new cases and uses magnets for easily adjusting the length of the strap.

The internet reacted as the internet typically does, with Apple fans divided in a mixture of awe – and hate. But when I saw the Crossbody Strap, I didn’t think smartphone strap. I thought: The camera that fits in my pocket finally has a camera strap.

Cameras have been paired with straps since the technology first became portable. Not every photographer uses straps – the strap-or-no-strap debate at times seems nearly as divisive as Canon vs Nikon.

But I’ve always considered the camera strap more essential than optional. A camera strap enables my hands to be free when I’m not snapping a photo and keeps it ready for whenever a moment unfolds. But a camera strap also feels far safer to use. It protects my gear from being dropped off an elevated lookout platform or off the side of a boat.

A strap for the camera that took 500 billion selfies last year alone doesn’t feel outrageous; it feels long overdue.

I don’t need convincing over the value of having a camera worn around your neck – not to mention the freedom to pack light without bringing a purse. (Do not get me started on the tiny and even non-existent pockets on women’s clothing.)

But, I may need convincing over whether or not the design of Apple’s Crossbody Strap is smart or needs improvement. When I first heard of a smartphone strap with magnets, I thought perhaps the magnets were to quickly attach and detach the smartphone. After all, I may want a strap on my camera, but I don’t want to bother with a cumbersome attachment when using my phone to read an eBook, tap out emails, or stream a video.

That’s not what the magnets are for, though – they're for adjusting the length of the strap. Based on the product photos, it looks like the strap attaches to the smartphone with simple fabric loops through holes in compatible cases, like a typical lanyard. That seems like it would be a pain to get the strap on and off, and I think a quick-release system would be even more essential on a smartphone.

My camera connects to a harness using metal clips at the tripod mount and a secondary anchor at the usual strap attachment ring. Attaching and detaching my camera from the strap takes seconds, and that metal connection isn’t going to wear out over time.

If the iPhone wants to be taken seriously as a camera, it needs the ability to add a strap. I’m wholeheartedly on board with the idea of putting a strap on my iPhone, both for when I use it as a camera and when I want to pack light and wear pocketless dresses.

But I think the company that came up with the design for the iPhone Air and spent much of the September 09 launch talking about design could have been a bit more creative with a quick attachment system. Camera straps are a great thing. But a camera that is also an eReader, TV streamer, internet browser, portable computer, and a phone needs a quick way to get that strap on and off.

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Miss the iPhone 17 launch? Read about Apple's strange new square front-facing camera, the camera on the iPhone 17 Pro, or the new slim iPhone Air. Or, browse the best camera straps.

The Apple 17 series is here – and Apple didn't just launch the long-rumored iPhone Air. The iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max contain what Apple says is its best camera yet, with up to 48MP resolution on all three rear camera lenses and a larger, square-shaped sensor on the front camera.

Apple CEO Tim Cook says the newest iPhone series is "unlike anything we've ever created." While part of that is due to the launch of the iPhone Air, the iPhone Pro and Pro Max are also redesigned from the ground up. In fact, Apple is so confident about its camera capabilities that it filmed the entire September 09 Apple launch event on an iPhone 17 Pro.

As previously rumored, the camera bar on the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max looks different than earlier models, with a camera bar that takes up most of the width of the back of the iPhone itself. The three cameras sit on the left with the flash and LiDAR sensor on the right.

While the iPhone 16 Pro already had two of its rear cameras at 48MP, the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max now use up to 48MP on all three rear cameras. The newly designed telephoto camera, which previously topped out at 12MP, uses a teraprism design that allowed Apple to increase the sensor size by 56 percent.

The telephoto camera also packs in Apple's longest telephoto yet. The telephoto camera can shoot at either a 4x 100mm equivalent or a 2x 100mm equivalent, a setting that relies on the iPhone's ability to capture either 24MP or 48MP images. That means the longest 200mm equivalent reach is at 24MP, not 48MP.

Like with earlier models, the 48MP resolution is the max that's used alongside a smaller, more space-friendly 24MP default.

Video wasn't left out of the equation either, with new support for ProRes RAW capture, an Apple-created codec that allows for more flexible edits in post production. A new Genlock feature allows serious iPhone video creators to sync multiple cameras for effects like time splicing and bullet time, which will be supported by a new Blackmagic Pro dock. That list of video features also includes Dolby Vision HDR, 4K120fps, and support for ACES

That rear camera bar also joins a newly redesigned front camera that uses a square sensor. Called Center Stage, the square design is meant for capturing vertical or horizontal selfies without having to rotate the phone itself.

That updated camera bump – which Apple eloquently calls a plateau – doesn't just house the cameras, though. Apple relocated the antenna to the edges of the camera bump, a move that Apple says helps to increase connectivity.

The iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max also use the newest A19 Pro Apple silicon, which includes a six-core CPU and a six-core GPU with a neural accelerator built into each GPU core. That powers – you guessed it – on-device Apple Intelligence.

Apple says the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max incorporate more machine learning into the imaging pipeline than any other previous models. The company says the machine learning comes into play at preserving details, reducing noise, and improving color accuracy.

The redesigned camera plateau isn't the only redesigned aspect of the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max. The smartphones are the first iPhones to use a unibody. Apple says that the one-piece design was made to be light and rigid while also being thermally efficient.

Photographers and videographers will also appreciate that enhanced thermal regulation, as it's part of the equation that allows the Pro and Pro Max models to deliver up to 40 percent better performance than the 16 Pro at intense tasks like photo and video editing.

The iPhone 17 series is slated for a September 19 release, with pre-orders opening on Friday, September 12. The iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099 / £1,099 / AU$1,999. That's technically $100 more than the 16 Pro base model, but the base model has more storage at 256GB, and that price matches the iPhone 16 Pro 256GB model. The Pro Max starts at $1,199 / £1,199 /AU$2,199.

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The long-anticipated iPhone Air is no longer the stuff of tech myths and rumors. During a landslide of new Apple gear announced during the September 09 event, Apple unveiled its thinnest iPhone yet. The Apple iPhone Air is just 5.6mm thick and packs in the same new A19 Pro Apple Silicon as the iPhone 17 Pro. The camera on the new iPhone Air, however, is another story.

Where Apple’s Pro series packs in three cameras on the rear, the iPhone Air tries to pack more features into a single rear camera. While the specs list just the one rear camera, Apple says the camera still has the capabilities of four different lenses. That’s thanks to a 2x optical zoom and the option for 48MP or 24MP photos.

Apple says the standard main lens has options for the look of a 28mm and 35mm equivalent focal length, with an “optical quality 2X Telephoto” built into that same camera. Like the three-lens array on the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, the iPhone Air’s single camera has a 24MP default and a 48MP high-resolution mode. The 48MP Fusion camera also still manages to include sensor shift optical stabilization.

While Apple has managed to get a 2x zoom without multiple camera sensors on the rear of the iPhone Air, there’s only so much the tech giant was able to cram into something 5.6mm thin. The feature list for the iPhone Air doesn’t list the .5x zoom of the iPhone 17, nor does it list macro photography capabilities.

Despite having only a single lens, however, Apple says the iPhone Air still supports portrait mode with focus and depth control, a popular feature for creating more background blur from a smaller smartphone sensor. The thinner iPhone also still has an action button and Camera Control.

For video, the iPhone Air offers 4K Dolby Vision at up to 60fps, and an action mode for 2.8K at 60fps. While the still photos keep portrait mode intact, cinematic mode for more background blur in footage is not among the list of iPhone Air features.

Like the rest of the full iPhone 17 series lineup, the iPhone Air uses what Apple is calling a Center Stage front camera, a square sensor that allows users to snap vertical and horizontal selfies without changing the orientation of the phone itself. That front-camera capability can also help keep users centered in the frame on FaceTime calls.

Despite the thinner design, the iPhone Air still advertises a battery life that allows for up to 27 hours of video playback – a slight decline from the iPhone 17’s up to 30-hour specification.

The iPhone Air is a uniquely positioned smartphone that offers the same processor as in the Pro models, but without the three-camera array and inside a far thinner design. The iPhone Air is priced above the base model iPhone 17, but below the iPhone 17 Pro, starting at $999 / £999 / AU$1,799. Preorders open on September 12, with the first models shipping on September 19.

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Apple’s biggest launch event of the year is here – and the tech giant says 2025 is a big year for cameras, starting with the iPhone 17. But while the rear cameras offer a number of updates, the front-facing camera has the most unusual upgrade: it’s square.

The iPhone 17 series front-facing camera, now dubbed Center Stage, uses a larger sensor that’s square-shaped. Why go square? Apple says the new shape of the sensor allows users to change the orientation of the photos without turning the smartphone itself.

The Center Stage camera comes into play on the base model iPhone 17 as well as the new iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max.

The ability to snap a horizontal or vertical shot without changing the orientation of the camera is designed to aid in grabbing wide group selfies, as the newly designed front camera also uses the widest lens yet. But, the square sensor also crops the video to keep users centered in the frame during FaceTime calls.

That redesigned front-facing camera also supports a new dual recording mode that uses both the front and rear-facing cameras simultaneously to film the user’s reaction to whatever is unfolding in front of the rear camera.

That square format sensor is meant to be cropped, so resolution will vary a bit across the board, but the front camera peaks at 18MP.

The front-facing camera is also equipped with stabilization, as well as focus and depth control.

The front-facing camera does vary slightly across the iPhone 17 series, despite the Center Stage selfie camera being part of all four new models. The new iPhone Air doesn't offer cinematic or ProRes 4K 60p video from the front camera, but the iPhone 17 Pro does.

The iPhone 17 series pre-orders open on September 12.

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As a photographer I have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to images, but Apple is about to warn users of a smartphone photography mistake with an easy fix: a dirty lens.

The beta version of iOS 26 has a new feature called Lens Cleaning Hints, which alerts users when the camera is too full of smudgy fingerprints and pocket lint to take a clear shot, and I’m hoping that a quick pop-up notification will rescue countless photos from imminent, blurry ruin.

A dirty lens wreaks havoc on photos, softening details and making everything look blurred. But unlike other solutions to common photography problems (like learning how to use manual mode or how to use a flash), a dirty lens has an easy fix – just wipe it off. (Ideally, with a microfiber cloth, but I won’t judge if you use the corner of your t-shirt.)

I once bought a lens protector for my iPhone, and then after a few weeks, I pulled my iPhone out and had a split second of panic when everything on the screen was a blurry mess. The culprit wasn’t an iPhone bug or a busted camera, though, just a broken lens protector.

The Lens Cleaning Hints uses AI to detect smudges in the photos and will then warn users when a dirty lens is about to wreak havoc on image quality. The feature can be toggled on by heading to Settings > Camera and toggling the option for Lens Cleaning Hints. (It can also be turned off if you find pop-up notifications annoying, or if you want to use a diffusion or soft focus filter over the lens.)

The feature, for now, is only on the beta version of iOS 26, but I hope the feature rolls out with the fully-fledged iOS, which will likely arrive sometime after Apple’s September launch event. The feature, however, looks like it's limited to the iPhone 15 and newer models for now, so it’s not going to prevent all the smudgy images from entering my feed.

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I miss the days of finding a pair of headphones in the box along with my iPhone – not because I love earbuds, but because Apple’s headphones had a hidden hack to remotely control the camera. But with iOS 26, Apple is bringing back one of my favorite iPhone photography hacks, this time, with the wireless AirPods.

Apple teased the ability to control the camera with the gesture controls built into the stem of some AirPod models back in June. But with the recent announcement of an Apple launch event on September 9, I suspect the feature is getting very close to rolling out, as an iOS update often follows shortly after a new phone launch.

Back when Apple used to tuck a pair of wired earbuds into the box of each iPhone, the volume controls could also be used to snap a photo. Naturally, those wired headphones meant photographers still had to be standing close to the camera, but the hack was a good way to minimize camera shake when using a tripod.

Adding the hack to the wireless AirPods will open up even more possibilities. The small AirPods can easily be hidden and have a much farther range than the old plug-in buds.

As developers have gotten access to early previews of iOS 26, iPhone photographers now have a better glimpse at what the feature will look like, beyond the original rumors and Apple’s brief mention of the capability.

The feature looks to be compatible with the AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2. The Camera Remote feature will need to be turned on in the settings, according to MacRumors, but then users can choose which gesture to use to trigger a shot, between pressing once or pressing and holding the stem of the headphones.

But there’s another feature that hints that this AirPods Camera Control will be quite useful. Instead of taking just one shot while your finger is up to your ear, the camera uses a three-second timer, and then takes ten photos, increasing the odds that you get a good shot with no blinks.

Besides being handy for capturing selfies without having your arm up awkwardly in the photo, using a remote is also handy for taking long exposures instead of a timer, as touching the phone can introduce unintentional camera shake.

Now, if only headphones were still included in the box.

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A widely-circulated rumor suggests that Apple might already be ditching the iPhone Camera Control button, which debuted with the iPhone 16. This would come as a bit of a surprise, especially given how long the company persevered with the Touch Bar on the MacBook Pro.

The source, "OvO Baby Sauce OvO," on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, doesn't have a 100% track record, and history suggests that Apple sticks with features a little longer (or a lot longer) to see if there is any take-up – again, see the Touch Bar – in fact here the two are next to each other:

So, with an imperfect source and a very early potential retirement, why is the story being so widely circulated? Three reasons spring to mind.

Firstly, the button hasn't had a lot of traction. I'm a photography writer, I bought the iPhone 16 Pro Max and I barely use it the new control. I think it comes down to the fact that the camera control is distinctly software-based, not mechanical, and so it feels a bit too unnatural for me. That's personal, of course, and many will have a different experience, but I still find myself reaching for the control on the touch screen. Perhaps it is also difficult to unlearn nearly 20 years of experience!

Secondly, Apple has shown some interest in using the button – which is a little like a tiny track-pad – to control its AI features, and AI features (and Apple's failings in the area) are big news in the tech world, so any sign of weakness there is worth reporting for tech writers.

Thirdly, of course, we tend to expect new iPhones to be announced at some point in September and that's just next month, so any news about possible changes carries more weight than usual.

I will share a personal gripe about the camera control button while I'm writing though. My iPhone case has a very, very thin strip of plastic around the top of the button, and it has bent over the course of the year so that it curves over the on-screen keyboard (when it's there) and makes it hard to press the 'P'. It's caused me a lot of typos – rather more than it has saved me moments in photography!

On the flip side, we have also seen other rumors suggesting that Apple might be bringing more camera controls to the outside of the iPhone 17 and later, so another possibility is that this rumor is correct, but for a different reason. It is possible that Apple has chosen to end its order of this particular part, but not because it is withdrawing external camera controls, but simply changing them and using a different component from a different supplier.

Either way, we will know soon and will share that news here.

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With just weeks to go before Apple's biggest product launch of the year, Apple's most renowned information leaker – Mark Gurman – has shared details of the next three years of iPhones, including an upcoming folding phone iPhone.

In his paywalled piece for Bloomberg, he explains that Apple is about to begin a 3-year plan to re-invent (and perhaps reinigorate) the iPhone, and that will begin with an iPhone Air (a rumor we have covered here before), a phone which will make some compromises on the number of cameras and battery size in exchange for thinness.

Gurman is clear he thingks that the iPhone Air will actually replace the iPhone 16 Plus in the lineup, so there will not actually be another product when it comes to number, just a new way of looking at the four phone line up. The iPhone 17, 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max will come out as you might have expected.

The next big change will come in (presumably) September 2026 with a folding iPhone – that Gurman tells us is internally codenamed called V68. It will fold open into a small tablet (though it's a fair bet it'll cost more than an iPad Mini). We are told that this device will have four cameras, one on the front, one inside, and two on the back. In other words, one fewer back camera than we're used to on a premium product.

We're also told that the iPhone Fold (just a guess at a name!) will feature Touch ID rather than Face ID. It will also, apparently, only be sold in black and white rather than Apple's traditional four color options. Screen tech has proven an issue at Apple towers too, with Apple first wanting to use the less accurate on-cell touch tech, but shifting to in-cell touch sensors.

Apple will start to include its own modem chips in the iPhone Air, and the iPhone Fold will be the first where a C2 modem chip – one as powerful as the premium chips from competitors – might make an appearance.

Finally, the third year will be 'iPhone 20' – a special curved design to recognise the 20th anniversary. Ring any bells?

As September approaches, tips about the iPhone 17 are circulating, and of course we want to know about any new features on the cameras above anything. A boost from 5x to 8x optical zoom on the Pro models is likely one of those, at least according to an anonymous tipster.

Why would we give any credence to someone who won't even share their name? They've shared their tip with MacRumors – and, apparently, been back in touch to clarify details of other aspects of their information – which implies a little more care for the truth than a random voice on social media.

According to the tip, the zoom lens will have continuous optical adjustment between different focal lengths, which will be interesting at phone size.

Another part of the tip suggests that Apple will create a 'Pro Camera' app for both photos and videos. This is something we have seen from other brands too, and does seem like a logical step after the tidying up of the Camera app interface seen in the iOS26 at WWDC.

It might be bad news for the other 'pro' camera apps on the iOS platform – Halide, Kino, and Filmic Pro, for example.

The rumor also suggests there might be an additional camera control button on the top edge of the device for quick access to camera-related settings, in addition to the Camera Control button added to the bottom right edge of the iPhone 16 on all models.

Personally I have to admit I very rarely make use of that button – the main thing it has done for me is make my phone slightly harder to use, not because of itself, but because the case I have has a very thin piece of plastic to allow access to that button, and over the not-yet-year it has warped and now interferes with the on-scren keyboard!

Finally, Macrumor's tipster suggested that there would be a new copper color.

Everything so far needs to be treated with a due sense of caution (I'd say especially a mechanical lens), but a longer zoom would make sense in line with the competition.

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It really does look like most of 28 Years Later was shot on an iPhone 15 Pro Max. I’ll be honest, I thought it was largely a clever bit of marketing and that iPhones were used sparingly, but a video on the Sony Pictures Entertainment YouTube channel takes a behind-the-scenes look at the gear used by Danny Boyle and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle – and most of it is smartphone equipment.

However, we’re not talking about a camera operator walking around with an iPhone in a MagSafe case. The iPhones used on 28 Years Later were dressed in various rigs, so they could be operated effectively. The simplest is a small rig with two handles on either side of the iPhone and an anamorphic optic that looks like a pancake lens. Anthony says: “My dear focus pullers can still control the image if they need to.”

ABOVE: Watch Boyle and Dod Mantle talk through the gear

What I found interesting is that the filmmakers decided to turn off image stabilization. You might think that’s a curious decision but, in spite of Apple’s sensor-shift tech, the iPhone’s Enhanced Stabilization zooms into the image slightly to digitally stabilize footage, which eats into the resolution – hence the decision to turn it off.

The next rig is a much larger and more professional-looking affair, and answers one of the big questions I had when I found out that the production was using iPhones: how do you pull focus? Well, you still use cinema lenses.

As Anthony explains: “A smartphone, an intermediate stage which converts this sensor into an imaging sensor capable of receiving a PL lens”. This enabled the filmmakers to use anamorphic or spherical lenses and accessories such as matte boxes and filters.

What I wasn’t expecting to see was a telescope mounted on an iPhone. Having seen the movie, I can’t quite remember where that might have been used, but what I do remember is plenty of FPV drone shots.

As the filmmakers explain, the drone pilots wore VR goggles when filming to immerse themselves in the action. “It’s not just like the drone, the God’s POV,” says Anthony, “I wanted them to work with the actors as much as possible and become like a very dramatic character”.

And finally, Danny Boyle walks through the famous 20-iPhone rig. A half circle of mounted iPhones, which was used to create a 3D Bullet-Time effect. “You overhear the word 'immersive',” says Danny, “but this is an example of it, it puts you right inside it really. Because it changes the simultaneous perspective at any point, if you like.”

Camera talk is only part of the video, though. So make sure you watch the whole thing to gain some great insight into the pre-production process as Danny Boyle talks about Alex Garland’s incredible script, storyboarding and more.

I’ve seen the movie and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not only does it manage to tap into the original’s uncomfortable brand of immersion, but the cinematography is genuinely outstanding. I love the fact that iPhones were so prevalent within the filmmaking process, and the film doesn’t suffer from it at all.

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We're fast approaching the likely September launch window for the iPhone 17 series, and now a leak on Chinese social media site Weibo claims to have the first hands-on photos of the upcoming iPhone 17 Pro. The design of the camera island is consistent with previous rumors, showing the camera island elongated to cover the whole width of the phone.

This marks the first substantial change to the camera island's shape since the triple camera array within a square island debuted with the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max. However, it's not obviously clear whether there's any practical reason for enlarging the camera island in this way, since there are still only three camera lenses, all of which appear to be in the same physical position as they've been for several years. Only the LiDAR scanner and flash have been moved to the opposite side of the camera island, though we can't see why.

As for the specification of the iPhone 17's cameras: it's claimed that the iPhone 17 will get a 48MP primary (wide-angle) camera, while the Pro Max could have wide, ultrawide and telephoto modules all with a 48MP resolution. Speculation also hints at possible 8K video recording capability for the Pro Max, which would be an iPhone first. There have also been reports that Apple may move to a 24MP selfie camera, which would be a significant upgrade from the iPhone 16's 12MP front-facing module.

We also now have new information suggesting the possible colors for the new iPhone 17 range. A Tweet from Sonny Dickson on Twitter/X shows the camera rings that will supposedly surround each lens on the new iPhones, and crucially, these small inserts look to be color-coded to the rest of the phone. This therefore implies that the iPhone 17 series would be available in the following color options:

iPhone 17:

Black, gray, silver, light blue, light green, light purple

iPhone 17 Air:

Black, silver, blue gray, light gold

iPhone 17 Pro / Pro Max:

Black, gray, silver, dark blue, orange

If an orange finish for the iPhone 17 Pro / Pro Max does turn out to be real, this would be a welcome return to a really vibrant iPhone color since Apple discontinued its Product (RED) color option, last available for the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus.

iPhones and Formula 1 cars may not seem an obvious match, but it's been revealed that for the Apple Original movie, F1, starring Brad Pitt, Apple constructed a custom-made on-board camera comprised of iPhone parts.

Read more: the best iPhone for photography

On-board cameras on Formula 1 cars have been a fixture for decades, with the camera module often located on the side of the car's air box, just behind the driver's head. However, these cameras are designed to transmit video footage for live television broadcasting, whereas the production team behind F1 required the movie video to be shot at a higher resolution, using a different color space and recording codec. Apparently it was easier to construct a new on-board camera designed especially for the job than convert/upscale footage from existing on-board broadcast cameras.

The camera that Apple came up with doesn't resemble an iPhone externally, as it had to fit within the existing aerofoil-shaped camera housing that attaches to the side of the car. The new camera even had to be built to a pre-defined weight, in order to not upset the finely-tuned balance of an Formula 1 car. Although Apple hasn't revealed the exact specs of the camera it created, it's been speculated that it may feature the same 48MP primary camera from the iPhone 15 Pro, as well as its A17 Pro chipset. This is because Apple has previously used similar cameras mounted to Formula 1 cars during the 2023 and 2024 seasons. The cameras used for the movie production apparently also contained a neutral density filter to enable better control over exposure, while video is said to have been recorded in log with Apple's ProRes lossless video codec, in order to give editors more color grading freedom for matching the look of footage captured by other cameras.

As the camera module doesn't contain any form of wireless transmission, the only way to communicate with it is via a custom iPad app connected via a USB cable. The app then allowed the production team to change camera settings such as frame rate, exposure and white balance, and to start and stop recordings. The iPhone-based camera module also needed extensive testing to ensure it could cope with the demands of recording video while mounted to a Formula 1 car. You'd normally choose a vehicle with supple suspension to effectively absorb bumps and keep your video smooth. A Formula 1 car is exactly the opposite: hard and unforgiving, therefore Apple presumably required some next-level image stabilization to counteract the extreme camera vibrations.

The use of iPhone tech in a major movie production isn't unique to F1. Other filmmakers have utilised this relatively accessible means of filmmaking before, and even the upcoming Danny Boyle horror blockbuster 28 Years Later has been partially shot on iPhone. And it's thanks to the increasing use of camera phones in movie making that Apple has now implemented features like log encoding and the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) color workflow into iOS.

Of course, if you do fancy giving movie-making a go, just because a current iPhone has the ability to record in a professional video format doesn't mean you'll instantly end up with Hollywood-grade footage. The right lighting, stabilization, and a tripod will also likely be required, as well as a creative eye of course.

Story credit: Wired

The iPhone 17 is coming, probably in September assuming Apple follows its usual release schedule, and rumors are circulating about what we might expect from the new line-up. This is said to consist of four phones: iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and iPhone 17 Air.

Early reports from sources within Apple's supply chain suggest that the new iPhone 17 Air could replace the discontinued 'Plus' variant, as Apple potentially transitions to producing a thinner and lighter phone model that can rival Samsung's Galaxy S25 Edge. If the rumors are to be believed, the iPhone Air could be just 5.5mm thick, undercutting the 5.8mm S25 Edge to become the thinnest non-foldable camera phone in the world. The new iPhone would be positioned above the vanilla iPhone 17, but below the Pro models.

It's also suggested that the camera hardware across the iPhone 17 line-up could be overhauled, with reports that Apple may move to a 24MP selfie camera, which would be a significant upgrade from the iPhone 16's 12MP front-facing camera. It's expected that the iPhone 17 will get a 48MP primary (wide-angle) camera, while the Pro Max could have wide, ultrawide and telephoto modules all with a 48MP resolution. Speculation also hints at possible 8K video recording capability for the Pro Max, which would be an iPhone first.

Story credit: BizzBuzz

In the ever-evolving world of filmmaking, the tools we use to tell stories are shifting and increasingly, they’re fitting into our pockets.

Apple’s latest short film, Big Man, was shot entirely on the iPhone 16 Pro and is a powerful reminder that compelling cinema doesn’t require a truckload of gear.

Directed by Academy Award-winner Aneil Karia and starring UK music icon Stormzy, Big Man follows Tenzman, a weary musician whose unexpected bond with two kids sparks a journey of warmth, spontaneity, and renewed purpose. It’s an emotional story told with rich visuals and cinematic flair, and yet, it was all captured on a device most of us carry every day.

For Karia, this was his first time shooting a full narrative piece on an iPhone. "It’s been a really invigorating process," he says. The lightweight, compact nature of the phone enabled the crew to move more freely, shoot more intimately, and adapt in ways traditional cinema cameras often can’t. Whether squeezing into tight corners or capturing spontaneous performances, the iPhone opened up creative opportunities that would have been more difficult with larger rigs.

Above: Big Man behind the scenes YouTube video by Apple

The iPhone 16 Pro’s Cinematic mode, with its shallow depth of field and automatic focus pulling, enabled visually dynamic storytelling without the usual logistical complexity. Director of Photography Stuart Bentley points to this versatility as a game-changer: "If you’re hungry and passionate about cinema, there’s no reason you can’t make an amazing film. You can do it all on an iPhone."

Beyond flexibility, Big Man showcases the technical muscle of the iPhone 16 Pro. Slow-motion scenes were filmed at 4K 120 fps, enhancing action with fluid detail. Scenes in dimly lit arcades and music studios were shot using the phone’s advanced low-light capabilities, and by shooting in Apple ProRes Log, the team preserved a high level of image data for professional-grade color grading in post. The result is a film that looks anything but mobile-made; it's a grounded piece of cinema.

This isn’t just a one-off for the iPhone either. Not long ago, I wrote about the iPhone 16 Pro being used to capture a Weeknd music video, and more recently, director Danny Boyle’s upcoming film 28 Years Later, the highly anticipated follow-up to 28 Days Later, was shot on an iPhone, reaffirming that this shift is not a gimmick.

What makes Big Man so exciting isn’t just the story it tells, although excellent with a standout performance by Stormzy, but it’s what it represents. It’s a reminder that filmmaking is no longer limited to those with deep pockets or studio access.

As Karia notes, there was a time when filmmaking felt completely out of reach. Now, with a powerful camera sitting in your pocket, those boundaries have all but disappeared.

Check out the full short film and behind-the-scenes video on the official Apple YouTube channel.

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Check out our guides to the best camera phone and the best iPhone grips. If you want to take control of your iPhone exposure, we have a guide to that too.

Anamorphic lenses for smartphones are nothing but a gimmick, right? After all, anamorphics are the preserve of moviemakers and high-end video productions. Then again, anamorphic lenses have become much more accessible, thanks to Chinese brands such as Sirui and Blazar, churning out decent anamorphic glass at affordable prices. And that tech extends to camera phones, too.

I recently happened upon a YouTube video by Switzerland-based filmmaker, Piero Gianni, called The Truth about Anamorphic Lenses for Smartphones, which delves into the Freewell iPhone Pro Filmmaker Cine Pro Kit and its 1.33x anamorphic lens. This lens attachment retails for $129.99 / £129.99 / AU$260 (you'll need a custom Freewell case for your particular model of phone too). And while that isn’t expensive for an anamorphic lens, it’s a serious commitment for an iPhone accessory.

If you’re wondering what is an anamorphic lens? These optics are used to capture super-wide fields of view via specialist optics that squash the image onto the sensor. The image is then ‘desqueezed’ in post-production, producing that distinctive, letterbox ‘CinemaScope’ aspect ratio without compromising on pixels. And in that respect, the Freewell anamorphic lens is no different. But the crux of Piero’s video is whether or not it’s worth the expenditure and the effort.

He rightly points out that part of an anamorphic lens’s charm is its distinctive, anamorphic look. The way it distorts the image, causes ovular bokeh, and produces that razor-thin flaring effect that JJ Abrams loves so much. In short, anamorphics simply look cinematic.

But what about on iPhone? Does the Freewill 1.33x anamorphic lens still bear these hallmarks or is it a cheap imitation? Well, the answer lies somewhere between. It definitely has anamorphic characteristics, but ultimately, it’s a much smaller lens on a much smaller sensor and that comes with some inherent limitations. Make sure you watch the video (above) to find out what those limitations are, and for a closer look at the Freewill optic in use.

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Thinking of shooting video on your iPhone? "A filmmaking powerhouse!" – The iPhone 16 Pro is a serious camera, and this proves it! Here's the iPhone 16 Pro Max review, and if you're into anamorphics, Blazar Lens makes waves with "world’s first" autofocus 1.33x anamorphic lenses.

How can Apple's famous wireless headphones, AirPods, be adapted to serve the needs of photographers, you might ask? With Apple's annual developers' event, WWDC, set to start on Monday, plenty of rumors are suggesting that it will happen – perhaps even with head gestures!

Don't worry, it seems unlikely that Apple will have you capturing a photo every time you nod along with the beat. But motion-sensing technology has been discussed in a roundup of claims made by Apple fan site 9to5Mac.

Its piece reports that the option to "Control Your AirPods by Moving Your Head" will appear as an option (with the "Turn On" or "Not Now" choice) when the next version of iOS is installed.

That, incidentally, will not be called iOS 19 (as you might have been expecting, after the current iOS 18) but iOS 26.

All new versions of Apple's operating systems – MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS and the like will make the jump to 26 for consistency and to reduce confusion. (If this were to apply to VisionOS, too, that'd be quite the jump from version 2.)

Okay, but what about photography? If you can remember far enough back, the old EarBuds could be set to control the camera. Now, according to the piece, "AirPods Camera Control" will allow users to click the stem of the AirPod (as you might to pause the music most of the time) to activate the camera.

Questions remain, but something that would make it potentially even more useful, given the tiny and wireless nature of the pods, is the possibility that it could be triggered even (or only) when the pods were not being worn.

Another interesting feature for photographers who were wowed by last year's AI audio features (switching to In-frame, Studio and Cinematic modes when shooting ProRes video) is that a "Studio Quality" option might use the microphones in the AirPods to simulate a lavilier mic.

How soon will we know? Digital Camera World will be reporting the highlights from the WWDC keynote, which is June 09 at 10:00 PDT / 18:00 BST / 03:00 AEST.

Features are typically available to developers the same day, then to the public around a month later as part of a Public Beta that can be downloaded optionally "at your own risk". The official version of the new OS will not likely be pushed to all Apple phones (or at least all capable of running it) until the fall.

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Adobe Lightroom for Mobile is a free app for iOS or Android devices that’s really designed for an Adobe subscription plan but CAN be used in a basic way as an alternative to your iPhone's in-built Camera app. 

Here’s Adobe’s list of things you don't get  without a subscription:

• Cloud storage and the ability to sync your Lightroom photos on all your devices including your computer.
• Sync presets and profiles
• Healing brush
• Selective Adjustments
• Sensei search
• Geometry tools
• Raw editing on phone or tablet
• Share Web Galleries
• People Photo sorting
• Batch editing

That sounds like just about everything, right? Actually, no. You can still use a lot of the Lightroom editing features in the free version and, more to the point, you can use Lightroom for Mobile’s in-built camera app.

You will still need to sign up for a free Adobe ID before you can use the app, but just getting an Adobe ID doesn't automatically incur a subscription charge. An Adobe ID is completely free.

Once you've got the Lightroom for Mobile app, you'll need to dig a little to find the built-in camera. There are three buttons across the bottom of the screen: ‘Device’, ‘Edit’ and ‘Community. The one you want is ‘Edit’. On this screen you’ll see a blue ‘camera’ icon in the bottom right corner.

Even in free mode, the camera controls are useful. You get exposure compensation, white balance and focus point control and, via a button top right, you can set the self-timer and aspect ratio, and apply some useful composition guides and an even more useful horizontal/vertical level display.

There’s more useful stuff right at the bottom where you can choose ‘Automatic’, ‘Professional’ or HDR modes, and swap between your iPhone’s different cameras.

What you don’t get is the option to shoot raw images or automatic synchronization to the cloud, or the full range of editing tools.

To be fair, you probably are better off getting a subscription because you might get tired of all the things you want to do that turn out to be ‘Premium’ features. 

But if you already have a Photography Plan and you hadn’t given Lightroom for Mobile much thought, then you should install it and check it out right away. This is a completely free tool you’re not using, and Lightroom for Mobile also has its own camera app which is WAY more powerful than Apple’s.

A new wave of rumors is buzzing online: Apple could be working on an iPhone with a 200MP camera – a major leap for the tech giant, and it has got people pretty excited.

While some may roll their eyes at yet another rumor without solid confirmation, this one signals that Apple might finally step up in the smartphone camera game – something we have been waiting for. It feels like ages since we've seen any major camera upgrades in iPhones.

The latest speculations about the upcoming iPhone 17 Pro sparked some hopes: Apple is ditching earlier rumors of a horizontal camera bar (similar to the Google Pixel 9 Pro design). Instead, it might upgrade the iPhone 16 Pro's 12MP telephoto to a 48MP module with 10x hybrid zoom and a larger sensor. This all requires space, so the iPhone 17 Pro probably features a bigger, triple-lens camera island. If Apple follow its usual annual calendar for updates, the iPhone 17 Pro would be officially announced in September.

And now, the possibility of a 200MP camera is entering the conversation. Exciting.

An insider known as Digital Chat Station on Weibo has spilled some tea about Apple's design plans. Sadly, this information makes the rumor look unlikely to become a reality for the upcoming iPhone 17 line, as Apple is working on camera improvements years ahead.

But 2027 marks the 20th anniversary of the iPhone, and that could be the perfect moment for Apple to deliver a major camera overhaul. The iPhone 19 – or possibly a special anniversary edition, much like the iPhone X for the 10th birthday – could be the model to finally feature a 200MP camera.

And it's about time! To put things into perspective: the world's first 200MP smartphone camera debuted in August 2022 with the Motorola X30 Pro (later released globally as the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra). Following that, brands like Samsung and Xiaomi jumped on board with their 200MP models, including the Galaxy S24 and S25, or the Xiaomi Red Note 13+.

Meanwhile, Apple's most recent release – the iPhone 16 Pro Max (launched in September 2024) – still only features two 45MP cameras (out of the four cameras it has in total).

That's the scoop for now.

Saying that, there are some rumors around the iPhone 17 Pro, hinting not just at better camera quality but possibly an all-screen design, as Apple could be working on putting Face ID in an under-display camera... But this news kind of lost its spark compared to the 200MP camera rumor.

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In breaking news today, Donald Trump has indicated that he is "recommending" imposing tariffs of 50% on goods from the EU – including a number of camera manufacturers like Leica.

On the subject of iPhones, Trump address the CEO directly via Truth Social, his social media platform: "I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else. If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

"If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S."

In his Truth Social account, Trump then addresses the EU "Our discussions with them are going nowhere! Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025." This is much more than the 10% which some had expected.

Reminding (or attempting to push onto his followers) a the naive interpretation of the economics of trade tax, he adds "There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States." but this doesn't really acknowldge the fact that those manufacturers may well need to source parts which have themselves been manufacturered outside the USA, so will have been subject to tariffs.

Already this month Leica have had to push some prices $1,595 from to $2,790 while other camera manufacturers have paused orders for some models.

I remember when there were supply issues for the DJI Air 3S, also caused by US legal choices, and many Americans found it easier to get theirs from Canada. It'll be interesting to see how customers handle difficulty getting iPhones and cameras at the prices they expect!

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It looks like Apple is going back to the drawing board with a camera technology that has thus far eluded it: the under-display camera (UDC).

I'm by no means alone when I say that the iPhone 16 launch was a disaster, from the vaporware that is Apple Intelligence to the poorly implemented Camera Control button.

Apple, it seems, is also aware of the situation, and is eager to find its new killer app for the next wave of iPhones. And perhaps it has found it, by following in the footsteps of phones like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 with its invisible selfie camera.

Apple's implementation, however, may not be for a selfie camera but instead for facial recognition – which would still reduce the cutout required for the front-facing cameras.

"Well, I checked the Apple supply chain a few days ago," wrote tipster Digital Chat Station on Chinese social network Weibo (by way of SamMobile).

"The iPhone 18 Pro / 18 Pro Max is indeed testing 3D faces under the screen, with a single HIAA [hole in activation area] hole; the iPhone 18/18 Air is a regular 2+1 hole…"

​​If true, this is an interesting strategic inversion; it had previously been reported that Apple would roll out the technology to base models, starting with the iPhone 17 / Plus, before bringing it to the high end with the iPhone 18 Pro / Max.

While Samsung has been the only company to make a real go of UDC tech thus far, it's far from the only manufacturer to have explored the idea.

Xiaomi patented its version of the tech in 2019, with plenty of players following suit from Microsoft in 2020 to Google in 2023. And while a couple of Chinese brands have brought the feature to market, there's been one tiny problem: "the camera sucked".

By using the tech for facial recognition, rather than as an actual selfie camera, Apple would get around the image quality issue. And it's adding a new wrinkle, by giving its own UDC a light source – believed to be the infrared used by Face ID.

Whether or not this rumor turns out to be true, there's no doubt that Apple needs to do something for the next iPhones. The 17 has a lot of heavy lifting to do, if confidence is to be restored. I'm gagging for a new phone, Apple – just give me one worth buying!

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This effect has different names. Some people call it ‘converging verticals’, some call it ‘keystoning’, after the shape of keystones in arches. Technically, it’s a type of perspective distortion – and you see it all the time with wide-angle lenses. 

So it’s the lens’ fault? No! Actually it’s your fault, because of where you’re standing and how you tilt the camera. It’s natural behavior, though – you’re right up close to some spectacular building or landmark, so you swap to your iPhone’s wide-angle lens to get it all in. And the taller your subject, the more you have to tilt the phone upwards. 

This is what causes this converging verticals effect. The top of the building is much further away than the base, so it appears much smaller.

This is, to be fair, exaggerated by wide-angle lenses, so it is kind of the lens’ fault after all. The wider the angle of a lens, the more it exaggerates the difference in size between nearby objects and those further away. But it's not the iPhone's fault, and it will happen with the best camera phones from other brands as well.

Fine, but what can you do about it? Here are two practical solutions…

1. Get further away and / or swap lenses

True, this is not very helpful if you actually can’t get further away right there and then, but keep it in mind in case you can change your shooting position later and photograph your subject from another street or another angle.

If you can get further away, you can swap to your iPhone’s standard camera or even its telephoto camera if it has one, and this achieves two things.

First, you’re further away so you don’t have to tilt the phone as much – if at all. Not tilting the phone doesn’t just solve the perspective problem, it adds a sense of scale. Impressive structures look even more impressive when you see them towering over their surroundings. 

2. Keep your iPhone level – find some foreground interest

You can stick with the wide-angle camera if you can’t move much further from your subject, but get as far away as you can and look for some interesting object to have in the foreground. It could be a bench, a café table, even other sightseers passing through the frame.

If you can find some interesting foreground detail, it gives you a reason to hold the phone level and also perhaps capture a more interesting composition. This approach will eliminate any converging verticals and, hopefully, you’ll still be able to get the full height of the building in the frame (hence moving back as far as you possibly can).

You can fix minor perspective distortion in software, but it’s much better not to have to. Software corrections work by ‘reversing’ the keystoning effect, but this makes the tops of buildings look less sharp, and iPhones don’t have a lot of resolution to spare, so it’s better to get your photos right with clever framing.

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The iPhone is an extremely effective filmmaking tool, with terrific features and stabilization but has a slippery body and nowhere to mount accessories like lights and mics.

So you could get a cage, and these work well. I have a SmallRig smartphone cage with all the cold shoes and screw thread mounting points I could ask for, but it’s not exactly compact and it does look a bit like something out of a Terminator movie.

But then I saw the Shoulderpod G2 and I just had to have one straight away. It looks as weird as heck, but it’s not very expensive and has some really clever design touches.

For a start, fixing your iPhone is easy. There’s a spring-loaded clamping lever that locks really tight with a solid ‘click’. When it’s in place you grip the ShoulderPod using the two vertical rectangular handles that form the sides. Need to swap from horizontal video to vertical video for social? That’s easy – there are no clamps or pivots and you just turn the ShoulderPod G2 on its side. It’s just as easy to hold that way, too.

There are six cold shoes, two on the top, three down one side and one on the other side. There are also two mounting points for accessories or attaching a QR plate for a tripod, one on the base, one on the side. This means you can mount accessories in the best positions for either horizontal or vertical shooting, and with a QR plate attached you can swap from tripod to handheld filming in a couple of seconds.

You might have to shop around a little to find a reseller that stocks Shoulderpods (I got mine from UK reseller CVP) but you can also buy direct  from the Shoulderpod website.

Take a look at it online and see what you think. It’s probably not for everyone, but I think it’s just one of the cleverest bits of design I’ve seen in a long time.

Check out the best iPhone microphones and the best smartphone gimbals

You used to be able to switch the iPhone’s HDR mode off, right? I remember when you had the option to use HDR or not, or even save a non-HDR version of the photo as well. So I went looking for that option on my iPhone and it’s gone. It’s not just moved to a different place, it’s gone altogether. 

It turns out it was removed some time ago and you no longer have this option even in the best iPhones. Apple’s support page says:

“By default, iPhone automatically uses HDR when it’s most effective. On some iPhone models, you can manually control HDR instead. On iPhone XS, iPhone XR, iPhone 11 models, iPhone SE (2nd generation), and iPhone 12 models:

“Go to Settings  > Camera, then turn off Smart HDR. Then from the camera screen, tap HDR to turn it off or on. On iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X: Go to Settings > Camera, then turn off Auto HDR.”

So that’s it. Now we’ve got HDR photos whether we want them or not. To be fair, the iPhone does usually do a good job – but not always. It’s ‘proper’ HDR, where the camera is merging separate exposures and not just doing a bit of shadow adjustment.

However, sometimes it can look a little unnatural – and sometimes the iPhone compresses the tonal range so much to capture it all that the photo just looks a bit flat. 

The problem is not necessarily the HDR process itself, though, but the way the iPhone processes the HDR image, and that’s something you can change.

This is something that only more serious photographers would want to undertake, since you need to swap to a desktop photo editing app, but it does make it possible to exploit the iPhone’s terrific HDR capabilities in a much more controlled and creative way.

1. Shoot RAW

With the RAW option enabled, the iPhone will capture a raw DNG file. The picture will still look exactly the same on the iPhone and in Apple Photos, because Apple is applying its default HDR tone curve to the RAW file just as it would if you had set the camera to shoot JPEG or HEIF images.

The difference is that the RAW data is still there, and it contains a lot of extended dynamic range data.

2. Export the RAW file from Apple Photos (desktop)

Back in Apple Photos on your Mac, you can Export RAW iPhone photos in their original format. They will be saved as DNG files that you can open in other software.

If you did a whole set of shots on your iPhone, you can export them all at once and import them into Lightroom or Capture One. Or you can launch Photoshop and open these DNG files individually.

3. Change the profile in Lightroom or Photoshop

If you use Photoshop, these DNG files will open in Adobe Camera Raw initially, where they will look pretty much as they did on your iPhone. But if you check over in the edit tools in the right sidebar, you’ll see that Adobe has automatically applied its AppleRaw Profile – and you can swap to one of the others to get a completely different look.

For example, if you choose the Adobe Color Profile, it might look like all your extended shadow and highlight detail is gone. In fact, it’s still there and you can use Adobe Camera Raw’s tonal adjustments – or, even more interesting, its masking tools – to bring it all back.

But now you’ve got much more control over the tones and contrast and you’re not stuck with Apple’s own HDR rendering.

So this is not a simple On/Off switch on your iPhone any more, but it is a way to get much better photographic results from the iPhone’s automatic HDR merging and Apple ProRaw files.

It makes the iPhone an even more serious photographic tool than it was before.

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Back in September, you may remember Apple releasing its latest series of iPhones, namely the iPhone 16, the iPhone 16 Plus, the iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro Max. We had a lot to say about each of these models but, to be honest, their pricing wasn't especially noteworthy or contentious. 

Yes, they weren't cheap, but iPhones never are. And they weren't so expensive as to raise any eyebrows.

In March, however, Apple brought out another new iPhone, the 16E; a successor to its long-running affordable series, the iPhone SE, and its high price brought howls of derision. Here at Digital Camera World, we called it "Apple's folly", and concluded that "the iPhone 16E is too expensive".

To be specific, on launch the iPhone 16e cost $599 / £599 / AU$999 for the base model with 128GB of storage. That was a huge jump up from the $429 / £429 / AU$719 it cost for the third-generation iPhone SE.

At the same time, the 16e's single camera and pedestrian 60Hz display felt like relics next to the Google Pixel 8a or Nothing Phone 3a Pro; both of which offered superior specs at friendlier prices. Nor were we alone in thinking this. Even Apple loyalists were unimpressed, with over half refusing to consider a phone missing that crucial second lens in this survey.

Forward thinking

So did Apple drop the ball? Back in March, I'd have said yes. But now Trump and China are ramping up their trade war to near-unimaginable levels—tariffs at 145% and 125% at time of writing, albeit with a new promise of some kind of exemption for smartphones—it seems that the company might just have been doing some forward thinking.

Perhaps the iPhone 16e wasn't overpriced by accident but on purpose. And the underlying lesson is clear: the prices of other models will also rise. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon.

After all, Apple, which does almost all its manufacturing in China, is seriously vulnerable to tariffs between the two countries. Yes, it's made efforts to diversify production to India and Vietnam, but then again, these place also face big tariff rises. And analysts estimate that if it were to relocate even just 10% of its supply chain from Asia to the United States, it would require all take three years and cost around $30 billion.

Sword of Damocles

As I write this, Apple has a stay of execution, with Trump suspending his tariffs on certain tech products, although the details are fuzzy and he's clarified this is only temporary anyway. But ultimately, Apple's future lies in the hands of one man who, even supporters will admit, is emotionally volatile and can change policy on the flip of a coin.

No wonder Apple has just airlifted 600 tons of iPhones from India to the US. And even if these super-high tariffs are never applied to its products, the sheer uncertainty alone will doubtless move Apple to boost its prices anyway. Some analysts predict iPhone prices could cost up to $2,000 more.

So it seems likely that the 16e was simply Apple's trial balloon—a way to normalize higher prices before tariffs force their hand. As with everything to do with this trade war, in truth no one knows what will happen next. In fact, that's one of the big problems with trade wars: everyone loses because there's so much uncertainty. So if you thought current iPhone pricing was steep, brace yourself: I reckon our wallets are about to take an even bigger hit.

Rumors about the iPhone 17 Pro cameras continue to circulate, with claims emerging that the iPhone 17 Pro series will not feature a horizontal camera bar after all.

Previously, speculation suggested that the cameras might be arranged horizontally – similar to the design of the Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL. This information came initially from tipster Digital Chat Station, via Chinese social media network Weibo.

A user on X, @Mia_Katsuragi, shared that after six years, Apple could be shaking things up with its camera module design for the iPhone 17 Pro, Max, and Air models.

The post showed a neat tech breakdown image that offers some intriguing insights, hinting that the series might feature a sizable camera island while still keeping the beloved "ideal triangle" camera layout.

So, why this design change? It's because of the camera tech.

It seems Apple is planning to introduce a new, higher-resolution camera. The current 12MP telephoto camera is likely to be replaced with a powerful 48MP module that boasts a 10x hybrid zoom and improved stabilization.

To make sure the camera performs well (and does not have to deal with smaller megapixels, which would mean that the light performance would suffer) Apple is reportedly increasing the sensor size to gather more light.

The image on X shows that Apple might want to achieve this without moving the sensor; instead, it looks like the telephoto lens gets rotated. This shift means the LiDAR module no longer has space and will need a new home on the far end of the camera bump, alongside the LED flash and microphone.

Another user, @sonnydickson, who frequently shares iPhone-related content, posted on X: "First look at some cases for the new iPhone 17 Pro – wow, that camera hole is huge! Apple's really turning heads with this design."

If this image is real, it seems likely that the iPhone 17 Pro, Max, and Air will feature Apple’s "ideal triangle" camera design, presented as a camera island with the LiDAR scanner, LED flash, and microphone all snugly on the right.

The iPhone 17 release date is expected in mid-September 2025. Various online sources say that all iPhone 17 models will come with a new 24MP selfie camera, and that the Pro models will support 8K video for the first time.

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If you are into smart photography, check out our guide to the best camera phones – and if you're an Apple diehard, take a look at the best iPhone for photography. We also have a guide to the best iPhone power bank to keep you shooting longer.

UPDATE: Minutes ago, after I published the below story about the likely impact of Trump's tariffs on the iPhone costs, it was announced that Smartphones and Computers will be exempt from the charges.

That means a lot of the speculation below is now not valid – but the story gives a good idea of just how many things can go wrong, how much change is in the air (and just what we still don't know about cameras).

It also rather suggests that Apple CEO Tim Cook might have managed to persuade the US government of just how much harm their tariffs (without the new exception) were doing to the company and, by extension, the economy.

Original text: Your next iPhone could cost $2000. Or $2000 MORE (depending on how you read it). That's not random speculation, by the way, but the respectable journal that is the New York Times.

In practical terms, that means the top of the line 1TB iPhone Pro Max up from $1599 to around $3500, and even more shockingly the basic iPhone up from $799 to about $2800.

What is the cause of the dramatic leap in prices? Donald Trump's tariffs, as if you hadn't guessed. But how exactly could tariffs – taxes on imported goods – end the iPhone, an American icon?

According to New York Times guest essay writer McGee, 90% of Apple's manufacturing is still done in China, and Tim Cook, as CEO, was incredibly successful during Trump's first term as President in preventing restrictions being put in place which would harm this. He goes so far as to say, "Mr. Cook played the president for the fool."

Now, though, the tariffs are dangerously high for companies that need to buy from China. They're changing a lot – as I noted in another story (on tariffs and drones) – they're currently at levels known to have caused wars. Going into the weekend 145% on goods from China (with 125% retaliation).

Apple is having to make desperate changes and the immediate response – the only thing possible in the time frame for the iPhone 17 expected in September – is simply to pass those costs on to the customer.

Of course, the stated aim of protectionism – the name for putting tariffs on foreign goods – is to 'protect' domestic (in this case American) production. So the idea that American manufacturing will simply step in and produce its own devices relies on the idea of a large skilled workforce just appearing out of thin air.

Where are all the trained Americans? Where are all the factories and workflows? They simply don't exist. Especially not in the way Apple need them, building up to a million phones a day at peak season. This is achieved, McGee points out, in part because China has a population of low-paid migrant workers about the same as the entire US population that can simply follow demand.

There will be no more iPhones on launch day for everyone if they're all manufactured in America, even after the few years it'd take to set up the supply lines.

And that's before we even start a discussion about raw materials which, let's face it, are under whatever borders they're under already!

It is true that with the iPhone 16E Apple has finally introduced its own modem chip, but that doesn't solve every issue. It's also true that the new tariffs target the countries – India and Vietnam – that Apple had started to build up, hence the desperate flight of iPhones out of India we have covered elsewhere.

It's easy to see how this might spell the end for Apple. It can't easily pivot, and, yes, I love my iPhone and I like iOS more than Android, but I don't know if I like it three times as much.

To stick with iOS, the best case for Americans might be simply not to buy a new phone for the next four years (still less time than it's likely to take to re-tool the entire tech industry), which also won't be good for Apple. Can it really survive an entire presidential term without its home market?

Oh, and even if you don't own any Apple devices, this could pose a problem for you. Apple represents the better part of 10% of the S&P500 index, which means some of your investments you spend on other devices are probably tied up in Apple!

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A report by Reuters reveals that Apple has taken to the skies, airlifting 10.5 million iPhones via cargo flights from Chennai airport in India to the US. The tech giant has taken this strategic move to sidestep the reciprocal tariffs from Trump, as those will affect Apple’s pricing dramatically (pending what happens with tariffs going forward).

The shipment amounts to 600 tons of iPhones – what a number! It is an act to keep Apple’s foothold strong in one of its largest markets, the US, amid a shifting political landscape. Apple is extending operations in its Foxconn factory in India, to work even on Sundays.

"About 6 cargo jets with a capacity of 100 tons each have flown out since March, one of them this week just as new tariffs kicked in, the source and an Indian government official said," reported Reuters.

This move makes clear that Apple took warnings from analysts seriously. It seems like the company is pivoting toward India as a manufacturing powerhouse, diversifying its reliance on China.

Apple's main manufacturing hub is based in China, imports from which will be affected by Trump's highest tariff rate, likely rising to 125% by Wednesday from the previous 54%. To compare, India is affected by Trump’s tariff of 26% – but this is currently on hold as Trump called a 90-day pause, which just so happens to exclude China.

When taking China’s future tariff into account, US prices for the popular iPhone models will skyrocket! No wonder Apple wants to hit its goal of a 20% iPhone production increase in India now.

Counterpoint Research estimates that a fifth of Apple's US imports come from India, while the remainder comes from China. Foxconn and Wistron are Apple's primary plants in India; the company is operating three factories in total, with two more to come.

Apple joins the likes of Blackmagic and Camp Snap, who have both publicly confirmed plans to relocate manufacturing to avoid the worst of the tariffs.

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If you are into smart photography, check our guide to the best phone for photography and the best iPhone for photography. We also have a guide to the best iPhone power bank.

You can also find details about how Trump's tariffs could affect camera prices here.

Rumors suggest that the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max models will feature a new telephoto lens with 3.5x optical zoom, as opposed to the 5x optical zoom offered in the iPhone 16 series.

This means that the upcoming iPhone 17 line may provide shorter optical zoom capabilities than its predecessor – but the expected 48MP sensor would enhance the photography experience, enabling 5x or even 7x lossless zoom through cropping.

We've heard a lot of leaked information about the iPhone 17 line in recent months. This time, Majin Bu (via 9to5Mac) reports about a telephoto update and redesigned camera module that could spice up the game in mobile phone photography.

The iPhone 17 camera lenses might be arranged horizontally in a wider layout, connecting to previous rumors from tipster Digital Chat Station via NotebookCheck, saying that the iPhone 17 cameras will feature a horizontal bar across the rear panel (similar to the design of the Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL).

If these rumors hold true, Apple will offer a versatile lens in the iPhone 17 line – albeit with less optical zoom than before. The new 3.5x telephoto camera would have an 85mm focal length, marking a departure from the 120mm found in the 5x zoom found in the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max.

However, due to the expected 48MP sensor and Apple’s mention of lossless cropping as a feature, the 3.5x optical zoom camera could crop images to achieve up to 7x zoom while maintaining the image quality (but with a lower megapixel count).

The telephoto lens has sparked discussion online, with some users reluctant to lose the 5x optical zoom capability while others see new possibilities with the 3.5x. For portrait photographers, the 3.5x zoom is particularly advantageous, as it provides an equivalent 85mm focal length – a popular choice for capturing portraits that render subjects in a natural and flattering way with minimal distortion.

The iPhone 17 release date is expected in mid-September 2025, consistent with Apple's tradition of annual launches. Various online sources say that all iPhone 17 models will come with a new 24MP selfie camera, and the Pro models will support 8K video for the first time.

You might also like…

Check our guide to the best phone for photography and the best iPhone for photography. We also have a guide to the best iPhone power bank.