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iPhone 11 Pro Review: Cameras
There's a new ultra wide camera in town and the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max have it. But, really, all the cameras here are new in one way or another.
The main, wide-angle camera is still an effective 26mm, 6-element wide angle f/1.8 but it's got way better light sensitivity now and also 100% Focus Pixels, which is Apple's name for phase detection auto focus. It just means that instead of some fraction of the pixels in the camera sensor being used to determine focus, every one of them is being used in order to make it three times faster in low-light, which is something we'll talk more about in a minute.
The updated telephoto camera is still an effective 52mm, and 6-element, but has gone from f/2.4 to a larger f/2.0, letting it capture 40% more light.
The new ultra wide angle camera is an effective 13mm, 5-element, f/2.4, and 120ยบ field of view.
And, as you'd expect, because iPhone, they all work together as part of a unified, fused camera system.
The interface is the same as the standard iPhone 11 but in addition to the wide angle camera hinting at what lurks off to the sides in ultra wide angle mode, wide angle does the same in telephoto mode.
Instead of being able to tap between 1x wide angle and 2x telephoto optical zoom like on every Plus sized iPhone ever and the X and XS, or between 1x wide angle and 0.5x ultra wide angle like on the iPhone 11, you can tap between all three on the iPhone 11 Pro. Effectively giving you up to 4x optical zoom.
And again, Apple is fusing the camera output in the preview, not faking it, so what it hints at is accurate as to what you'll get. I love that.
Effectively, it means you have a much broader range from a single vantage point, from close up to wide to long, all without having to sneaker zoom in or out, taking time and potentially altering the angle or losing the light or composition.
You can still digitally zoom up to 10x and it looksโฆ somewhere between terrible and non-terrible, but other cameras are going higher optically now, and even using ludicrously cool periscope lenses and machine learning to make functional if hella creepy 50x zoom.
Apple's absolutely nailing the cameras and zooms it has, but they're not pushing it yet when it comes to the extreme telephoto. Or, for that matter, macro. Now that I finally have ultra wide angle, I have to start pining for something else, don't I?
Last year, I lamented that I wanted both the iPhone XS's telephoto and the iPhone XR's wide angle portrait modes both on the same camera. Even if the latter had to remain limited to Focus Pixels and segmentation masks.
Well, this year we're getting almost exactly that. Almost because, thanks to the third camera, wide angle portrait mode isn't limited at all. Just like the wide angle provides real depth data to the telephoto portrait mode, now the ultra wide angle provides real depth data to the wide angle portrait mode.