iPhone 11 Pro hands-on

Let’s start with the iPhone 11. That phone’s wide angle and ultra-wide angle cameras are all new for Apple. The wide-angle camera isn’t going to be new to most users as far as the kind of shot you’ll be able to take. It’s the standard iPhone camera perspective you’re likely already used to. But the ultra-wide angle lens allows you to capture far more of your subject’s surroundings.

Apple makes zooming in and out with the three cameras as easy as it was with the iPhone XS and XS Max. You simply tap the 0.5x to zoom out, 1x to go back to the normal wide-angle shot, and 2x to go to the telephoto shot. You can also adjust your zoom level between those levels for a more fine-tuned photo.

All of those zoom features also work with the Camera app’s video capture feature. What’s more, Apple has added audio zoom that focuses the iPhone’s microphones on whatever you happen to zoom in on.

As for video quality, the three new iPhones are able to capture video that looks like it was shot with a professional camera. I’m not sure if it was the lighting, or if professional videographers were using the iPhones, but a sample video taken of people running on a beach looked incredible. Whether someone like me can recreate that, however, will remain to be seen until I get my hands on the phones.

The three cameras on the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max include a wide-angle lens, telephoto lens, and ultra-wide angle lens. (Image: Howley)

Of course, other smartphone makers, including Apple’s rival Samsung, have been offering ultra-wide angle and telephoto cameras on their devices for some time, so it’s not exactly a revelation in the smartphone space. But true to Apple’s M.O. the company took a technology that other companies have been using, and rounded out the edges.

Finally, Apple added a new Night Mode feature to the iPhones that uses the camera’s updated sensors to make low-light photos look surprisingly well lit. The photos don’t look unnaturally bright or anything, they simply look as you would likely see them with your own eyes.

It will be interesting to see how Apple’s Night Mode stacks up to the current low-light photo king, Google’s Pixel and its Night Sight camera mode.