It’s lastly new iPhone season – after months of rumors and some weeks of ready, the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Professional, and iPhone 17 Professional Max land on retailer cabinets on September 19.
The perfect iPhones are usually among the finest digital camera telephones, however it may be fairly obscure digital camera specs, and Apple goes a step additional through the use of its personal advertising phrases like “Fusion Digital camera” and “Heart Stage” – it took me just a few passes on the spec sheets for the iPhone 17 collection to get my head across the new digital camera techniques.
Most customers simply need handsome photographs and movies, however there are some actual variations between every of this yr’s iPhone fashions in relation to digital camera {hardware}. Maintain studying for a breakdown of every mannequin’s cameras, in addition to a take a look at what “Fusion Digital camera” and “Heart Stage” really imply.
Only a observe earlier than we get into issues – the iPhone 17 Professional and iPhone 17 Professional Max sport extremely highly effective {hardware} for video taking pictures, with a nascent ecosystem of specialised equipment. To maintain issues centered, on this article we’re speaking about nonetheless images solely.
iPhone 17 lineup: Digital camera specs
Here is a fundamental abstract of the digital camera specs for every of the iPhone 17 household units:
The iPhone Air has a single 48MP wide-angle digital camera.
The iPhone 17 has a 48MP wide-angle digital camera and 48MP ultra-wide digital camera.
The iPhone 17 Professional and iPhone 17 Professional Max have a 48MP wide-angle digital camera, 48MP ultra-wide digital camera, and 48MP 4x zoom digital camera.
All 4 fashions have an 18MP selfie digital camera.
Fusion Digital camera: Decision
Apple has keenly promoted its high-resolution rear iPhone cameras as ‘Fusion Cameras’ – and since each rear digital camera throughout the iPhone 17 lineup is a 48MP digital camera, they’re all now often called Fusion Cameras.
Relying in your settings, your iPhone might seize photographs at 12MP or 24MP as an alternative of utilizing the complete 48MP afforded by the sensor. That’s due to a course of known as pixel binning, which teams particular person pixels collectively to mix knowledge into one remaining pixel, capturing richer gentle and shade data. In 12MP mode, teams of 4 pixels are binned collectively (for an in depth clarification on pixel binning, see our piece concerning the iPhone 16’s Fusion Digital camera).
The 24MP mode is a bit more complicated – it captures each a 48MP picture and a 12MP picture after which merges the most effective components of each utilizing digital processing. Ideally, this affords a midpoint between the element of 48MP and the brightness and shade of 12MP. This 24MP mode is a part of why Apple calls its cell cameras ‘Fusion Cameras’ – the ultimate picture is a fusion of the full-res and pixel-binned captures.
To change between 12MP and 24MP for normal photographs, head to Settings > Digital camera > Codecs > Picture Mode. Slightly below that you just’ll see the Decision Management toggle to activate 48MP taking pictures.
Fusion Digital camera: Zoom
The opposite facet of the Fusion Digital camera branding is all about zoom – and Apple has made this a bit harder to parse. For example, the phrase optical in images often describes the glass within the lens, however Apple makes use of optical as a advertising time period to explain picture high quality. I’ll keep away from falling into these traps right here.
Due to that Fusion Digital camera tech, Apple will go forward and say that the iPhone 17 Professional is like carrying eight lenses and affords 8x optical zoom, regardless of having three cameras and a hard and fast 4x zoom – what we would usually name 4x optical zoom for the reason that zoom is completed by the glass, not digital trickery.
Apple claims that its Fusion Cameras can obtain double their unique zoom size whereas retaining optical high quality – that is a advertising declare, not a scientific reality, however there’s a kernel of reality inside.
The 48MP foremost digital camera discovered on the iPhone 17, iPhone Air, and iPhone 17 Professional comes with a 2x possibility that crops into the central 12MP of the 48MP sensor, producing a 12MP picture with no misplaced data.
It is a comparable story for the ultra-wide digital camera discovered on the iPhone 17 and the Professional fashions, which crops in from 0.5x relative zoom as much as 1x zoom, and the 4x telephoto digital camera on the Professional and Professional Max, which crops in from 4x to 8x zoom.
This sounds just like the digital zoom you’d look forward to finding in your smartphone, however it is a bit totally different.
Typical digital zoom makes use of a course of known as interpolation. The smallest decision an iPhone digital camera will produce is 12MP, however long-range digital zoom will take a smaller crop of the sensor – for instance, at 3x zoom the iPhone 17’s digital camera sensor is cropped down to only over 5MP. That is blown up and digitally enhanced to fill the 12MP body, counting on digital processing to approximate how the picture would take a look at this greater decision.
Utilizing the preset Fusion zoom ranges, a picture shot at 12MP actually accommodates 12 million pixels of knowledge, with out the digital guesswork of interpolation (although there will probably be some upscaling if taking pictures at 24MP).
Nonetheless, the Fusion Digital camera’s ‘telephoto’ mode isn’t fairly the identical factor as true 2x zoom. You gained’t get the identical depth of area or visible proportions by cropping the iPhone 17’s foremost lens at a 2x crop as you’d through the use of an precise 2x lens – it simply isn’t bodily attainable.
To Apple’s credit score, these Fusion Cameras do give the iPhone 17 Professional and Professional Max glorious uninterpolated zoom vary, spanning from 0.5x to 2x and from 4x to 8x. There’s a niche there the place the primary digital camera has to make use of digital zoom to achieve from 2x to 4x, earlier than switching to the devoted zoom digital camera, and previous 8x as much as the utmost 40x is all interpolated digital zoom.
The iPhone 17 will get the identical 0.5x to 2x protection, however lacks a devoted zoom digital camera, so from 2x as much as its most 10x zoom is all interpolated. The iPhone 17 Air has solely the primary 48MP digital camera, so it will get high-res cropping between 1x and 2x earlier than switching to interpolated zoom as much as 10x.
Sensor cropping is not unique to iPhone; the Samsung Galaxy S25 Extremely and different high-resolution digital camera telephones can obtain comparable outcomes. Even very high-end cameras just like the Leica Q3 use sensor cropping as an alternative of really optical zoom. We’ve almost coated every little thing in relation to Fusion Digital camera zoom – there’s only one extra factor to elucidate.
Apple often expresses zoom ranges in multiples of the primary digital camera’s default zoom size, which is labelled as 1x, similar to we do right here on TechRadar. On the default ranges, a picture taken by way of the iPhone 17 Professional’s 4x zoom digital camera seems 4 instances bigger than one taken with the primary lens.
Nonetheless, Apple generally additionally refers to zoom ranges in millimeters, referring to focal size. For instance, the iPhone 17 Professional’s specs web page lists the 8x Fusion zoom as a ‘200mm’ zoom. In images, focal size is the space between the lens and the sensor, and dictates how far-off or shut up the picture seems. In Apple’s case, the mm spec is admittedly an estimation of how the iPhone lens compares to a devoted digital camera lens.
As I discussed, the iPhone 17 Professional Max has three cameras – and Apple describes the focal lengths of every as follows: a 24mm wide-angle digital camera, 13mm ultra-wide digital camera, and 100mm zoom digital camera.
These focal lengths are fastened. That 8x ‘200mm’ zoom Apple quotes really describes the simulation of a 200mm lens – there’s no method for a 100mm lens to increase to 200mm with out bodily shifting, and you would be onerous pressed to seek out any smartphone lenses that do that.
Apple makes no distinction between actual and simulated focal size. It’s unlikely to have an effect on your expertise all that a lot, nevertheless it’s price understanding the reality about how your telephone digital camera works to get the most effective outcomes, particularly in case you’re making an attempt to recreate pictures taken with, say, an precise 200mm lens.
Heart Stage selfie digital camera
So, that is the rear cameras sorted, however what concerning the all-important selfie digital camera?
Each mannequin within the iPhone 17 household – in addition to the iPhone Air – comes with a brand new selfie digital camera with a sq. sensor. What this implies is that the selfie digital camera now performs identically whether or not you maintain your iPhone vertically or horizontally – no extra holding your telephone sideways for group selfies.
Apple calls this new selfie digital camera a Heart Stage selfie digital camera. Apple has beforehand used the time period Heart Stage to consult with selfie digital camera tech that retains you in body mechanically throughout Facetime calls and when recording video.
The iPhone 17 collection will get this characteristic and extra. On the most recent iPhones, Heart Stage refers back to the selfie digital camera’s computerized swap between portrait and panorama mode relying on what number of topics are detected within the body. The selfie digital camera also can crop out and in to make group photographs simpler. It’s a considerate, sensible piece of design that additionally means your solo selfies will probably be of upper high quality.
Fortunately, all of those new selfie controls are manually accessible with on-screen buttons, so that you’re not simply on the whims of automated selections.
So, that’s the iPhone 17 collection’ digital camera techniques defined intimately – be at liberty to bookmark this web page for future reference. For our tackle every little thing else concerning the new Apple handsets, remember to take a look at our iPhone 17 evaluation, iPhone Air evaluation, iPhone 17 Professional evaluation, and iPhone 17 Professional Max evaluation.
