Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max camera review: Testing Action mode, ProRAW, zoom, low light, and more

I’ve been using the new iPhone 14 Pro Max for almost a week now, before I publish my full review later this week, I’d like to dedicate an entire piece to the cameras, because Apple made some significant upgrades this year, including a new 48MP sensor that gives Apple a lot more room to play with in terms of digital zooms and electronic image stabilization.

First things first, the camera system of the 14 Pro Max and 14 Pro is completely identical, so everything said here applies to the smaller iPhone 14 Pro too.

Second, the photos you see in this article are compressed. I have uploaded some uncompressed, full-sized images to Flickr.

What’s new with the cameras?

• 48MP main camera, a larger sensor for ultra-wide and selfie
• 3x telephoto remains same

The new 48MP wide (main) camera brings several benefits. The first and most obvious benefit is it allows Apple to apply pixel-binning to its photos, which essentially packs four pixels’ worth of light information into one. This results in better performance in low light, without resorting to night mode as much.

The second benefit is we can also shoot RAW files (or as photographers call it, “shooting in RAW”) using all 48 million pixels. RAW files are uncompressed, lossless files that keep all the data a camera sensor is capable of capturing. Apple calls their RAW files “ProRaw,” by the way.

The third benefit is that the more pixel-dense main camera allows Apple to crop into the middle section of the sensor to produce what Apple claims is a “2x optical telephoto” shot.

A promotional image shared by Apple shows how the “2x optical telephoto” crops into the 48MP sensor.

I will talk about the first two upgrades mentioned — pixel binning and 48MP ProRAW — further down the article. Let’s start by examining the new “2x optical zoom.”

Three lenses, four focal lengths

The iPhone 14 Pro Max’s main camera system has three lenses covering the ultra-wide (13mm), wide (24mm), and 3x telephoto (77mm). The wide lens is slightly wider than before (going from 26mm to 24mm), but otherwise, having three optical focal lengths has been the case since the iPhone 11.

But as mentioned in the last section, Apple is advertising a fourth optical focal length, a 2x zoom (48mm) that crops into the main camera sensor to produce a “lossless optical 2x zoom” shot. Below are four shots snapped at the four focal lengths.

Notice Apple does a great job keeping color science consistent across all three lenses (and four focal lengths) (the exception is the last 3x zoom shot of the neon lights, whose brightness shifted a bit). This is something Apple has always excelled at compared to Android brands, some of whom will still produce wide and ultra-wide shots with wildly different color science.

The big question: is that 2x zoom actually lossless optical quality? The answer is mostly. With good lighting, 2x zoom shots do look very clean, and when cropped in to match the actual 3x optical zoom lens, the quality is close enough that it is a very good zoom.

iPhone 14 Pro Max, 2x zoom (left), 3x zoom (right), cropped to match framing evenly.

Now if I do the same thing with a 2x and 3x shot captured by the iPhone 13 Pro Max, we can see the older iPhone’s 2x zoom is noticeably softer on details.

iPhone 13 Pro Max, 2x zoom (left), 3x zoom (right), cropped to match framing evenly.

But here’s the catch: the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s 2x zoom can only reach near-lossless quality with really good lighting. The above plant sample was taken right by a window with direct sunlight. If I pixel peep the other 2x zoom taken at the restaurant, it is nowhere near as clean.

iPhone 14 Pro Max, 2x zoom (left), 3x zoom (right), cropped to match framing evenly.

Keep in mind the restaurant isn’t even that dark, so you really need to shoot during the day with direct sunlight access to get that lossless 2x zoom. Otherwise, it’s just another digital zoom.

If you’re wondering, the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s zoom prowess still falls short of phones with a dedicated Periscope zoom lens, like the Pixel 6 Pro’s 4x Periscope.

How much better are the iPhone 14 Pro Max cameras compared to the iPhone 13 Pro Max cameras?

We already established that the 14 Pro Max’s 2x zoom is better than the 13 Pro Max’s 2x zoom (if the lighting is great). But what about other lenses?

For the main camera, in day scenes, I’m not seeing much difference. But at night, the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s image processing produces much more pleasing colors.

The iPhone 13 Pro Max’s night shots in the above set look bad — the whole scene is just brightened up and has little to no contrast. The iPhone 14 Pro Max seems to understand that “brighter isn’t always better,” and actually keeps shadows, you know, darker. This is likely Apple’s new “Photonic Engine” at work, which is Apple’s machine learning computational photography algorithm that snaps multiple versions of the same photo, trying to retain uncompressed data as early in the pipeline as possible, to produce a shot that has better details and colors.

Do note all shots captured in this section are shot without ProRaw — we’ll get to that in the next section.

The iPhone 14 Pro Max’s ultra-wide is also better than the 13 Pro Max’s ultra-wide in low light situations due to the larger image sensor and the Photonic Engine.

These ultra-wide shots were taken in a really dark alley (see photo below). Both cameras needed night mode, but the 14 Pro Max’s night mode didn’t need as much time (I’d say 1/3 of a second compared to 2/3 of a second). The 14 Pro Max’s shot has more natural colors that are closer to real life.

This is how dark the alley was at the time.

And if we pixel peep, we can see the 14 Pro Max’s shot has slightly less noise.

Ultra-wide, iPhone 14 Pro Max (left); iPhone 13 Pro Max (right).

These differences may seem small individually, but add them up — the iPhone 14 Pro Max didn’t need as long a night mode, its colors are more accurate, and the photo is slightly less noisy — and they’re not insignificant improvements.

Remember, I tend to conduct my camera tests in extremely challenging shooting scenes (against harsh backlight, in dark alleys) because I want to really test them. There’s not much point in snapping photos of one object in a white room with perfect lighting as a test.

Shooting in ProRAW

The iPhone has had the ability to shoot in ProRAW since the iPhone 12 series, but the 14 Pro phones can shoot in full 48MP resolution, which allows for cropping further in without sacrificing details, and as mentioned earlier, ProRaw retains complete lossless image data information — at least as much as the iPhone camera sensor can take in.

If you’re a casual smartphone photographer, you may be wondering “if RAW files bring more image information, then why don’t all smartphones shoot in RAW all the time?” The answer is because RAW files are much, much larger in size, and more importantly, shooting RAW goes against smartphone computational photography tricks like HDR, pixel-binning, and the Photonic Engine.

The purpose of shooting RAW is so the photographer can take the file to a photo editing software to make changes to colors and lighting (hence why it’s crucial the image keeps as much data as possible). For the most part, only serious photographers have the skills (or would want to spend the time) to do this. Most people would prefer if the smartphone’s computational photography smarts just processes and produces a great shot. Shooting in RAW is a great option to have, but most smartphone users will not want to or know how to use it.

For example, that photo of a small minivan with a red roof (in Hong Kong, these are called red minibusses, a form of public transport) I showed earlier, I also shot in ProRAW, and when I opened the image on my Mac, it defaulted to opening in Adobe Lightroom instead of the usual Mac photo viewer.

The image by default is dimly lit, but when I play around with the image tuning sliders, I see I can increase exposure much higher without blowing out lights. Because this is a RAW image, it retains more dynamic range for me to experiment with. I can also zoom into the shot much more than a typical 12MP shot.

With just a few tweaks, I was able to get two images with much different lighting and mood.

Excellent portraits

The iPhone has had an excellent portrait mode for years, with natural-looking artificial bokeh (that can be tweaked after the shot) and a more natural approach to skin tone (unlike Asian brands, which try to whiten or smooth out skin). What’s new with the iPhone 14 Pro Max is that the default portrait focal length is now 2x, instead of 3x as in the 13 Pro Max. Apple says the 2x focal length is better for portraits, as the 3x zoom is sometimes a bit too close in. I agree for the most part. This is using that digital crop 2x zoom, which has already been established to be very good in good lighting, but a bit less detailed in low light.

If you want consistent portrait quality and do not want to worry about what not enough light would do, you can always revert back to shooting with the 3x optical telephoto zoom lens.

You can adjust the portraits after the shot by increasing or reducing the artificial bokeh, and apply different lighting. None of this is new — you can do this on iPhones for years — but it’s worth highlighting again briefly.

Action Mode improves iPhone’s already best-in-class stabilization

Another thing the iPhone has always excelled at is video recording, particularly video stabilization and video fluidity when switching between lenses. In the video sample below, I am in a moving car, while zooming in and out between three lenses (and going digital zoom up to 9x), and everything is remarkably stable. I’m particularly impressed by how stable the footage was even at 9x zoom.

If somehow this industry-best level of stabilization isn’t enough, Apple’s added a new EIS (electronic image stabilization) mode named “Action Mode.” To be clear, iPhones in the past had EIS, but action mode is a more advanced form, cropping into the main sensor more than usual and using Apple’s machine learning to apply advanced roll correction. The catch is video resolution maxes out at 2.8K (no 4K recording) and you need good lighting, but even then I was able to use action mode at night and it worked very well as can be seen at the 30-second mark of the clip below. I’m more impressed by the fact I can run full speed (also shown in the clip below) and the footage remains stable.

Just when Android flagship phones were catching up to iPhone in video performance, Apple widens its lead again.

Selfies are natural

The iPhone 14 Pro Max’s selfie camera, despite moving to an island, is improved from previous iPhones: it has a faster aperture (f/1.9) and it gains autofocus capabilities.

I am not a selfie person, but I think the iPhone’s front-facing camera system, with help from the TrueDepth sensors, has always been able to capture natural selfies, with great portrait lighting. You can also adjust portraits after the fact.

Another polished set of cameras with a higher ceiling than before

I have been quite vocal over the past couple of years — in my writing on XDA or on social media — that the iPhone 12 and 13 series cameras are pretty good but not the best in the smartphone scene. This was mostly because top Android brands are using main cameras with much larger image sensors, and special hardware tech like a periscope zoom lens.

The iPhone 14 Pro Max doesn’t completely flip the script — for shooting night city shots of neon lights-drenched Asian cities, I still prefer the cooler cyberpunk tones of a Google Pixel 6 Pro or the Vivo X80 Pro‘s uncanny HDR. If I’m taking close-up shots of things, I prefer the natural depth-of-field and more natural look of the Xiaomi 12S Ultra (see sample below — Xiaomi’s image is not as oversharpened and has stronger depth-of-field). And if we are talking about zoom prowess, Samsung’s 10x Periscope zoom lens is still the best in the industry by some distance.

But notice all of those situations are still photos, and mostly with the main camera. The best Android brands have developed awesome main cameras for photos, but there’s still polish lacking in synergy between all the cameras, plus other areas like video recording. Switching between lenses while filming video, for example, will still result in visible jerkiness in most Android video clips. The iPhone has no such issues.

It is very debatable whether the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max have the best main camera for photos (I’d vote no), but a strong case can be made that the iPhone 14 Pro phones have the most polished and well-rounded camera system. And unlike in years past, where iPhones were hampered by small sensors or not enough pixels, this year, the iPhone 14 Pro’s main camera has a higher ceiling. Combined with the consistency we’ve come to expect from iPhones, it paves the way for another year of being a good benchmark.

If you’re considering picking up the iPhone 14 Pro Max, do check out our recommendations for the best iPhone 14 Pro Max cases.