iPhone 13 Pro Max Camera Overriding My Choice of Telephoto Lens?

I don't understand why Apple would say it has pro features, but doesn't allow the user choose the lens and without the user knowing uses digital zoom when optical with significantly better quality is available. It is doing this even in broad daylight. See attached screenshot with EXIF included. Shooting at ISO50 at 1/4000s and still picks the wide camera when it should have used the 77mm optical. And the photo is very poor quality and clearly digitally zoomed when viewed at full resolution. There is more than enough light to use the F2.8 lens. For the PRO versions with the 77mm lens, it should have an option for the user to turn off digital zoom.

Not great options, but, I've noticed that if you hold the phone very very steady, it tends to use the actual 3x lens, or prop it on something to reduce shaking. Portrait mode seems to pick the 3x optical more often than not. Need to try some third party app also as have heard that will allow to pick the actual lens.

I've submitted a feature request to be able to turn off "digital zoom."

If more people request, maybe they will eventually add it in.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone/

You can force it to use whichever lens you want with 3rd party camera apps like Manual. The stock camera app’s “feature” does this digital zoom more on the iphone 13 since they went with a more longer focal length telephoto lens (77mm vs 52mm on the iphone 12) and likely had to make it a little slower (f2.8 compared the iphone 12’s f2 telephoto) to fit size constraints. The switch happens when there isn’t enough light at f2.8 and so the iphone instead does digital zoom using the faster wide lens (f1.5).

I totally agree… I also hate when it applies very ugly sharpening when shooting with the default camera app. If I shoot with ProRAW and then open it in Lightroom the sharpening goes away but if I shoot in JPG the sharpening is baked in and in some scenarios it’s very prominent and ugly. I hope I’ll be able to disable that post-processing some day…

Every iPhone with multiple lenses has worked this way, back to the iPhone X.

The digital zoom is a bit more obvious on the 13 Pro Max because the telephoto on past iPhones was 2x or 2.5x and it’s 3x on the 13 Pro/Pro Max.

I’ve been asking for at least an indicator of digital vs. optical zoom and a switch to shut off auto lens switch since the iPhone X, but Apple has not yet implemented one.

The fact that they added a switch to shut off the auto macro lens switch gives me hope if enough other people feel the same they might now add this too.

Please let Apple know your feelings on the matter here:

Feedback - Camera - Apple

How do we stop this from happening- when i choose the tele lens I do it for a reason, so I won't have digitally zoomed from wider lens and it's maddening for the camera to do this. If I had realized this earlier I would have returned it. Kept wondering why some of my photos with the telephoto lens were so bad when it's the sharpest lens on the camera, then stumbled into this being the reason why that it will just on its own use the wide lens and digitally zoom to 77mm equivalent.

The factual content of the picture is altered in multiple ways, basic factual things like colors of objects, presence/absence of gaps, presence/absence of text are altered. This is contrary to the idea of this switching - to produce a photo which looks better, because factual alterations to a picture are even worse problem than noise. Furthermore, it makes iPhone 13 an untrustworthy device to make photographs when the factual content is actually important - for example, for documenting state of affairs for legal or medical disputes.

1) The banner contains no text when it actually contains text

2) The sequence of balloon colors on relatively large balloons is: white-yellow-brown-yellow-blue-green instead of the actual white-yellow-red-yellow-grey-green

3) One child which actually has two distinct regions - upper yellow region and lower red region, separated by a gap - is turned into one which has only one continuous region of pale yellow and no gap

4) One blue balloon completely disappears

"Pro" is usually a misnomer for a cell phone camera, but this takes it to the extreme of not being "Pro" in any way. I shoot with professional DSLRs and lenses. This sentence should be removed from the specs "Pro 12MP camera system: Telephoto, Wide, and Ultra Wide cameras" along with all of the misleading advertisements as there is nothing pro about it when you have no idea what you end up with.

Yes, the 77mm equiv. 3x tele is useless. Will Apple recognize this as an issue and fix it, or will they ignore it and let it bite them in the photo/video community. I'm new to Apple and will watch this one closely. For the record, I own the 13 Pro Max and am seeing the issue.

Thanks for the feedback. As to turning off digital zoom, that would have to be easily accessible as I use it frequently myself, but not for 77mm equivalent, but for digital zoom tied to the tele lens. For many things I ok with up to around 250mm equivalent as long as it is starting with the tele lens. I would prefer just being able to select which lens to use and lock out the other two.

The sensor data fed to the processor told the phone the results from the optical telephoto would have been unusable, so that's why it switched.

I couldn't tell you why.

The EXIF data does denote which lens was used, so that data would be useful in the legal disputes you describe.

That's your opinion.

It's actually quite easy to determine both which lens will be used as well as which was used.

There are in fact many commercial photographers who use these phones in their business every day.

Your definition of "pro" is not everyone's, nor is Apple's.

However there is nothing misleading about stating the presence of the three lenses and the fact they are used when conditions warrant.

Can you show me with some screenshots how you can determine before you take the photo which lens it is using? I can't seem to figure this out. When I click 3x, until after I look at EXIF, I can't tell whether it used the wide lens or the 3x lens.

And of course, everything is each person's opinion :)

The three lenses on the 13 Pro Max are distinct.

You can use this to your advantage: slightly move your finger in front of the bottom edge of the wide lens (the lowest of the three.)

If you tap 3x and can still see your finger obstructing part of the lens, the phone is using digital zoom.

If you cannot see your finger, it is using the telephoto lens.

Don’t do the inverse or the phone will see your finger as darkening of the image and will automatically shift to the wide lens.

This sounds complicated but only needs to be done once per shot unless lighting changes dramatically.

Got it. Thanks for the tip. I'll try to use this when I can. I was hoping for something on the screen for the quick "grab and shoot" scenarios to not miss something quick. I find that even between two identical shots it can change lenses if my hand moves even a bit. Even the pic I posted above was shot at ISO50 and 1/4115th where chance of shake is close to zero and it was very bright, but it chose the wide lens. Maybe some algorithm improvement will be made over time.

Anyone have recommended third party app that can select lens and be more deterministic?