iPhone 13 Pro Max Camera Quality

You are correct.

Only the .5x, 1x and 3x zoom settings are optical zoom settings on the 13 Pro Max; any others are digital zoom settings which will always look worse and quite frankly shouldn't be used if photo quality is your primary concern.

This is normal and expected as that's how digital zoom works; you are effectively using a magnifying glass to look at your screen.

iPhone camera basics - Apple Support

Dogcow-Moof,

I know it’s been several weeks, but I wanted to thank you for your reply, and apologize if I had replied to you in an argumentative or negative way.

Over the last few weeks, since we’ve had these discussions, I have been playing with the camera more and more. I can in-fact attest to your statements, and confirm that using the .5, 1, and 3 lenses is the absolute best way to capture a picture. Rather than using “digital zoom”, the better option is to take the picture with one of the 3 lenses, and then zoom in on the picture later in the Photos app. From there, if you need the picture to be zoomed in, you can edit/crop the picture. This works best because there will be less “watercolor” effect than zooming all the way in to 15x digital, and the software automatically correcting the photo.

Dogcow-Moof thanks again for your clear explanation. I appreciate individuals such as yourself who patiently work with the rest of us to help figure out these fantastic devices!

It will not switch to the ultra wide lens.

However, if there is not enough light for it to get a good photo with the 3x telephoto it will switch to a 3x digital zoom or the 1x lens.

This is something you just have to notice.

15x is going to look bad no matter what you do; for a 13 Pro Max for best results you should only use .5x, 1x and 3x.

Anything else will be a degraded digital zoom.

I have asked Apple for an indicator as to whether the zoom is optical or digital for about five years now, but they’ve yet to provide one.

Thank you for posting product specifications, however that seems to be a very unhelpful reply. I’ll admit that when the camera works correctly, the picture does look great. But the problem is with the way the software handles lens changes.

There are real issues with the iPhone 13 Pro Max camera. This is actually the reason I came here, to ask for help and find answers. Phophi19, the only solution I’ve found to good camera quality is to use the “.5”, “1”, and “3” zoom levels. 80% of the time, when I pinch to zoom in the camera, it switches to a different lens which completely blurs and distorts the image.

2 months ago or so, the temporary solution was to “turn off Auto Macro”, which is no longer an option. I think the solution to this is on Apple to fix it.

Thanks for your response, and that makes perfect sense. It’s not wrong, but the problem is that the system will sometimes switch to the ultra-wide or macro lens while zooming in on far away objects. When I say far away, I mean the clock on the other side of the room or the billboard on the other side of the street. Sometimes zooming into 15x looks fine, however it’s much more common to zoom in 15x on a far away object, and then the lens changes and everything goes blurry. I have taken pictures of the same object 10’ away from me, zoomed in 15x, seconds apart from each other with no other changes, and one picture is crystal clear and the other looks like mush.

The iPhone 13 Pro Max should give you the best Video and Image quality. If you are not sure, check here:

iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max - Technical Specifications - Apple

Thanks, and I wish you continued photographic success!