Night Mode not working in Portrait photos on iPhone 17 Pro Max

It’s the same for me. If I take a picture of a person in night mode, it no longer saves the depth data and I can’t convert it to a portrait afterwards. And if I’m in portrait mode, night mode will not activate no matter how dark it is. I don’t think it’s a bug, I think Apple just flat out removed the ability to take night mode portraits and didn’t actually announce it. Check this link: Take Night mode photos with your iPhone camera – Apple Support (UK)

If you select the link for “supported devices” for taking night mode portraits, it lists the 12 Pro to the 16 Pro, but *not* the 17 Pros. But if you click for supported devices for other features (night time selfies for example) it does list the 17 series, so it’s not just that the page hasn’t been updated yet with the 17 series phones.

I can’t see any reason why this would be the case. The 17 Pro has all the same main sensor and LiDAR Scanner as the 16 Pro, so it’s not a hardware issue. I could take night mode portraits on my 16 Pro, , so it’s not a software issue. They just decided to remove a feature that you had before, and not say anything about it. Which is a shame because some of my favorite pictures have been night mode portraits (pictures of my wife when out do a dinner date in a dimly lit restaurant, my kids outside at night surrounded by Christmas lights, etc).

I hope they restore the functionality. Or at least acknowledge that they took it away.

[Edited by Moderator]

That’s not what DXOmark is saying. What they said is:

“Zero shutter lag integration means there is no delay when pressing the shutter button, allowing to capture exactly the desired moment. This works well, even in low light, but not after the camera has

switched to the long exposure night mode.”

The “this works well, even in low light” is referencing the zero shutter lag in the previous sentence, and noting that it doesn’t work with night mode enabled. The “this works well” is that statement is not referencing the quality of portrait photos more generally or in low light specifically.

And you can still manually put it in portrait mode and take a portrait in low light without night mode enabling, but the result is terrible. Low light portraits come out leaps and bounds better on my wife’s 14 Pro than on my 17 Pro Max. They seriously crippled the ability to use portrait mode in anything but bright conditions, for no reason as far as I can tell.

It's certainly not good for my purposes. I shoot northern lights most nights through the dark season here in Alaska, and against all odds, night mode long exposure + portrait mode took photos that beat actual plain old night mode on my 15 pro max. It seems so counterintuitive but it did- I reasoned that possibly it removed motion blur on the aurora by focusing on empty space in near forground after initial light capture. I am double thinking about whether to pack up my 15 for return at this point, I'm so disappointed!

According to DXOmark Portrait mode is so good that probably it does not need own night mode anymore

[Edited by Moderator]