The iPhone 12 Pro Max camera has some key upgrades. Find out if they’re worth it in our iPhone 12 Pro Max vs iPhone 12 Pro camera test.
Current smartphone camera technology is leaps and bounds ahead of the past couple of generations. There’s now a bewildering selection of main camera sensor sizes, telephoto vs periscope zooms, and wide-angle lenses of various widths scattered across the market. Picking the best combination is no easy task. One somewhat irritating trend over the past few years has been for the larger and more expensive models in each range to boast superior camera specifications. Be it the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus vs S20 Ultra, Huawei P40 Pro vs P40 Pro Plus, or the OnePlus 8 series. With the exception of Sony’s Xperia 1 II and 5 II, it’s virtually impossible to find a smaller model of a phone that shares the same cutting edge camera setup as their larger siblings. But the pressing question is if it actually matters. As we currently have both the Apple iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max in house, we thought we’d take a quick look at what, if any, photography benefits you get with the more expensive model. Both of Apple’s latest iPhones feature triple 12-megapixel camera arrangements. It’s a familiar main, wide-angle, and telephoto zoom configuration all around. However, there are subtle differences between the main and telephoto cameras that are worth highlighting. For starters, the iPhone 12 Pro Max boasts a larger main sensor. Apple says it’s 47% larger than the main sensor in the iPhone 12 Pro, which sees individual sensor pixels increase from 1.4µm to 1.7µm. A larger sensor with bigger pixels captures more light, which should pay dividends for detail capture, noise, and low-light photography. The iPhone 12 Pro Max’s main sensor also moves from the industry-standard optical image stabilization (OIS) to sensor-shift stabilization (IBIS). Sensor-shift stabilization is common in full-size mirrorless cameras. It can make up to 5,000 micro-adjustments every second. Faster and more sensitive stabilization offers a theoretical advantage when correcting for minor hand tremors during long exposures. So again, low light stands to benefit the most. The wide-angle lenses and Li-DAR depth sensors are the same on both phones. The only other change is to the telephoto camera. However, it simply appears to be an adjustment to the lens aperture and its focal lengths. The iPhone 12 Pro’s telephoto camera has a 52mm focal length, which is 2x the main sensor’s 26mm focal length. The Pro Max model has a 65mm telephoto lens, which works out to a 2.5x zoom from the main camera. While there are minor hardware differences here, the biggest is clearly the price. You’ll pay an extra $100/£100/€100 for these camera changes, along with a bigger display and a slightly larger battery. Yet, is the extra cost worth it to mobile photography enthusiasts? See also: 2020 smartphone mega shootout: The best camera phones tested As you’d expect from a premium company like Apple, image quality is great across both handsets. In fact, the two take essentially identical images in daylight and overcast conditions. Color processing, exposure, dynamic range, white balance, and focus are indistinguishable between the two iPhone 12 models. Both sets of pictures look great and are very realistic.
