Another year, another iPhone, but the new iPhone 17 Pro brings with it a significant set of new features that might be of interest to photographers.
Tech/Camera YouTuber Tyler Stalman had a chance to get some seat time behind the iPhone 17 series, and took a deep dive into the features of the iPhone 17 Pro. More importantly, he was allowed to AirDrop the photos to himself and do a head-to-head comparison against the iPhone 16 Pro. The results are looking much better than an iPhone has ever looked.
I've been putting iPhones (and Pixels, too) through the paces for years, and one frustrating trait of iPhone photos, even when shooting raw files, has been a "painterly" look when zooming in on the photos. There was just a lack of detail upon close inspection that instantly pegged a photo as being "shot on an iPhone." It's something I didn't see in any of the Pixels I had and certainly not from any DSLR or mirrorless camera.
Stalman's initial tests seem to confirm that this may not be the case any longer. There's a distinct difference in the way the iPhone 17 Pro processes photos when placed next to a 16 Pro. Stalman posits several theories on this, but if I had to take a guess, I'd say it would be a combination of the phone's larger sensor and a different post-processing pipeline.
Stalman does a deep dive into all of the changes and new capabilities of the camera on the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro in the video above, so check that out if you're interested in learning more.
Do you plan to pick up the iPhone 17 Pro for photography? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
4 Comments
Great little review of the new iPhones. Lots of helpful info. But I wish fstoppers would stop with the constant ads that it throws at you while you’re watching the video. I wouldn’t mind one or two. But there were like 20+ videos, trying to get your attention, which really says fstoppers is a sleaze ball website.
That sounds more like a YouTube-based issue than an fstoppers one, and the video isn’t even an fstoppers video it’s Tyler Stalman. So it would be up to Tyler to turn off mid-roll ads completely, since YouTube in its infinite wisdom doesn’t let you really choose what ads go where.
Which is why ad blockers have been the number one plugin on any browser since time immemorial.
Appreciate this post and it is a helpful video, but without offending anyone, shouldn't Apple just change the iPhone name to iCamera? Seems every major upgrades, capability and features are mainly around the camera. I mean yes it has the next best processor, it has memory, and more hdspace and better battery life but most of it is really around all the new features and capability the camera has front and rear. So you might be asking...well what else do you want to see? Well that's why Steve Jobs was an icon he could tell us before we knew we wanted it. I don't need a $1200 phone camera. I could use a phone that helps me run my business, block spammers, make call and video calls with the masses not FaceTime perhaps natively without downloading 3 types of VC apps....any ways I never comment on these articles and thought I'd join in on this great forum....Thanks Wasim!
I keep saying that Apple should just make a photography-focused iPod-like thing without the phone part!