I’m a Photographer and YouTuber and I’m Stoked for the iPhone 17 Pro’s Cameras

During its “AWE Droping” event on Tuesday, Apple whipped the blankets of its latest iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, which pack a whole multitude of updates, including a new orange division color. But as a professional photographer, these are the cameras that fascinate me particularly and the new professional models have a plethora of updates that have the technological nerd in me trembling with excitation like a jelly on a balance board. Let’s dive and discover more.

Longer telephoto lens zoom

First, the zoom telephoto lens. While the 16 pro offered a 5x optical zoom, the 17 pro increased to 8x – the equivalent of the rupture on a 200 mm lens to an ordinary camera. I love to use a long lens with my Canon R5. This allows me to find more interesting compositions in a scene that would be lost if I simply stood there with a wide angle lens. And while the 5X was a good ideal point for many scenes, I often wanted this additional range for more distant subjects, but I did not want to sacrifice the quality of the image by zooming digitally.

Now the pro model offers the full camera bag, ranging from ultrawide at one end to Super Zoom to the other. The telephoto lens sensor now has 48 megapixels of resolution and is physically larger than the previous model. It’s great – a larger sensor captures more light and more light means more beautiful images. I am really excited to see how this larger sensor could allow natural telephuritions of natural appearance without the heavy over-viewing view of many rival zoom systems.

I would have honestly liked to see a larger sensor on the main camera. I wanted to see Apple becoming large with a 1 inch type sensor, like those found on the Xiaomi 14 Ultra and 15 Ultra, which can offer amazing quality. It does not seem that Apple has changed the main equipment of the camera this time and I suppose that it is good. After all, it was already among the best phone cameras, so why play too much with a good thing?

As a professional photographer, I used my iPhone in place of my usual camera several times when I did not expect to need my camera. I even published iPhone images in magazines. Did I need Apple to revise its main camera? No. Would I have liked to see it slap on a complete image sensor with interchangeable objectives? Oh hell yes. He has stabilizations of optical “second generation” sensor shift image, which should help for low-light images, while the ultra-reality camera remains a 48 healthy megapixels.

Brute Prore video

In addition to a photographer, I am a video producer, creating videos for CNET and the production of YouTube videos for my channel on photography. I work frequently on site and create videos that show how I take photos, which means transporting a lot of equipment – I need a camera to take photos and I need a camera to film myself by taking these photos.

Last year, I shot a particularly cinematographic video in the mountains of Wales (integrated below) and I had to transport a huge amount of equipment on the back, including two cameras, two tripods, a monitor for the video camera and the microphones, lenses and filters. This is why I am enthusiastic about the other big Apple upgrade to the cameras: Prores Raw Video.

Apple introduced the Prore video codec to its iPhone 13 Pro in 2021, which essentially captured much more information in videos for a more professional look. Prores RAW captures even more information, bypassing a large part of the integrated image processing (such as sharpening) in order to give much more flexibility with the resulting video files in post-production. As Apple says, Prores RAW is the standard format on industry on professional cinematographic productions, so the fact that a phone can do it now is wild.

“But Andy, no serious filmmaker will use a phone for their shooting”, I hear you cry. This is not the case: the recent successful Smash Zombie Flick 28 years later was filmed on the pros of the iPhone 15 and they did not have prores RAW. They were not even the most recent model available at the time. Although an iPhone may not offer the same quality as a huge cinema camera and a lens costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, the small size of the iPhone means that it can be used in small spaces and for a fast pace action where larger platforms will fail.

Of course, my little YouTube channel is not exactly a Hollywood production, but I savor any opportunity to bend my creative muscles and try to create a slightly more cinematographic video. And with the camera updates of the iPhone 17 Pro, I will be much better equipped to create more beautiful videos without having to transport quantities of spine equipment with me.