The Pro Max camera system is the (real) reason you buy this phone. Whether you’re shooting stylistic street scenes or recording a cinema project for film class, the iPhone 17 Pro Max has all the tools you need to get the shot.
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The phone has a triple 48MP Fusion camera system, with the same main and ultra-wide cameras as the iPhone 17, paired with a telephoto camera with optical zoom. The main camera has an aperture of f/1.78 with optical image stabilization and can take “optical-quality” 2x telephoto shots at 2x. The ultra-wide camera has a 13mm equivalent lens, an aperture of f/2.2, a 120-degree field of view, and can shoot at the full 48MP resolution if desired. Last, the telephoto camera has a 100mm equivalent lens with 4x optical zoom (which is less than the 5x optical zoom of the 16 Pro Max), and 8x “optical-quality” zoom by using the central 12MP portion of the sensor. The phone supports digital zoom up to 40x.
The feature list is nearly endless. It carries over the Adaptive True Tone flash, Deep Fusion, Smart HDR 5, portrait lighting, focus and depth control, night mode, panorama, and photographic styles. You can capture in ProRAW, HEIF, JPEG, and DNG files, and the camera has an automatic macro mode for shooting close-ups.
If you want to just point and shoot, you can do that, too. Press the Camera Control to launch the camera app and keep pressing to fire off a photo. Or, use the simplified on-screen photo and video buttons to capture the scene quickly. Advanced tools are just a swipe away in the new Camera application.
The results are a noticeable step up from the iPhone Air and iPhone 17. The images I captured look sharper, have more detail, and deliver a little more visual pop compared with similar shots taken with the iPhone 17. Any shots you zoom in past 2x or 4x are demonstrably clearer and have far less noise. Shots zoomed as far as 8x look right, but digital zooming past about 10x starts to lose detail and resolution. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.
0.5x zoom (Credit: Eric Zeman)
1x zoom (Credit: Eric Zeman)
2x zoom (Credit: Eric Zeman)
4x zoom (Credit: Eric Zeman)
8x zoom (Credit: Eric Zeman)
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
(Credit: Eric Zeman)
The Pro Max shares its selfie camera with the rest of the iPhone 17 lineup, which means it’s the new 18MP Center Stage system. This is a totally brand new front camera from Apple. It has a square sensor (1:1 rather than 4:3), which allows you to take vertical or sideways photos no matter how you happen to be holding the phone. Further, the lens supports a short range of digital zoom, which brings wide and standard fields of view to both landscape and portrait shots. It’s far more flexible than most other selfie cameras, though there is a slight learning curve to master its controls.
Selfie camera (Credit: Eric Zeman)
Selfie camera (Credit: Eric Zeman)
Serious videographers should not bother with any other phone. The 17 Pro Max has more video capture tools than most and consistently produces superior results.
The phone can record 4K Dolby Vision footage at 24, 25, 30, 60, 100, or 120fps from the main camera. It supports Cinematic Mode (which introduces portrait-style bokeh) at 4K30, and Action mode with stabilization at 2.8K60. It handles ProRes recording at 4K120 if you attach the phone to an external storage device. The phone supports ProRes RAW, Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), Apple Log 2, Genlock, macro capture in slow-motion and time-lapse, night mode, and QuickTake video in Dolby Vision at 4K60.
The footage simply looks fantastic. While Google and Samsung phones can capture higher-resolution 8K30 content, they don’t support as many video modes or frame rates, nor can they handle color standards like ACES for post-processing flexibility.
