iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max Camera Review by Pro Photographer

Calgary’s Chris Niccolls is best known for his years of camera reviews (including those at The Camera Store TV) at the popular photography site DPReview. But after Amazon shut down the site in April 2023, Niccolls and his creative partner Jordan Drake announced their move to PetaPixel, where they began leading the site’s YouTube channel starting in May 2023. Their photographer-focused review of the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max was released today, after Apple’s embargo lifted on first media reviews.

Niccolls makes clear from the outset that this is not a general smartphone review. The focus is entirely on photography and video. He says the biggest change is a new 4× telephoto that replaces last year’s 5×. It’s roughly a 100mm equivalent with a larger 48-megapixel sensor, giving sharper detail and better low-light performance.

In side-by-side tests, the new lens produced much more resolution than the iPhone 16 Pro’s 12-megapixel 5×. Even when cropped to 5×, the new 4× still delivered more detail, about 30 megapixels versus 12. For portraits, Niccolls calls the jump “night and day,” with freckles and skin texture looking more realistic rather than soft and waxy. He does note that you only get the full 48-megapixel benefit within the lens’s focus range; move in tighter than a head-and-shoulders composition and it drops to 12 megapixels.

On Apple’s marketing of zoom, Niccolls is direct: “it isn’t optical. As much as they want to say optical, it’s not optical. It’s a crop.” Still, he finds Apple’s new processing pipeline does improve cropped 12-megapixel modes like 2× and 8×, producing noticeably clearer detail than on the iPhone 16 Pro.

The main and ultrawide cameras use the same hardware as last year’s Pro models, though you can now shoot 24-megapixel HEIF or JPEG from the ultrawide instead of being limited to 12 megapixels unless shooting RAW. Overall image processing remains familiar: bright, punchy, generally realistic colours with strong skin tones, and similar editing flexibility as before.

Niccolls also highlights the new Center Stage selfie camera shared across the iPhone 17 lineup. Using a 24-megapixel square sensor, it allows vertical or horizontal recording without rotating the phone and can automatically reframe to include new faces. At the widest field of view he sees a clear improvement over the previous generation, while tighter crops look more or less the same.

Video updates are relatively minor. The headline addition is ProRes RAW with open-gate capture, allowing multiple aspect ratios from one take. But it requires recording to an external drive and disables stabilization in that mode. Niccolls says Apple Log in H.265 remains his preferred option and wishes Apple would add it to the default Camera app. His bottom line: “So, if you’re really interested in video, the iPhone is still the best choice right now.”

Design-wise, Niccolls notes Apple’s shift to a unibody aluminum build with a larger ‘camera plateau’ (now that’s brilliant Apple marketing for a huge camera bump) a vapour chamber for improved thermals, tougher ceramic shield on glass elements, and very bright 3,000-nit displays. Handling is nearly unchanged from the iPhone 16 Pro Max, while the Pro comes in at 6.3 inches and the Pro Max at 6.9 inches.

So what’s the final consensus? Niccolls says the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max bring meaningful gains for photographers and video creators, especially with the new telephoto lens and improved selfie camera. A broader comparison with Google and Samsung phones is planned soon so viewers can weigh differences in colour and rendering styles across brands.

Check out the full video review below if you’re a photography nerd: