The iPhone 18 Pro’s portrait mode holds up well against a professional camera, though it still loses detail at 2x zoom and can overdo the background blur, Toronto-based photographer Lee Zavitz found in his annual test published on September 29.
Zavitz shot the same portraits on the iPhone 18 Pro and a Sony camera using Sony 16-25mm and Tamron 35-150mm lenses. In the side-by-side image above, the right-hand photo was taken on the iPhone 18 Pro and the left-hand one on his pro camera.
He said the 18 Pro’s main camera is the only major hardware change this year, with a Sony IMX 905 sensor replacing the IMX 903 used in the previous three iPhone generations. It remains the same size and 48 megapixels, but offers better low-light performance and a wider f/1.48 maximum aperture. The 4x f/2.8 telephoto is unchanged from the iPhone 17 Pro, while the phone runs Apple’s A20 Pro chip.
Software additions include a white balance lock for portrait mode, addressing the auto white balance behaviour that previously made matching shots more difficult, along with Photographic Styles texture controls such as glow and grain. Adding grain “takes away that fake portrait mode feel,” Zavitz said, making images look more natural.
He also tested whether the variable aperture changes the blurry background, known as bokeh. Moving from f/1.4 to f/4 produced only a subtle difference, with f/4 creating more defined, circular bokeh balls. Zavitz shot at f/4 on the iPhone to better match f/2.8 on his camera, saying the iPhone otherwise applies too much blur.
Zavitz said the iPhone remains very consistent in portrait mode. Skin tones and texture looked strong, aside from some tone mapping in facial highlights, while hair separation showed natural falloff without excessive sharpening. He noted that some rival Chinese smartphones still handle the effect better.
The 2x zoom drops from 24 to 12 megapixels, resulting in a noticeable loss of detail, while 1x and 4x remained sharp. Zavitz also tested a shutter-drag portrait using an ND filter, a black-and-white portrait and a technique that lets users pinch in from 4x to capture a 5x portrait while still outputting a 24-megapixel image.
Looking at the images Zavitz shared in his video, it’s pretty hard to tell which one was taken on an iPhone, especially if you’re an average user and not a pixel peeper.
Watch the full comparison in Zavitz’s video above. For another photographer’s take, check out Austin Mann’s iPhone 18 Pro camera test.
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