The real story of the iPhone 18 Pro's camera

The Vergecast

The Vergecast explores the broader landscape of smartphone photography, diving into Apple's iPhone 18 Pro camera updates, manual controls, i

Key takeaways

• Apple's iPhone 18 Pro features significant software upgrades over hardware changes, particularly improved image pipeline and pro controls like long exposure.
• Variable aperture is more of a flashy feature than practical for most users, with auto mode defaulting to optimal F1.8 settings.

Main topics

• iPhone 18 Pro camera features and real-world usability
• Smartphone photography software vs. hardware innovation

Notable quotes

"It still looks better to do that [turning the phone sideways] even though it has the center stage camera."

"You can change the white balance. You can do all these things."

Conclusion

While hardware upgrades like variable aperture get attention, real pro

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:01) I'm Ina Garten. I have a new podcast called Happy Hour with Ina. Each week, I'm inviting a really interesting guest to join me for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. I'll be getting personal with actors, chefs, comedians, musicians, and writers I admire. So grab a snack, pull up a chair, and join us. You can watch by searching for Happy Hour with Ina on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Don't we all need to have more fun? Speaker 8 (0:40) Hello and welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of fStops. I'm Jake Kastranakis, executive editor of The Verge, here with our friend David Amell, Verge Cast guest host. What's up, gamers? I'm back. And we've got a lot coming up today. We're going to geek out about smartphone cameras with Allison Johnson. Hayden Field will join us to talk about the AI safety meltdown this week. And we've got another installment of the lightning round. But first, I've got some stuff to talk about. We have a new season of Version History. The theme for this run of episodes is back to school. I love it. I'm like so hyped. The first episode is about the Oregon Trail. So awesome. Yeah, I love that. I'm on an episode about, I don't know who came up with these ideas. I'm on the episode about overhead projectors, which when they told me that, I was like, of course, of course, we have to do overhead projectors. They bought an overhead projector. It's like. I can't tell you guys how beautiful it is. Yeah. I miss them. David, you're on an episode about one laptop per child. Yeah. Also Speaker 5 (1:44) like a beautiful piece of hardware. I Speaker 2 (1:46) was surprised how much I loved that computer and how many of the ideas from that computer I wish were in modern laptops. It's Speaker 5 (1:53) a very Speaker 2 (1:53) weird piece of tech history. Yeah. Okay. We have a trailer. Check it out. Speaker 5 (1:58) What if I told you that for the last several decades, Schools across the United States have required students to have a game console in class. You might have heard of it. It's called the TI-84+. Speaker 6 (2:10) Minesweeper, Tetris, Snake, Pong. Speaker 5 (2:14) Drug Wars was the game. It also does math. This season on Version History, we're going back to school. Speaker 1 (2:20) Peak dysentery. Yeah, peak dysentery. Speaker 5 (2:22) I like that idea. A two-in-one laptop. You can just flip to any page in the book. This was the only technology available. So grab your Trapper Keeper, throw on the Jansport, open up a bottle of Fruitopia, and check out Version History on YouTube or wherever you get podcasts. Speaker 8 (2:39) That was awesome. TI-84 plus hitting this weekend. That's a good one. That's great. Also, if you're listening to this early, some Verge staffers are going to be live streaming a playthrough of the Oregon Trail today, Friday, at 1.30 p.m. Eastern on our YouTube page. Check it out. It'll be really fun. We'll find out who's going to make it to the Oregon, who lives, who dies, whether the emulator crashes while we're playing. It's going to be fun. You can follow Version History. at Version History Podcast on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Now it's time to talk about Apple. Senior reviewer Allison Johnson is here. Allison, welcome. Speaker 7 (3:20) Hello. Thanks for having me. Speaker 8 (3:22) I'm so excited. This is going to be an all-out camera geek out. The iPhone 18 Pro reviews hit earlier this week. Before we get into that, there's something perhaps more important that I want to talk about. Earlier this week, on Monday, the Emmys, Apple CEO John Ternes is walking down the red carpet. He's looking sharp. He's in a tuxedo. He has an iPhone Duo in his breast pocket. A reporter asks him a question. She wants to see it. Let's roll the clip. Speaker 4 (3:56) I would love to Speaker 1 (3:57) see Speaker 5 (3:57) it. Let's see. There we go. There Speaker 4 (4:00) we go. I love it. Speaker 4 (4:08) Okay, Speaker 8 (4:10) here's my question. Ternus versus Cook, what's the swag comparison? This Speaker 2 (4:15) is so different. Yeah. It's so weird to see the Apple CEO like dressed up and at a big event like this. Sometimes Tim Cook would show up for like a half second and just smile and wave and then he'd leave. It's very uncommon to see them actually engaging with people, showing things off, looking all cool. There are multiple photos of him at the Emmys, like looking like a movie star, taking photos with people, ironically with the iPhone 18 Pro, because the inner camera on the fold is not good. Well, funny enough as well, he turns the iPhone 18 Pro sideways, even though it has the center stage camera, to take the selfies. Speaker 7 (4:50) That's right. He doesn't need to do that. But, Speaker 2 (4:53) you know, Speaker 5 (4:54) we'll give him a pass for that because it still looks better. Speaker 8 (4:57) It still looks better to do that. I know that photo. It looks cool. He looks cool. I cannot imagine Tim Cook doing any of this. The vibe is so Speaker 2 (5:05) different. Speaker 8 (5:06) Like having a normal human conversation and interaction. Oh, Speaker 2 (5:10) my God. He also he kind of has that like rock star vibe when he walks around, like even photos of him that have gone out recently of him, like not at Apple Park. He's got like shades on and he's got like a jacket on and it's just a totally different energy. Speaker 7 (5:25) Yeah. So. Speaker 2 (5:26) Hopefully that means something in the future for Apple hardware. If Speaker 5 (5:30) you had told me there was going to Speaker 8 (5:32) be an Apple CEO who was like a normal human person who like could. could almost pass as cool. I could see him on a motorcycle. I never would have believed Speaker 5 (5:41) it. Speaker 8 (5:41) I would have lost Speaker 5 (5:42) money Speaker 8 (5:42) on Polymarket there. Speaker 5 (5:43) And he's the hardware Speaker 2 (5:44) guy, which makes it even cooler. He's responsible for a lot of the good hardware upgrades that have happened on the Apple laptops and stuff recently. A Speaker 8 (5:53) successful first two and a half weeks as CEO. I think that's the impression here. I'd Speaker 2 (5:59) say Speaker 8 (5:59) so, yeah. Okay. Now we'll talk about the iPhone 18 Pro. We'll get into it. Allison, your review dropped earlier this week. You were on the Verge cast earlier this week. You talked about it with V. David, we haven't had you on to talk about it. So why don't we start off? I want to hear your thoughts. A couple big upgrades here. I think the variable aperture is probably the most important one. Yes. You tested it out. Big deal. Not a big deal. Where do you fall on that spectrum? Speaker 2 (6:30) When we say most important upgrade, I think it's probably more apt to say like flashiest upgrade because the changes that Apple made that are actually important, in my opinion, are in software, both in the pro controls that they added to the phone, which I think are very important because now you can do things like up to a second of long exposure. So you can get sort of a shutter speed, slow shutter kind of effect. You can get... God, there's so many things you can do with that. You can change the white balance. You can do all these things. And also, they upgraded the image pipeline because their signal to noise ratio is better now because they have a bigger aperture. They have, you know, sensors the same size, but they felt comfortable enough doing less sharpening. I had a conversation with Apple about this. They said, yeah, we totally reengineered that whole pipeline. And I noticed it in my time testing it. I went to Arizona to shoot a bunch of photos with the phone. And right out of the gate, I was like, things look less plasticky, less over sharpened. And the color is just better and more natural, both in the heath mode and in pro raw. Not really once in that entire process was I like. And I want to use the variable aperture. But all of the other things, I was like, yes, Speaker 5 (7:47) thank you. Thank you for adding these features. Speaker 8 (7:49) Wait, I have so many questions about the color, about the sharpening. But on the variable aperture, I think that's sort of where Allison landed too, which was Allison, like you mostly, you had it in auto and it was like mostly just shooting at the same F1.8 that it always did. Speaker 7 (8:05) Yeah, which at first I was like, aha. Gotcha, Apple. And when you think about it, it's like that lens has been optimized, you know, for that f-stop and it's a little bit sharper there, I think. But there, I think it does kind of illustrate that there are so few use cases where you're like, yeah, I would like to stop down the aperture on this teeny tiny lens in front of this teeny tiny sensor. Yeah. They exist and it will, it will behave that way. in auto mode, but it's sort of in the, we kind of had to go looking for it. I was like, you know, lining up a group shot. I was like, okay, two of you need to stand here. One of you needs to be back here. And then we got it to drop to F4. Yeah. So the, they kind of like the big updates are sort of. hidden under this whole the aperture moves thing where it's like it is a brighter maximum aperture. We finally can control shutter speed in the year of our Lord, 2026. In Speaker 8 (9:09) the native app. Yeah. Yeah. This is my question. Both of you are like, I think like very good smartphone photographers and like pretty deep in it. I'm like, oh, God. manual controls, like through software like this, like it is a lot. Do you find these to be usable? You're like you're like, fine, like, great. Give it to me. I will use it. It's it's this is very doable. Very. Speaker 2 (9:35) I find it to actually be more elegant of an implementation than a lot of other smartphone manufacturers do. Apple sort of redesigned the camera app a little bit so that a lot more is in that little extra menu that is just on the right side. The most annoying thing for me is that when you close the camera app, that goes back to the default and you have to change it every time. And that's frustrating. But the settings for like shutter speed and things like that, they now have quick settings for on the top. And you don't have to touch them if you don't want to, right? Like the idea for most of these smartphone manufacturers has always been we want a magic box that you press a button and it gives you the best possible photo. And we can talk a little bit more about the redesigned image pipeline and how that. helps deliver the best possible photo. But I think that they actually did quite a good job of implementing pro controls for people who want access to them. And it's not you don't have to go through 1000 menus. Like in the past, Apple made you go into the settings menu, like the settings app, and then you had to go you define camera needed to tap on camera, and then to go deep into that. And then you'd have to change like from if you wanted to shoot JPEG instead of heath, you would have to change it from like, most smallest file size to most compatible or something like that. And there's some of those settings still exist, but it is much easier now to just go into the sub menu in the camera app itself and switch these settings. And that exists for shutter speed that exists for things like white balance. I think it's Speaker 8 (11:01) a Speaker 2 (11:01) it's a nice balance for both amateurs and pro photographers. Speaker 8 (11:05) Allison, did you do a lot of playing with with manual mode? Speaker 7 (11:08) I did. And I, you know, I kind of like. Speaker 7 (11:12) poo-poo, like shooting raw on a smartphone a little bit where I'm like, I'll just let it handle, you know, it's going to do all the multi-frame compositing. I don't feel like I want to tinker with a raw file from a smartphone too much. Other people, you know, mileage varies. But the shutter speed and having, you know, there's the exposure compensation that has been available. kind of having that suite of controls, I will go in there and I will mess with them because I'm sort of like framing a shot and I'm like, okay, I can see how I want this and the phone is not quite behaving right. Like I can make two quick changes right here and I've got the photo like way closer to what I was envisioning rather than being like, well, I just will. underexposed and maybe do something with it later. So I had a good time with them. I Speaker 8 (12:13) was looking at your sample photos in the 18 Pro review and I was like, I was angry. I'm like, this is how do you take this photo on a phone? Like this is like I've spent too much money on real cameras and I can't do this. I want to make you two talk about because Allison, there were there were shots fired there with your comment about people shooting raw. Speaker 6 (12:33) Are Speaker 8 (12:34) they in the room with us? David, you mentioned they improved the image pipeline. Speaker 8 (12:43) Are you still a raw guy? Have they improved it enough that you're like, do these results show through in the JPEGs or the HEIFs? Or are you getting a meaning? Because I'm still assuming most people, most photos, even the photographers out there are going to shoot JPEG. Are you noticing the difference there? Or is this just potential? Speaker 2 (13:05) Actually, a lot. And I need to break something down for people because there is raw, which you can only access through third party camera apps like Moment or Halide. And then there is pro raw, which is still it is pro raw has been such a contentious setting because when they first introduced it and up until now, it was still quite compressed. Like it gives you a little bit more flexibility. It gives you a little more malleability in post. But for me, it still gave you the like really crunchy sort of plasticky smartphone camera look that we have pretty much always been plagued by. Annoyingly, you can pretty much only get the 48 megapixel mode through either using ProRAW or shooting in 48 megapixel through the default iPhone camera app. Most third-party camera apps like Halide or Moment Camera Pro 2, if you shoot RAW, you only get a 12 megapixel image, which is frustrating. And I went into this review or like my review of the camera shooting through Moment Camera 2 initially because I always go straight to the raw camera apps because I generally want the most control. I was just kind of messing around with the camera, both in the Heath mode and the ProRAW mode. And I was just noticing like, oh. weirdly the color is better and weirdly that plasticky look is like not gone obviously and i still sometimes will go into like light room and pull down on the sharpening a little bit but it is much better than it used to be and we have these like briefings with apple after we have the phones but before the reviews go live where they can answer questions and i was like did you guys do something to the camera because i feel like both in pro raw and the regular heath mode It just like the color is better and the sharpening is better. And they said, yeah, we we felt that our signal to noise ratio has gotten good enough that we don't have to. By the way, signal to noise ratio. I'm Speaker 5 (15:01) sorry. This is a lot. We're at like the third tier sub break. Speaker 2 (15:04) Yeah, I'm like, how deep should I go here? Speaker 5 (15:07) That's what Speaker 8 (15:08) this segment is. I'm sorry. Speaker 5 (15:10) And congratulations. This is what I want. Speaker 2 (15:12) OK, good. OK, good. When you have a sensor. It's subdivided into hundreds of thousands of little photo buckets that capture photons, right? And the signal is how many photons get captured by each individual bucket and converted into electrical current, which is then turned into brightness. That brightness signal is then demosaicked, where the phone takes all of these adjacent subpixels and says, based on the pixels around it and how much signal it received. this is the color of what that pixel should be. However, there's a lot of different types of noise. There's things like shot noise, which is basically like chaos. It is. When there are photons flying around, there is also electrical interference that is happening between these subpixels. Samsung has done a lot of engineering on this to create like subpixel gates between the photon buckets to make sure that there is less interference. There's a lot of engineering that goes into making less noise on a sensor like this. Things like backside illuminated sensors are also made to cut down on noise. Anyway. The signal-to-noise ratio gets better when the sensor gets bigger, because when those photo buckets, the individual pixels, are bigger, they can receive more photons individually. This is why when smartphone cameras were originally the first 100-megapixel or 200-megapixel Samsung smartphone camera, it looked freaking awful when you shot in 200-megapixel mode, because you were taking a sensor that, while bigger than we had had before, was subdivided 200 million times. You know, that is too much. And you are not getting a good signal in each individual pixel. Now, Apple is doing the thing that everybody else is doing, where in regular Heath mode, it's taking that 48 megapixel sensor and it's making four pixels into giant, I don't want to say megapixels, but like megapixels, ultrapixels, whatever. And they're taking all that signal and converting it into light. But even on the 48 megapixel sensor, the sensor is now big enough that you're getting enough photon signal that you're not receiving too much noise to actually say what the color of that pixel is supposed to be. So all of that to say, Apple feels that their sensor is big enough. The bigger aperture on this camera probably also contributes to that, right? Because... Yeah, it's Speaker 1 (17:35) the Speaker 2 (17:35) same size sensor, but if the hole is bigger, you're still receiving more light. I think they say there's like a whole extra stop of light from that or something. And anyway, they took this information and they said, now that we're receiving all of this light data, we don't have to do as much computational photography. And what they had to do before is because you weren't receiving as much light information, you had to stack frames on top of each other because. I'm sorry. Should I stop or should I keep going? Well, I might be, this might be too much. I'm sorry. Speaker 8 (18:07) I think, so they've done all of this, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Go. Speaker 5 (18:12) And then Speaker 8 (18:13) the answer is that ProRAW is therefore able to deliver a cleaner image that is less processed. Speaker 2 (18:20) Yes, exactly. The computation of the photography that happens here is basically saying we're not receiving enough light data, so we have to use computers. to stack frames and do sharpening and noise reduction and things like that. And when you have physics on your side, which happens by having a bigger sensor or having a wider aperture, you don't need to do this computational photography because the computational photography was invented because the sensor was too small. And so Apple went back to the drawing board. And they said, let's re-engineer the way that we process the light information that's hitting the sensor and do less sharpening and things like that. And that's why the color and the sharpening is better. So, Allison, Speaker 8 (19:00) you are, I think, more of a JPEG HEIF style shooter, which is to say not getting as much pure data as David is. Yeah. Are you seeing those changes in... the JPEGs, because that is where I think there has often been just a world's difference where with the raw, you always got this very, you know, unprocessed file with the JPEG. They just went crazy on it. Speaker 7 (19:27) Yeah, I think so. I think across my photos, like some of them still do have that kind of a little over the top kind of HDR-ish look to them. Particularly with the ultra wide, we know, which is a smaller sensor and that's Speaker 1 (19:48) its Speaker 7 (19:48) own thing. Yeah, I was just finding and it was like kind of a cumulative thing where we went out for a morning and shot around the park and we take a photo and it was more of like, oh, okay, I got the photo that I wanted here. I didn't have to fight it as much, you know. Speaker 7 (20:13) That's what I was finding. And just coming back to my photos at the end of a session and being like, yeah, no, that's what the light did look like. And it didn't go crazy overboard on sharpening it up and all that. So I think it's a subtle effect maybe to those who are not as steeped in all of this. But I think people will see it and appreciate it. Speaker 2 (20:39) Yeah, the big question that I have yet to get an answer on from Apple is whether or not these processing changes will be passed down to older iPhones. And I'm still waiting on an answer for that. So not sure. Did you notice a difference in like color and that sort of plasticky effect? Because I felt it was better in my heefs as well, but I would love to get your take on it. Speaker 7 (21:00) Yeah, I did. And it was, I'm thinking of like a particular. situation where there's sort of like this beautiful like golden light that's kind of like reflecting off of a building and throwing some cool kind of shadows. And I think typically a smartphone will kind of be like, ah, like freak out a little bit and not quite know what to do. And it's sort of balancing for like what's true north here, like what's supposed to be white and then making it look a little. Neutral Speaker 2 (21:34) white balance kind of situation. Speaker 7 (21:35) Yeah, it was just a little more, it was a little easier. I had to like, you know, get into the white balance settings. But once I got that, I was like, okay, it's behaving the way I want it to here with less friction. And that, you know, that came out in the JPEG, the HEAF. I thought colors looked pretty good running around, you know. New York, we got nice blue skies that were not crazy. I thought just a pleasant, I had a pleasant time with the photos I got. Speaker 8 (22:13) Apple also, they expanded the photographic styles feature, right? Where you can now dial in these more, I don't know, these filmic sort of things like grain and texture. Allison, was that part of getting that color or is this like a whole separate thing on top of it? Speaker 7 (22:30) So I, for my purposes, I wanted to keep it all straightforward, you know, the like total default photographic style. But there are so many options now. I was