Apple’s Newest Phone Is Worth It…for Photographers

How to take great pictures of the Moon with the iPhone 12 Pro Max

I took this photo with an iPhone 12 Pro Max. Photos courtesy of the author

Padding down my steps one morning, I noticed the brightly lit reflection of my casement windows on the den floor. It was before sunrise and I quickly surmised that this was sunlight streaming through my window.

Approaching the windows, I could see the Waning Gibbous Moon still high in the crystal-clear sky. I grabbed my DSLR and shot a few photos of it from the vantage point of my window. My 200 mm lens lets me get quite close, but I also tried to get a shot that captured the window frame and put Earth’s satellite in context. The shots came out well and I shared them on Instagram.

Less than an hour later, I glanced out at the now bright blue sky and noticed that the moon was still clearly visible. I had another idea for a photo, but this time I grabbed Apple’s new iPhone 12 Pro Max. It has a 2.5x optical zoom which is no match for my big lens, but I still thought I could do something interesting.

I stepped out into the brisk autumn air, positioned myself behind one of my small backyard trees, and then tried to frame the moon behind some of the leafless branches.

One of my earlier attempts

I tapped on the 2.5 zoom and found that the moon was still just a tiny gray and white blob in the background. Next, I decided to push past the optical into digital zoom and noticed that I could bring in a bit more lunar landscape detail. However, to hold onto the focus and the lower exposure enough to keep the moon’s luminance from blowing out the image, I had to hold my finger on the screen, right over the moon, until Apple’s Camera app locked exposure and focus.

With that done, I could frame the moon more aesthetically behind a few of the branches, which were, naturally, now blurry.

I’d normally prefer a tripod at this level of zoom, but the iPhone 12 Pro Max has an extra image stabilization capability called “sensor-shift image stabilization,” which lets the image processor float on an x-y axis to reduce whatever shake you introduce while holding the…