Zooming in Photo modes

Zoom lets you bring your subject closer without moving toward it. ProCamera gives you three kinds of zoom, so you can get in close while keeping as much image quality as your iPhone allows:

• Optical zoom uses the camera's physical lenses. Selecting a lens with the right focal length magnifies your subject at full image quality.
• Digital zoom crops into the sensor image and upscales it, which can reduce image quality the further you zoom.
• Sensor-crop zoom is available on any 48MP lens. When you zoom within that lens's range, the image is cropped from the 48MP sensor instead of upscaled, so there's no loss in quality. The most familiar example is the wide-angle lens between 1x and 2x, but it applies to every 48MP lens on your iPhone — including the ultra-wide and telephoto lenses on models that have 48MP sensors for them.

To switch to the virtual 2x lens, tap the 1x lens button and keep tapping to cycle through the zoom levels until 2x is selected.

Digital and sensor-crop zoom in RAW and ProRAW formats

Digital zoom is not available when RAW (or RAW+JPG / RAW+HEIF) is selected, because RAW files capture pure, unprocessed sensor data — anything involving digital zoom or in-camera cropping is excluded. In RAW, only the optical zoom levels that match a real physical lens are supported (such as 0.5x, 1x, or 3x/4x/5x, depending on your iPhone model). Digital zoom levels (for example 2.1x, 2.7x, or 3.5x) and sensor-cropped levels like 2x or 8x are not.

With ProRAW, both digital zoom and sensor-crop zoom are available.

How zoom behaves in A mode vs. SI/M modes

• In automatic A mode, ProCamera uses Virtual Device Fusion, activating all lenses at once. The system automatically picks the best lens as you zoom and intelligently fuses image data from multiple cameras, delivering the full zoom range of your device and the best possible image quality for the current light and focusing distance — all without switching lenses manually.
  
  

• In semi-automatic SI and manual M modes, zooming is limited to the range of the active lens, and you switch lenses manually to reach the full zoom range. For example, on the 1x wide-angle lens you cannot zoom out to the 0.5x field of view. And if you zoom in beyond the tele lens's native optical level, ProCamera zooms digitally from there.
  
  

Ways to zoom in and out in ProCamera

Tap the lens buttons to zoom optically

Each iPhone lens has a specific focal length, and ProCamera represents these physical lenses with buttons in the Lens selector (each showing its zoom factor). Tap a lens button to switch to that zoom factor.

   

Tap the selected lens button again to zoom

Tap the lens button that is already selected to change the zoom factor. This zoom is digital — with one special case: the 2x virtual lens on iPhones with a 48MP camera, where zoom levels between 1x and 2x use sensor-crop instead of upscaling, so there is no loss in quality.

   

Tapping the 1x lens button cycles through the extra zoom steps of the Wide 1x lens:

• 1.2x — equivalent to a 28mm focal length
• 1.5x — equivalent to a 35mm focal length
• 2x — equivalent to a 50mm focal length

Pinch to zoom on the viewfinder

Pinch the screen to zoom in and out.

   

Swipe along the Lens selector to zoom

Swipe along the lens buttons to zoom in or out smoothly. A dotted line appears to guide your movement.

   

Summary of lens zoom capabilities by lens

1. Ultra-wide Lens (0.5x):
   • Digital Zoom: Starts from 0.6x and goes up to the maximum zoom level supported by the device, with a maximum of 4x (8 times the focal length).
   • Special case: On iPhones with a 48MP ultra-wide camera, zoom levels above 0.5x use sensor-crop instead of digital upscaling.
2. Wide Lens (1x):
   • Digital Zoom: Starts from 1.1x and goes up to the maximum zoom level supported by the device, with a maximum of 8x.
   • Special case: On iPhones with a 48MP camera, zoom levels between 1x and 2x use sensor-crop instead of digital upscaling.
3. Telephoto Lens (2x, 3x, 4x, or 5x, depending on the iPhone model):
   • Optical Zoom: 2x, 3x, 4x, or 5x (depending on the iPhone model), achieved with the lens's natural focal length.
   • Digital Zoom: Starts from 2.1x, 3.1x, etc., and goes up to the maximum zoom level supported by the device, with a maximum of 8 times the focal length (=16x for devices with 2x tele lens, 24x for devices with 3x tele lens).
   • Special case: On supported iPhones with a 48MP camera, zoom levels between 4x and 8x use sensor-crop instead of digital upscaling.

Front camera zoom

You can zoom in up to 8x with the front camera, the same way you do with the rear cameras.

       

Enabling or disabling digital zoom in Settings

Digital zoom is enabled by default. To turn it off:

1. Open ProCamera Settings.
2. For photo capture, go to Advanced Settings > Photo Zoom and turn off Photo Zoom.
3. For video capture, go to Video Mode Options > Video Zoom and turn off Video Zoom.