The recently released iPhone 12 Pro Max has had its camera performance kicked up another notch, letting you capture even higher-quality photos. So I took a 12 Pro Max with me and went out to shoot Kyoto's autumn leaves again this year. Note: the photos were taken in HDR, but on this page they're displayed in a non-HDR state, so please keep that in mind.

I avoided crowded times, kept the shoot short, and took COVID prevention measures including bringing alcohol disinfectant, taking my temperature, and wearing a mask.

"Wide," "Ultra-Wide," and "Telephoto" — All Beautiful

This one was shot with what you'd call the main wide-angle camera. The saturation and brightness gave me the impression that the scenery I actually saw with my own eyes had been preserved as-is. It's 12MP, so compared to the ultra-high-resolution 108MP options that have been gaining popularity on Android lately, cropping out part of the image and using just that part seems like a tough ask.

The ultra-wide camera, as you can see, doesn't appear to compromise either. With cheap Android phones there are cases where ultra-wide image quality is extremely poor, but on a 100,000-yen-plus iPhone, that of course just doesn't happen. It comes out vividly.

"Max" — Capturing the Scenery in Vivid Color

The red of the autumn leaves comes out richly colored. Since every photo was taken in HDR, they look even more beautiful when viewed on the iPhone's screen.

The background gets a nice solid blur too.

A blurred background brings out a sense of depth. This shot of the tree was taken in Portrait mode.

It came out feeling kind of DSLR-like — pretty nice.

Even with the telephoto lens, you can't really zoom that far, so when you want to get closer the move is to just walk up to the subject.

The iPhone's HDR display is something special — as the official site notes, the screen brightness goes up to 1,200 nits, so the bright areas really do show up bright. A shame I can't show it off on this page.

Photography Might Just Get Fun Again!

With each generation the iPhone's camera has been getting steadily closer to a DSLR. As I expected, the Max really is something special.