charlesn
Even after a lifetime of of photography as a prosumer hobby to the point of having a home color darkroom, I'm finding it hard to understand what's going on with lenses in Apple's latest Pro cameras. I assumed, for example, that the new Pro Max tetraprism lens was handling the optical zoom range not available in the regular Pro: 3.1x to 5x. Nope! A professional camera review of the lens that I read this weekend noted that the new lens only does 5x. Everything from 3.1x to 4.9x is handled on the main camera sensor. Which means what, exactly? A crop? Apple isn't helping things by claiming that its three lens set-up is actually seven lenses. A true zoom lens covers all of the focal lengths within its range optically and uses the full sensor size within the camera regardless of the focal length you're using. In theory, the 3 lenses in the new Pro Max set up can cover all focal lengths from 13mm to 120mm. But how much of that range is achieved through the use of true zoom optics and how much is achieved through cropping of the full image on the sensor? To go back to my earlier example: how is the main camera handling 3.1x to 4.9x if not by cropping, since the main camera does not have that optical range?
