The short version

22 photos and three video frames, all handheld, from one afternoon outdoors.
Every photo caption gives the focal length, aperture, shutter speed and ISO stored in the file.
The light was easy. Across all 73 photos I took with it, the ISO never went above 100.
The sea zoom set used the real telephoto at 4x and 8x. The bush zoom set is digital zoom and is labeled that way.
Not covered: night, indoor light, portraits, selfies and the ultra wide camera.

How these photos were taken

The phone was a day old. I unboxed it and moved my data over from my older iPhone the day before, then took it outside the next afternoon. The photos here run from about 2:40 PM to 3:50 PM. The plants came first, in soft light under cloud, and the sea and sky came later, with rain moving in.

I came back with 73 photos and 19 video clips from this phone. My earlier OLED burn-in test is another hands-on test.

One thing in the data is worth knowing first. The main camera has a variable aperture with four settings, from f/1.48 to f/4, and every main camera photo in this gallery reads f/1.8, not the widest setting. The only files from the afternoon that read anything else on that lens come from a separate aperture test, which is not part of this gallery.

Color and close-up samples

Crotons make a good color test because one plant carries yellow, orange, red and green side by side. This is the full frame from the main camera.

A croton plant with orange, yellow and dark red leaves surrounded by plain green leaves — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/1100 s, ISO 64. Red, orange and yellow sit side by side without bleeding into each other.

Here is a piece of the same photo at full size. It is 1,800 pixels wide, cut from a file that is 4,284 pixels wide.

Full-size crop of orange, yellow and dark red croton leaves showing the leaf veins — Full-size crop of the photo above, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/1100 s, ISO 64. Look at the veins in the orange leaves and the green flecks on the cream leaf at the bottom.

Yellow is harder. Push the saturation too far and a yellow leaf turns into a flat yellow shape. Here the green flecks and the center vein of each leaf are still there.

Long yellow croton leaves with green flecks, with dark palm leaves behind them — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/496 s, ISO 64. The brightest yellow leaves keep their flecks and veins.

The next frame was taken five seconds later, a little to the right. The broad striped leaves behind the crotons stay a deep, dark green, and the pink edges on the leaves in front are thin and clean.

Yellow, pink and orange croton plants in front of broad dark green striped leaves and a palm frond — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/409 s, ISO 64. At full size there are water drops on the palm frond at the top.

Not every planter was that tidy. This one has a tree trunk, bare soil, dead leaves and a concrete curb.

A planter of green and yellow variegated leaves and darker croton plants, with a tree trunk and a road behind — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/733 s, ISO 64. The shaded soil at the bottom right keeps its detail and the pale road at the top is not blown out.

The plumbago hedge is a test of small detail: hundreds of small leaves, and pale blue flowers that sit close to white.

A hedge of small bright green leaves dotted with clusters of pale blue plumbago flowers — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/379 s, ISO 64. At full size the petals keep their blue tint and the darker line down the middle of each one.

In the closer view, the flowers are softer than the leaves. At full size the leaves below them are sharp enough to show water drops.

Close view of pale blue plumbago flowers above bright green leaves — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/334 s, ISO 64, the slowest shutter speed in this gallery. The sharpest part of the frame is the leaves, not the flowers.

Two plainer subjects to finish. Palm fronds from above are mostly fine parallel lines. At full size the lines stay separate, right down to the yellowing tips.

Green palm fronds seen from above with a lawn underneath — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/740 s, ISO 64. The lawn is an even green with no hard shadows, which shows how soft the light was.

And a shrub with almost no color in it. The small leaves come out a silvery gray green, and the sprig of ordinary green leaves on top gives you something to judge them against.

A shrub with small silvery gray-green leaves and a sprig of larger green leaves near the top — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/810 s, ISO 80. Small leaf edges fill the frame from corner to corner.

iPhone 18 Pro Max focal lengths and photo sizes

Four focal lengths did nearly all the work that afternoon, from two physical lenses. Apple's spec page lists the 2x and 8x steps as 12MP "optical-quality" options, and the sizes of my files agree.

Zoom step	Focal length (35 mm equivalent)	Lens in the photo data	Aperture in the photo data	Photo size
1x	24 mm	Main, 6.93 mm	f/1.8 in this gallery	24MP (4284 x 5712)
2x	48 mm	Main, 6.93 mm	f/1.8	12MP (3024 x 4032)
4x	100 mm	Telephoto, 16.891 mm	f/2.8	24MP (4284 x 5712)
8x	200 mm	Telephoto, 16.891 mm	f/2.8	12MP (3024 x 4032)

The 2x and 8x photos carry the same lens data as 1x and 4x, so they are a tighter crop from the same lens at half the pixel count. Two of the sea photos below read 40 mm at the full 24MP. No photo in the set came from the ultra wide camera.

Zoom samples at 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x

From the sea wall I shot the horizon at each zoom step. Open water has little fine detail, but the lens data confirms the phone used the real telephoto for 4x and 8x. The 1x frame was taken about half a minute after the 8x frame.

Four photos of the same sea horizon and clouds at 1x, 2x, 4x and 8x zoom — Top row from the main camera: 1x at 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/8772 s, ISO 64, and 2x at 48 mm, f/1.8, 1/9174 s, ISO 80. Bottom row from the telephoto: 4x at 100 mm, f/2.8, 1/1050 s, ISO 25, and 8x at 200 mm, f/2.8, 1/825 s, ISO 20.

The 4x and 8x frames are paler, but they are filled with the hazy band of sky just above the horizon, so I would not read that as a color difference between the lenses. At full size the 4x photo holds the individual ripples on the water, and the 8x photo is softer. The telephoto frames sit at ISO 20 and 25, the lowest readings of the afternoon.

One more from the telephoto, taken earlier in the afternoon: palm trees and a bare flagpole against a bright gray sky, a little past 8x.

Dark palm trees and a bare flagpole against a bright overcast sky — Telephoto, 210 mm, f/2.8, 1/908 s, ISO 20. The sky is bright, so the palms come out dark. The ball on top of the pole and the rope beside it are clean at full size.

Digital zoom on a close subject

I shot a purple-leaf bush in a pot at the same four steps, and the lens data shows the phone stayed on the main camera for all of them. The 4x and 8x frames here are digital zoom, not the telephoto. The data does not say why. The bush was a lot closer than the horizon, and that is as far as I can take it.

Four photos of a purple-leaf bush in a pot at 1x and at 2x, 4x and 8x digital zoom — All four from the main camera at f/1.8 and ISO 64: 1x at 24 mm, 1/578 s, then 2x at 48 mm, 1/517 s, 4x at 101 mm, 1/473 s, and 8x at 202 mm, 1/410 s. Each panel shows the lower three quarters of the frame.

At this size all four look fine. At full size the 2x frame is still crisp, the 4x frame is starting to look processed, and the 8x frame has the smooth, painted look of heavy digital zoom.

Sea and sky samples

First the sky on its own, with the phone pointed straight up.

Deep blue sky with white clouds, photographed straight up — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/7874 s, ISO 80. The blue deepens toward the bottom of the frame without visible banding.

From the wall, the water is the subject. It goes from clear green over the seabed in the foreground to teal and then a dark blue band near the horizon, and the photo keeps those bands apart.

Teal sea under a blue sky with scattered white clouds — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/7874 s, ISO 80. The seabed shows through the water at the bottom of the frame.

The next photo was taken 35 seconds later, zoomed in a little, with rain on the way. Its shutter speed, 1/20408 second, is the fastest of the afternoon. The top left corner is glare and the middle of the frame is a dark cloud bank.

A dark rain cloud over a gray-green sea with rain falling on the horizon — Main camera, 40 mm, f/1.8, 1/20408 s, ISO 80. The cloud base stays dark, the rain under it is visible, and the bright cloud tops are not blown out.

Eleven seconds after that, at the same 40 mm, a clear patch of sky over the same water.

Teal sea under a mostly clear blue sky with white clouds near the horizon — Main camera, 40 mm, f/1.8, 1/7143 s, ISO 64. The shutter stayed open almost three times as long as in the rain cloud photo.

And the wall itself. The horizon is slightly tilted in this handheld frame. The wall in the corner is in shade and still shows its rough surface.

Open sea and a cloudy blue sky with the corner of a concrete sea wall in the foreground — Main camera, 24 mm, f/1.8, 1/7874 s, ISO 64. Bright sky and a shaded wall in the same frame.

Video frames of a plane coming in to land

While I was shooting the sea, a plane came in over the water, so I zoomed in and followed it down. These are frames from a 16 second 4K clip at 30 frames per second, not photos, and each is about 8 megapixels before resizing. The video data I have does not include the zoom level. The clip starts wide.

Wide view of the sea under a dark rain cloud with a plane as a small speck in the sky — Video frame, 4K at 30 fps, about half a second into the clip. The plane is the speck under the dark cloud, left of center.

About four seconds in, zoomed. The plane is in front of the darkest part of the cloud, and the white fuselage is not blown out.

An airliner with its landing gear down in front of a dark storm cloud — Video frame, 4K at 30 fps, about 4 seconds into the clip. The landing lights, the wheels and the row of windows are all distinct.

About six and a half seconds in, the tail has slipped out of the left edge of the frame. Handheld tracking at this zoom is not tidy. Zoom into the frame and the fuselage looks stippled, not smooth. It is a video frame, and it looks like one.

The front half of an airliner with its landing gear down at the left edge of the frame, against cloud and blue sky — Video frame, 4K at 30 fps, about 6.5 seconds into the clip. The cockpit windows and nose wheel are clear, and the plane has drifted to the edge of the frame.

What these samples do not show

This was one afternoon of daylight. Across all 73 photos the ISO never went above 100, and the slowest shutter speed was 1/227 second. Nothing here tells you how the camera does at night or indoors. I took no portraits and no selfies, so there are no skin tones in the set. Every photo is a 24MP or 12MP file, and none use the 48MP option Apple also lists.

I have not compared video from this phone with anything, so treat the plane frames as samples and nothing more.

For battery, the phone read 83 percent at 12:52 PM and 45 percent at 5:14 PM, with the Camera app at 25 minutes of screen time and 10 percent of battery use. It was doing other things too, so that is one afternoon, not a battery test. The battery screenshots do not establish the phone's capacity. Technobezz covered an August report on the battery.

Low light and night are next.

More from my iPhone 18 Pro Max testing

This product was provided to Technobezz for review. We independently select what we review. The manufacturer had no input on this article and did not see it before publication. All opinions are our own.