Neglecting The Telephoto Lens

Yet in stark contrast to my thoughts a few years ago, I thought the telephoto lens is used the vast majority of the time. Taping the 2x on the screen gets you a more representative image of what your eye is seeing (at 52 mm equivalent) and gets you closer to what you’re trying to shoot. In many situations it becomes the default.

I agree 100% with Greg here. I would love for Apple to put all of their energy into making next year’s iPhone 13’s telephoto camera markedly better so I can use it more often without feeling like I’m making any sacrifices to quality.

I also think it’s worth noting that we call this a “telephoto” lens, but that’s really overstating how zoomed in this lens is. For a lot of people, the standard lens they use with their camera is a 50mm lens, so calling it “telephoto” or “2x” is really just comparing it to the pretty wide standard lens on the iPhone.

If the Camera app let me set it to open with the 2x lens every time, I would change that setting in a heartbeat.