I wrote in my review of the iPhone 17 Pro that I've changed my opinion about how Apple talks about the 2x and 8x lenses in the iPhone 17 Pro. Some people don't like that they're called optical quality lenses, and as I explain in that review, I actually agree with Apple here.

One of the things that struck me after finishing the review was how I've heard people in the past say that you may as well just use the 1x and 4x lenses at those resolutions and then crop in later if you want to zoom more. As I've thought more and more about this, the less sense that makes to me. And I think if you're doing that today, you're doing yourself a disservice. You're overthinking the solution and you should just do what the camera suggests.

Here's a simple example to try to illustrate my point. The iPhone 17 Pro takes 24-megapixel images by default, including with the 4x telephoto lens. When you take an 8x photo, it's a 12-megapixel output image, which is using the 12 megapixels in the middle of the 48-megapixel sensor that you're using. However, if you just take the 4x shot and then zoom in later, you're getting a far lower quality image than you would have if you had used the 8x mode in the camera.

To illustrate this, I stood in a forest and took two photos of the same branches of a tree. The first image is at 4x, which is the native zoom of the telephoto lens. The second is using the 8x mode in the camera app, and the third is cropping the 4x image to the same framing as 8x. Effectively, the third option is what people who tell you to just use the native zooms and crop later will give you.

So basically, 4x gives you 24 megapixels of data, 8x gives you 12 megapixels, and cropping the 4x image down to the 8x frame gives you 6 megapixels.

To illustrate this more closely, here's a comparison of what the detail level is when using the 8x mode in the Camera app verses cropping to the same degree after the fact.

If you still want to crop later, that's fine, but it's plainly clear to me that if you need more zoom, you should do it in the Camera app because it will maximize the data you have to work with after the fact.

The only exception to this would be if you always shoot in 48MP mode, in which case then you can indeed crop later all you want since you actually do have all that data. I don't know how many people are actually doing that, but if you are one of those folks, then ignore everything I said above and just crop later if you want.