Top 5 Camera Features We're Excited To Test On The New iPhone 14 Pro

New phone season feels like a holiday — because it is. A bountiful harvest of never-ending upgrades, added features, and stellar new chips to impress our intelligently inferior population.
A classic late-summer feel means long-waited Apple events: cold lighting, exciting animations on screen, and a flooded Twitter feed.

While I wish we could state otherwise, we have to wait for the new phones like everyone else. After watching the keynote last week, here are some of our final thoughts and opinions from creatives working in the tech industry. Lo and behold, the top 5 camera features we can't wait to test out on the new iPhone 14.

Action Mode

iPhone 14's latest Action Mode features are something everyone has been talking about. While Apple has always been at the forefront of mobile photography, the iPhone 14 takes it a step beyond the fold for all models available to consumers. Boasting a sizable 48MP sensor made to produce exceptional imagery, it also nods to filmmakers needing a little extra help with cinematic goodness: stabilization.

That's precisely what the new action Mode is all about. An in-app mode for users to use IBIS technology behind a given clip for ultra-cinematic smoothness and fullness. Enabling such smoothness when moving the camera makes for smoother transitions without having extra accessories with you, like a gimbal.

How Does Action Mode Work?

Action Mode operates by capturing video using the phone's entire sensor. Ideally, iPhones use a popular AI method of capturing the scene while also capturing additional information beyond the camera to add more detail to your final output. However, using the entire sensor gives the phone's camera more room to compensate for jerks and shakiness in your footage. Action Mode overscan and advanced roll correction in Apple's picture to stabilize one's final image. It also supports Dolby Vision HDR.

Because this is Apple's first-year iteration of Action Mode, we're curious to see how well this might actually hold up in the eyes of professional filmmakers. Will its IBIS control be stable enough to bypass a mobile gimbal altogether, or will its gimmicky trajectory need a new for years updates? We'll have to find out when the phone comes in handy.

Low Light

Capturing good enough images or video in low light is one of the constant improvements Apple likes to make yearly.

With this highly formative quad-pixel sensor, the primary camera combines every four pixels into one large quad pixel equivalent to 2.44 µm. Thus, every photo will, by default, be resolved at a manageable 12MP, allowing the user to capture better detail with even more light.

The iPhone is made to be taken anywhere and at any time. I often want to photograph or film something candid during the after-hours of work and beyond, but sometimes the camera doesn't do that great of a job keeping up. Often, the images are too pixelated and worth a total share anyways. I'm stoked to see how their latest upgrades affect the smartphone camera market.

What's even better? You can pair the iPhone 14 (or any iPhone model) with a Moment Snap-On Filter to achieve better manual control behind every frame. Pop a CineBloom 20% diffusion filter over the camera, and you'll capture deliciously dreamy photos with your phone at night.

Street & Lifestyle Candids

The iPhone has always been damn good at lifestyle captures. Its highly intuitive focal length and automatic exposure adjustments leave plenty of room for crisp detail in every photo aspect, ensuring a good memory is well captured. It's obvious why it's one of our favorite smartphone cameras today and why billions of users trust Apple as their everyday camera.

And while their somewhat-phony feature names don't excite me, I'm always able to see the results on an optical level once I get the phone. Apple's latest Deep Fusion is implemented earlier in the capturing process to enable more colors and brighter details. The most significant step for low light Photonic Engine will be the furthest step forward in curating images with the most advanced smartphone technology.

So, the good stuff is coming.

Premium Flash

Apple's flagships' flash enhancements pose a fun twist to night shots, selfies, and memory banks. A better quality flash has a more significant impact than you think, especially when you're quickly shooting memories on the fly and want a high-quality light source to illuminate what's ahead. A new Adaptive True Tone flash has been completely redesigned with an array of nine LEDs that change patterns based on the chosen focal length.

Better Telephoto

I'm surprised at how often I use the telephoto lens on my iPhone. It was never a feature worth pixel peeping due to its shortcomings, but the iPhone 13 models proved me wrong. As an avid hiker, nature enthusiast, and architectural lover, sometimes I require a zoom-in crop to perfect my composition. The telephoto lens offers added support for those needing something beyond the Main Camera's basic functionalities.

In addition, the Telephoto cameras will also offer Apple's latest installed Photonic Engine. This feature enables a dramatic upsurge in quality by applying Deep Fusion earlier in the imaging process to deliver impressive detail, preserve subtle textures, maintain better color, and boast more information in a single image.

Bring on clarity and quality.