I photographed fireworks with the iPhone 15 Pro Max and iPhone 4 and the difference is astounding
In the wake of America’s typically boisterous and wild Fourth of July celebrations, our feeds have been filled with countless photos and videos of fireworks. They’re all bright, vibrant, colorful, and sharp — and many were taken with the best smartphones.
I’ve been photographing fireworks, or at least trying to, for almost 20 years. Digital photography, with its endless supply of files instead of film, has allowed me to experiment with different lenses, aperture settings, and shutter speeds to capture distant explosions and spectacular cascades of light, usually in red, white, and blue.
Most of my early successes came from my Canon EOS Digital Rebel. I would set the IOS to 400, set my aperture to 5.6 to capture as much light as possible, and leave the shutter for 8 seconds or more to capture the full effect.
In the summer of 2012, I tried something different. Of course, I still had the Canon strapped around my neck, but I also pulled my Apple iPhone 4 out of my pocket to try and snap some photos that I could immediately share on my social media platform of the time: Twitter (it was a different time).
In some ways, my old Canon EOS and the iPhone 4 weren’t that far apart. The former offered 6.3MP, while the iPhone 4 topped out at 5MP. In truth, it was like comparing a Hasselblad to a Kodak Brownie.
The Canon EOS had a huge lens and a sizable sensor, seven focus points, a zoom lens, and impressive image processing. The iPhone at the time came with what Apple described as a “5MP camera” with an f/2.8 lens. There were no controls to speak of, and the system did what it could to capture content in sometimes difficult situations, like photographing fireworks.
While I couldn’t zoom in on the action or hold the shutter open, the iPhone 4 could adjust its own ISO or film speed. In the case of these fireworks photos, the ISO was set to 1000. In the world of film, a higher ISO translates to faster film, meaning it captures light much more quickly. As with film, the iPhone 4’s images at higher ISOs were grainy.
In thumbnails, the photos don’t look great, but none hold up to closer inspection.
In my defense, looking at these images, I noticed that I wasn’t the only one trying to use smartphones that weren’t ready for the fireworks to capture the festivities from high altitude.
Still, I saw promise in those early images, and ever since, I’ve tried to use my latest iPhone (or other smartphone) to document the fireworks. I’ve done it so often that this year, I committed to not taking dozens of photos and videos of fireworks that no one would want to see.
Yet when a particularly explosive sight appeared just above my house, I couldn’t resist taking a few shots.
I only got half a dozen of them, and other than switching the main camera to 2x zoom, I didn’t do anything to help the iPhone 15 Pro Max photograph them, including changing the focus or exposure, or moving to a spot where there were fewer objects obstructing my view. I just held up my hands and took photos. Naturally, I noticed that the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s night mode camera automatically held the shutter open for a few seconds to capture the fireworks.
Considering I was shooting through lights and didn’t even bother to stabilize, the iPhone 15 Pro Max did remarkably well. The phone seamlessly switched from ISO 320 to ISO 1600, but compared to older iPhone 4 photos, these images weren’t grainy at all. The 48MP main camera (f1.78) captured the bursts and streaks of light, the trees, and the lights in my yard.
In short, it captured entire scenes. Unlike the iPhone 4 where it can be difficult to make out what’s going on, I was able to easily make out the entire scene in most of these shots.
It’s not uncommon for me to take photos like this (often better than this one) with the latest generations of iPhones, but I also don’t think I’ve appreciated how far they’ve come so far.
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Apple’s image processing is now on par with some of the best products from Canon, Nikon or Sony. Its lenses are still relatively small, but the sensors behind them are much larger than those in the iPhone 4. There are also more controls, multiple cameras and optical image stabilization.
I photographed the fireworks with the 12MP mode of the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s main camera. That doesn’t mean the images are actually a little more than twice as large and detailed as those from the iPhone 4. Each pixel contains four pixels of information. The level of detail in these shots, compared to those from the iPhone 4, is not really comparable.
Maybe you’re reading this thinking, “Well, 12 years and 11 generations have passed, what did he expect?” Actually, I wouldn’t have expected anything less, but I still find it hard to appreciate where you are or even where you’re going next (hello, iPhone 16) without knowing where you came from.
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