I spent quite a while figuring out how to get the 48-megapixel photo above. The trick is that you must select .5x zoom manually and turn on HEIF Max—there’s a button at the top of the Camera screen.
You must select .5x zoom manually? You can’t either pinch the screen or else slide your finger along the new Camera Control? Both of those got me to .5x; is that not also the 48-megapixel camera?
Yes, those are all manual ways of getting to .5x zoom, and you must also make sure you’re using HEIF Max. In other words, you can’t just get close to the subject and have the iPhone switch into macro mode automatically. In fact, when you see the macro mode icon, it’s not going to take a 48-megapixel image.
Interestingly, the two random tests I took to confirm the pinch and Camera Control methods resulted in 42- and 47-megapixel images. I don’t understand why yet.
Oh I see, I misunderstood what you meant by “manually”. After your previous comment:
I’m so accustomed to having single-tap access to .5x, 1x, 2x, and 3x
I thought that’s what you meant by “manually”.
In any case, I seem to be having a different experience than you with my iPhone 16 Pro. I cannot get more than 12 MP out of my camera. I have tried (every?) combination of Zoom (.5 vs. 1x), ProMax on/off, HEIF Max on/off, Macro on/off. All are 12 MP.
Also, am I wrong that you appear to be conflating Macro mode with the .5 zoom? In fact, on my phone, they are mutually exclusive. I can only get the Macro icon to light up (which it does automatically when I get close) when I’m in 1x zoom. Once I’m in .5 zoom, Macro appears to be disabled.
So I’m confused both about how the iPhone 16 Pro works and also why your experience differs from mine…
Well this explains what should work, but I can’t get the 48 MP.
Curious @ace , when you look here, does it ever say MAX? I have tried ProRAW Max and HEIF Max, and none of them reflect that in the metadata. But I don’t know if that’s because they’re not in fact Max or just that such an indicator doesn’t exist?
Might this help? From: About Apple ProRAW
It’s certainly the way I generally interact with the Camera app, but I’m aware there are other approaches.
I wish I knew more, but all I can say is that if I use .5x zoom and ensure that HEIF Max is on by tapping it on the Camera screen, and then I take a closeup photo of something, I get 48(ish) megapixels.
Again, I also find it very confusing, but I agree that getting a 48-megapixel image out of the Ultra Wide camera never displays the Macro mode icon. If the Macro mode icon is showing, I always get 12 megapixels. I don’t know what Apple intends the Macro mode icon to represent or why it doesn’t show when forcing the Ultra Wide camera to be used for a macro shot. On the iPhone 16 Pro specs page, Apple explicitly says “48MP macro photography.”
I read that too, and it was one of the reasons I spent hours writing that section in the article. I think it’s “correct” in that it’s saying that the Fusion camera can capture 48 MP at 1x and the Ultra Wide camera can capture 48 MP at .5x. I just tested with a non-macro Ultra Wide shot, and indeed, as long as I tap the HEIF Max button at the top of the screen, I get 48 MP.
The second sentence saying “Night mode, flash, and macro photos will always be saved at 12 MP” could also be construed as “correct” if you assume a “macro” photo is one taken when the Macro mode icon of the flower appears. There’s a setting to enable or disable that icon at the bottom of Settings > Camera, but I don’t think that switch makes any difference.
No, I always just see HEIF in the metadata screen for my 48 MP images too.
Yes, thanks, you can press that to change the format on the fly, or change it in settings. Either way, I have been unable to get the 48 MP.
Okay, this is getting a little clearer, and also more “blurry” at the same time.
My first update is that my experience yesterday is mostly unreproducible today! I can regularly get 48 MP shots. The conditions that work now are:
This is not what happened yesterday under apparently the same conditions, although I admit I’m not perfect and perhaps my test environment or procedure has changed in some way that I cannot discern. For now, I might have to live with that mystery…
But anyway, the takeaway from today’s tests is that Macro is the death-knell for 48 MP. As long as I’m in a “Max” format and I’m not zooming past 1x (it, use UltraWide or Fusion lenses), I ALWAYS get 48 MP now, as long as Macro is not engaged. This also matches the help text that says:
Night mode, flash, and macro photos will always be saved at 12 MP
So back to your comment:
The other attraction of the iPhone 16 Pro was the 48-megapixel Ultra Wide camera that promised higher-resolution macro photography.
This might be what threw me off, because it appears to contradict the help text. You said what you did to get “it” to work:
I spent quite a while figuring out how to get the 48-megapixel photo above. The trick is that you must select .5x zoom manually and turn on HEIF Max
But I don’t think what you got was technically “Macro”. You just took a reasonably close wide-angle shot, unless somehow my experience is different than yours.
To clarify, based on what I’m seeing now, the UltraWide camera is a necessary but not sufficient condition to take Macro. You can take UltraWide / 0.5x shots without Macro on, and they are 48 MP; and you can take Fusion / 1x shots without Macro, also at 48 MP. But to shoot Macro, I have to be in 1x mode, but then move the camera close to the subject. At that point, the flower lights up and the shot gets taken by the UltraWide (not Fusion) camera. (If I try again and disable Macro by tapping the flower, the shot will be taken by the Fusion camera, and therefore will be blurry, but will get the 48 MP. )
So in your “trick” above, did you actually have the flower enabled?
Jumping ahead of your reply, I’m going to say that it kind of stinks that you appear to have to choose between:
For real macro photography, the draw is that you get the full MP out of your camera in order to get all the clarity out of your tiny subject. But with this iPhone quandary, you either lose resolution by focusing close with Macro/flower (and then get stuck with 12 MP), or you back away to get high res (48 MP), but then have to crop in post to zoom back into your subject, effectively tossing pixels.
Am I missing something?
I think that’s only true of the 1x lens.
I never get the flower icon in .5 lens, but I seem to be able to get pretty darn close on stuff and take “macro” photos even if I’m not in a “macro” mode. I think Apple’s flower icon means it’s using a different lens to do a super-close up, but with the new .5 lens, it’s able to do that without a special “macro” mode.
I wish this thread had been going on a few days ago – I am camping with my new 16 Pro Max and took a few awesome sunset shots the last few days and did not get 48MP pictures because I didn’t have HEIC Max turned on! 
Is there any reason to not just leave that on all the time? Sure, it creates bigger files, but only when using .5 or 1x lens without zooming, and in those cases, I’d want the higher resolution.
Thanks for (mostly) figuring this out.
The Apple presentation wasn’t clear if you ever could get a 48MP file. I got the impression that all the extra pixels were just for oversampling, digital zoom and inputs to the AI image processing models, and might not ever appear in saved files.
But it appears now that there are some conditions where you can actually get them all saved to a file.
HEIF Max (not HEIC Max) is incompatible with Live Photo. When you turn HEIF Max on, Live Photo is disabled (if it had been enabled). However, if you turn HEIF Max off, the camera will remember the previous state of the Live Photo and turn it back on when you disable HEIF Max.
Not a problem for me as I rarely use Live Photos (and turn it on explicitly when I want to take one).
I discovered you have to go to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings and turn on the “ProRAW & Resolution Control” to keep HEIC Max on all the time – otherwise it reverts to off next time you use the Camera.
Thanks to @dave1 for sharing his tests.
I wonder if someone is up to testing the visual quality difference between a cropped 48 MP and the 12 MP Macro?
I would do it myself, but being off the grid right now I can not handle trouble like @tommy and @Dafuki
I think so? First off, we have to define what is considered a “macro” photo. From my perspective, it’s an extreme closeup of some object, nothing more. I think Apple agrees with that given the advertising of the iPhone 16 Pro as supporting “48MP macro photography” on the specs page.
Now, that’s different from “Macro mode,” which is when the little yellow flower icon shows up. At the moment, I believe Macro mode is a purely automatic thing that the Camera app enables when an object fills the frame sufficiently AND you have not selected .5x for zoom. I can get Macro mode to turn on when using 1x, 2x, and 5x. In Macro mode, all photos are taken with the Ultra Wide camera at 12MP—swiping up to look at the medata confirms this each time.
The technique I use for getting a 48MP macro shot explicitly avoids Macro mode. I select .5x zoom, which forces the use of the Ultra Wide camera, and I select HEIF Max. I don’t have to back up or anything—I’m still taking an extreme closeup of the subject. My guess at the moment is that Macro mode is doing additional computational photography, whereas the 48MP images without it are largely unprocessed.
Now, I have fairly universally been disappointed in the quality of these shots. I haven’t had time to figure out a representative test image and compare what would happen if I crop the same portion of a 12MP image vs a 48MP image, but I’ll be doing that soon. Simultaneously, I’ve been very happy with the quality of the 12MP images taken in Macro mode. Such as this one from yesterday.
Aha, thanks :-) And yes, your understanding and experience all completely matches mine… except on one point:
Yes, I was going to suggest we define this. But I’m not sure what Apple means by “macro”.
But here:
they talk about taking “macro” photos with 48 MP level of detail because the new UW lens supports that.
Here’s what I think is going on.
All of this is, frankly, fine, except for one major issue, which is that Macro Mode / flower, after switching to the UW lens which supports 48 MP, does NOT, in fact, utilize the 48 MP.
This I find inexplicable. Even the Fusion lens, where the user started the shot at 1x or 5x, supports 48 MP. But the whole point appears to be that it has actually swapped to a completely different lens, one which we know also supports 48 MP, and close focus… and yet chooses not to shoot at the 48 MP that that lens supports.
But the fact that the help text says 12 MP for macro seems to support the idea that Apple is doing this on purpose, and it’s therefore not a bug.
An exception might be if there’s something else about being in the 1x or 5x mode that the user selected that is still being respected by the camera, and which prevents one from benefitting from 48 MP. You seemed to suggest the same:
My guess at the moment is that Macro mode is doing additional computational photography, whereas the 48MP images without it are largely unprocessed.
I think you may be right. But then that means the 48 MP macro photography claim on their web page amounts to false advertising. We either need these additional computations or we don’t. If we don’t, give us our 48 MP.
It’s almost like going straight to .5x / UW to shoot macro shots is like “shooting Manual” on a pro camera: it’s up to the photographer to get things right. But Fusion camera + Macro Mode / flower is Apple’s way of automating the process, at the expense of pixels.
The real question is, is it possible to take good macro shots via 0.5x?
I agree, I think we’re getting closer. For what it’s worth, I’m running iOS 18.1 on my iPhone 16 Pro, so we know that hasn’t changed. However, I believe the original Macro mode did change from its initial release in a later update, so perhaps Apple will come up with some way to stay in Macro mode but get 48MP shots in a future update.
I think I’m smelling the contents of a new article. If not a chapter in a new Take Control book. 
So I thought I’d do a photo shoot, like you, to help move the discovery forward…
Given the ambiguity Apple has created over the term “macro”, and what I have recently learned about how it works, I’m going to use the term “Auto Macro” to refer to the “Macro Mode”, where the flower pops up automatically when you’re close enough, at which point iPhone switches lenses to UW (if it’s not there already) and does who knows what else. And so then shooting fairly up close using the Ultra Wide lens at 0.5x I’m now calling “Manual Macro”.
I chose two subjects: a Flower and a Pod. In both cases, camera was on a tripod, HEIF Max was enabled, and the subject was just a few cm from the lens. The procedure for both shoots was:
The 3 results of each subject are below.
Compare the first and last from each set. To me, I see pretty much the identical level of detail and depth of field. I appear to have gotten the exact same result, using the two different approaches.
Now, you might wonder what might have happened if, during the Manual Macro shot, I had zoomed in on the screen before taking the shot, rather than waiting to do it in post via Photos.
So zooming out from 0.5x was no different than starting in 1x or higher, where the shot would have been taken with the Fusion Lens, but since I got close and Auto Macro kicked in, it switched to UltraWide and tossed out my pixels. So in the end, there’s nothing about that situation worth noting that we haven’t already covered.
All of this leads me to two conclusions at the moment (clearly subject to change, lol):
1) Auto Macro is just a convenience feature to auto-switch you to the UltraWide lens if you end up so close that the photo would not otherwise be in focus, and nothing more; and,
2) The advertised 48 MP high-res feature for macro shots is just a ruse, because as soon as you switch into 0.5x, the camera zooms out, effectively moving you away from the subject you were trying to shoot close-up. And whether you try to compensate for that by zooming in live or cropping in post, you’re tossing out the MP Apple promised you.
UPDATE: looking closer at the pod shots on the big screen, the Auto Macro one appears at tad less over-exposed and has a tiny bit better contrast. Maybe that matches Adam’s results. Of course, that just reinforced my thesis, because Auto Macro never gives you the 48 MP option.
This is kind of off track, because I think that megapixels are overrated these days, especially on tiny sensors with so much potential mangling by the extensive image processing. I personally prefer to have fewer but bigger pixels.
Apple uses ‘macro’ as a fuzzy substitute for closeup. Macro is cool, closeup is humdrum. For either, there are multiple ways to do it when more than a single lens is available, but Apple hates going into detail about things such as which f-stop is in play when, and why that might cause a shift to another lens.
‘Macro’ in photography has a definition: a reproduction ratio (subject as seen on the sensor:sensor size) of 1:1 or bigger. With a 35mm sensor at 1:1 you can take a picture with a subject area as small as 36mm x 24mm, at 2:1 18mm x 12mm. Technically iPhones can’t do macro, and neither can any compact cameras I’ve looked at.
But that ratio isn’t very useful these days unless you’re comparing specs for a particular sensor size. It’s mostly (though not exclusively) used for calculating exposure times (automated now), and sensor sizes are all over the map. It would be really helpful for camera makers to just say what the smallest subject area you can take is, but they never do; you have to calculate or experiment to figure it out yourself.
There’s another more important implication of ‘macro’ though, and that’s control of perspective. For regular cameras, the better macro lenses are telephoto, not wide angle, and the longer the better. 180mm is typical, though you can get more compact / less expensive ones that are shorter. The longer the focal length, the longer the distance between lens and subject (you don’t have to frighten or squash what you’re trying to shoot), and the narrower the viewing angle to isolate the subject. There is one advantage to wide angle close ups, and that’s better depth of field, which is often though not always a good thing. Having more of the surroundings in frame can also sometimes be useful for context. But I still cringe when I see ‘switch to the wide lens for macro’…
Lighting is everything. The little on-camera ‘flash’ is almost guaranteed to be disappointing for closeups. You need to get the light off camera. Unfortunately there’s no way to attach a strobe flash to a phone–a strobe is essential for stopping motion, especially when hunting bugs, in breezy conditions, or if you’re under the influence of caffeine. At small scale, motion is magnified and optical image stabilization can’t usually cope well.
Since strobe is impossible, I use a small light panel mounted to the same holdable tripod that the camera is mounted to with a jointed thingie so I can manipulate the light angle. Two lights would be better, but that starts getting a little heavy. (Links to the bits in my setup below.) I don’t actually use it much, because compared to my micro 4/3 dSLR it’s finicky and unsatisfying with virtually no working distance, but it’s sometimes more convenient for video and it works very well with the Seek app which is helped quite a bit by better lighting but isn’t intended to take good photos.
Anyone interested in closeups should at least skim the outstanding “John Shaw’s closeups in nature” which he has kindly contributed to archive.org. It’s written for film cameras, but he explains all of the possibilities and implications of light and perspective, how to increase magnification in all sorts of ways, and the importance of and how to handle off-camera lighting. The many photos are great too, though they’re better if you get a physical copy (readily available used).
Hand held iphone ‘macro’ rig:
Ulanzi MT-16 Extendable tripod
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1613556-REG/ulanzi_2052_extendable_desktop_tripod.html
Smallrig universal magic arm with dual ball heads
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1422136-REG/smallrig_2157_universal_magic_arm.html
Xiletu folding smartphone tripod mount (you might need a bigger one, I have a 13 mini)
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1718654-REG/xiletu_xj_12_mobile_tripod_mount_clipper.html
vidpro light panel (I made a better diffuser by taping very thin styrofoam sheet into a little box that fits over it. Mylar drafting film would be better yet but I’ve mislaid my stash.)
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1219770-REG/vidpro_led_36x_digital_photo.html
bluetooth shutter release (I have a different one but they’re probably much of a muchness). I attach it to the handle with a rubber band.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1650616-REG/zuma_z_180b_bluetooth_for_smartphone_black.html
