YouTube's Worst Advice for iPhone 16 Pro Users: Ignoring 28mm & 35mm
The Truth About the iPhone 16 Pro’s 28mm & 35mm Cameras
When I first started looking into the iPhone 16 Pro’s camera system, I watched a ton of YouTube reviews, especially from street photographers. Almost all of them said the same thing: ignore the 28mm and 35mm options on the 1x camera, which defaults to 24mm. Their reasoning? These were just cropped digital zooms and not true native focal lengths. That made sense to me at the time—cropping means cutting into the image’s resolution, and that sounds like a bad thing.
I bought into the argument, unfortunately. I didn’t think too much about what a digital crop from a potential 48MP file actually meant when you worked with a 1.2 crop with the 28mm and a 1.5 crop with the 35mm camera respectively.
Then one day, while reviewing some shots I’d taken at 28mm and 35mm, I checked the metadata. What the hell? The file sizes were bigger than those from the 2x and 5x cameras—despite those being “dedicated” 12MP lenses. That didn’t add up.
This was misinformation at scale, and I had fallen for it. Instead of testing things myself, I trusted the tech gurus blindly. And that’s a shame because as a street photographer, I want those focal lengths. Sure, 24mm is great and I use it all the time on my full-frame camera, but 28mm has long been a favorite among street photographers. I’ve always wanted to explore it more.
If I had stuck to the bad advice from YouTube, I never would have realized the truth: the 28mm and 35mm modes on the iPhone 16 Pro retain more resolution and detail than the 2x and 5x cameras. So by Big YouTuber logic, we shouldn’t be using the 2x and 5x cameras! I should have tested their premise from the start. So let’s do that, shall we?
Cold Hard Proof: The File Sizes That Expose the Truth
Let’s break this down with actual file comparisons. For reference, my camera settings are dialed in to maximize resolution—I’m set to 24MP and shooting in ProRAW Max. Check out the screenshots below for confirmation.
RAW Settings
Let’s Look at the Files
Most of my work is done in RAW, though I occasionally stray into the once-forbidden land of non-RAW to take advantage of the iPhone 16 Pro’s Portrait and Live modes. But for this test, we’re sticking strictly to RAW file sizes to get a clear picture of what’s really going on.
At first, I was confused about only getting 36MP instead of the advertised 48MP in RAW. A bit of online digging cleared it up—choosing the 9:16 aspect ratio, as I’d done, trims down the megapixel count. Essentially, every shot is cropped. The full resolution is there, but what matters is the relative differences, and they clearly show that the 28mm and 35mm focal lengths hold up. Photographers using them aren’t "losing a lot of quality and resolution"—these cameras still pack more resolution than the 2x and 5x zoom cameras no matter what ratio you’ve chosen!
The Fine Details
If you're squinting at the details in the screenshots on your phone and the tiny text is giving you a headache, here’s a quick breakdown of the file details by each camera’s focal length for easy reading.
The .5x camera at 13mm produces a 36MP file (at a 9:16 crop), or a 8064x4536 pixel file.
The 1x camera at 24mm produces a 36MP file (at a 9:16 crop), or a 8064x4536 pixel file.
The 1x camera at 28mm produces a 26MP file (at a 9:16 crop), or a 6912x3888 pixel file.
The 1x camera at 35mm produces a 18MP file (at a 9:16 crop), or a 5712x3213 pixel file.
The 2x camera at 48mm produces a 9MP file (at a 9:16 crop), or a 4032x2268 pixel file.
The 5x camera at 120mm produces a 9MP file (at a 9:16 crop), or a 4032x2268 pixel file.
The Math Doesn’t Lie - The 28mm and 35mm Cameras SHOULD BE USED Whenever Appropriate!
So, what do we actually see here? Contrary to what some big-name YouTubers are claiming—that the 1x camera’s 28mm and 35mm focal lengths are too low-res to be useful—the numbers say otherwise. When stacked against the so-called "portrait lenses" (the 2x and 5x cameras), the reality is clear: there's absolutely no reason why 28mm or 35mm can't be used for portraits or anything else when the focal length makes sense.
If you, like me, are drawn to these classic focal lengths—say, the 28mm—there’s zero reason to hesitate. Digital crop or not, you’re still working with more resolution, more detail, and more megapixels than what the 2x and 5x cameras offer. Unless someone wants to argue that having twice as much or more resolution somehow isn’t "better" than the 9MP files from the 2x and 5x cameras, that’s their logic to wrestle with. For the rest of us, let’s use every camera on the iPhone 16 Pro with confidence—because the math is on our side.
