”It Just Works” is the basic how-to for the new Macro-Mode on iPhone 13 Pro

Steve Jobs was famous for repeatedly using this line to describe in product demos how something was so intuitive that no user manual would ever be needed. While this phrase has also often been used to try to help Apple accountable when something doesn’t “just work” it is a core design principal and an important part of the legacy of Steve Jobs, up until the current day.

The new iPhone 13 Pro (we are using an iPhone 13 Pro Max for photos and testing) has so many new features that it can be overwhelming to try and absorb, at first. Fortunately this one is almost completely intuitive to learn to use, if not obvious.

A short history of what the heck macro photography is

I will never forget when I was first taught about macro lenses and learned how to shoot extreme close ups. I was working with a professional camera operator (as a music video director) and I wanted to do a close up that would be so close as to be considered a macro shot.

Novice that I was at the time, I assumed that you could just keep pushing the camera closer and closer and focus on the tiny area desired, with no further ado. When my operator told me we would need a special “macro” lens adaptor (that we had not ordered as part of our kit), I felt a bit foolish and knew I would need to bone up on the macro ins-and-outs for the future shoots.

For traditional photography and film shooting there are macro lenses and adaptors that can enable super-close-up shots. These can be simple and relatively cheap or more elaborate and expensive for traditional film cameras and digital DSLRs. There have also always been lens attachments that can be used with an iPhone to get some macro capabilities.

Now, with the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max you have a built-in software enhanced macro capability that “just works”. Currently this feature is not supported on the iPhone 13 (regular) or mini.

Real world test shows some extreme possibilities that beg for more

As with many of the new camera features in iOS15, when using an iPhone 13 Pro, the macro mode is built-in and needs only be triggered by your behavior.

To shoot your first macro photo follow these steps:

Open the camera app and choose either photo or video (not cinematic or portrait
Move the phone closer to the object that you want to shoot a macro photo of. When you get close enough you should see a “jump-cut” indicating that you have automatically switched to macro mode due to the untra-close object in frame have been detected by the software. The macro range appears to be 14cm to 6cm according to specs.
Move camera into position (you might be almost touching the object if you want an ultra-macro-look) so that the object is in focus and shoot.

Some considerations: With large professional macro lenses, which are “slow”, extra light would be required to get the proper exposure. This is less true with the “computational photography” hybrid on the iPhone 13 Pro, but light conditions, as always, will impact the photo quality, a lot.

In particular, with a huge phone so close to the subject of the photo it is sometimes difficult to avoid shadows cast on the object being shot by the phone itself. It is also a somewhat surreal feeling, at first, to be shooting an object that you are almost touching with the lens.

Our live real world experiments (shown in the various photos above and below) are using every possible combination of lens and the automated software to see just how extreme the results can be. In a word, the answer is; very.

Above: Photo / Lynxotic: A reference photo to give scale, the two following photos show the extreme macro close up possible magnification

The future of computational and software manipulated imagery production using iPhone and iOS

Anyone who had initially learned about photo techniques based on the “real world” environment of glass, steel and celluloid will no doubt at times feel confusion, anxiety or even a sense of loss when confronted with software, AI and machine learning based computational photography.

And, yes, purists have commented and complained about the various trade-offs when images are produced with software manipulation during the shooting process.

But, as results here show, most of us will feel a sense of exhilaration at the visual and artistic potentials that are becoming possible – all using a device that is, pretty much always, “in your pocket”.

While a multi-thousand dollar high end professional lens, using optical grade, painstakingly engineered glass (usually from Germany), can be used to produce world class image quality, now and in 100 years, the benefits of computational hybrid photography techniques are already going in a whole new direction.

An important, and nearly infinite, benefit is that these enhancements are being improved, both through human based code improvements, and even more so, by machine learning and AI on a continual basis.

As we’ve discussed in previous articles, the fact that these improvements are inevitable and will potentially even accelerate, “while you sleep” is a mind-blowing concept that spills into all aspects of future potential for iPhone photo techniques.

The trade off is large, if you want to turn off these “artificial” enhancements, you will have to wait for macro mode (or use current work arounds) and then switch off night-mode and personalized filters and other beautifying add-ons in order to get a more “natural” or realistic look.

Apple, meanwhile, is 100% all-in with the idea of making iPhone photography intuitive and as beautiful as possible, even if, in some cases the “beauty” is enhanced beyond reality (!).

The photos and degree of magnification possible with macro mode on an iPhone 13 Pro, as seen in these rough test photos, is almost surreal. So much so that it’s easy to imagine that, not long in the future, a medical grade microscope could be possible. One that “just works”, of course, and usable by anyone, anywhere and all on a device that’s already in your pocket.

Pro 12MP camera system: Telephoto, Wide, and Ultra Wide cameras

Telephoto: ƒ/2.8 aperture
Wide: ƒ/1.5 aperture
Ultra Wide: ƒ/1.8 aperture and 120° field of view
3x optical zoom in, 2x optical zoom out; 6x optical zoom range
Digital zoom up to 15x
Night mode portraits enabled by LiDAR Scanner
Portrait mode with advanced bokeh and Depth Control
Portrait Lighting with six effects (Natural, Studio, Contour, Stage, Stage Mono, High‑Key Mono)
Dual optical image stabilization (Telephoto and Wide)
Sensor‑shift optical image stabilization (Wide)
Six‑element lens (Telephoto and Ultra Wide); seven‑element lens (Wide)
True Tone flash with Slow Sync
Panorama (up to 63MP)
Sapphire crystal lens cover
100% Focus Pixels (Wide)
Night mode
Deep Fusion
Smart HDR 4
Photographic Styles
Macro photography
Apple ProRAW
Wide color capture for photos and Live Photos
Lens correction (Ultra Wide)
Advanced red‑eye correction
Photo geotagging
Auto image stabilization
Burst mode
Image formats captured: HEIF and JPEG

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The Origin of Everything is Shrouded in Mystery – looking at Apple’s history yields many clues, however…

PART I of a 3 PART SERIES:

Given the sheer size, breadth and power of the various “Tech Giants” as they have become known, many, if not most would be skeptical if an assertion were put forth that all of them were a direct product or outgrowth of Apple.

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Although there is almost constant complaining that Apple is not the innovator it once was, or that they sell overpriced and overrated products, with more marketing than substance, tracing back through the history of tech a very different story emerges. Further, all the way to the present a pattern holds true that traces all big tech back to Apple in a direct route from at least 1984 or earlier.

The whole story is long and somewhat hidden; and it diverges from the accepted notions of how the massive empires of tech came about. In the end it is almost impossible not to see the behemoths now known as Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others as little more than incidental occurrences, spawned the wake of Apple’s growth and innovation.

Apple is an entirely different company from what it seems from the point of view of the masses & the media. For example, just as now we have Biden vs. Trump we once had Jobs vs. Gates. You can decide which is which. Perhaps today it seems like a stretch, but up until around 1998 the two were considered opposites and as compatible as oil vs. water.

https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1326262361900998657/pu/vid/1280x592/4NJDOGbF7eYtHJBu.mp4?tag=10

Above: vdieo Clip from the “One More Thing 2020 Event and Video Still Photo Collage / Lynxotic

There have always been a huge number of people who are offended by the high-price high-quality ethos that Steve Jobs created and that the company carries forward to this day.

Steve Jobs Steve Wozniak with the Apple 1 prototype

Much like Tesla owners are heckled by Toyota, Ford and Chevy pick-up truck owners, Apple has always had an army of detractors. And while for many years it was Windows / PC users now it is Android and Samsung. But if you set aside the Apple-derangement Syndrome, sister affliction to the fabled “Reality Distortion Field” there are some fascinating theories that could be put forth showing that Apple and Steve Jobs are the ultimate source of all tech since the Garden of Eden, or at least the 70s.

[Readers note: there are many accepted truths and fabled stories that will be addressed in this article. These are, at times considered “fact” and at other times questioned openly. If it bothers you when either of those choices are made to suit the narrative, you may, of course, opt-out at any time. All attempts have been made to remain true to historical fact, but no claims or guarantees are made of perfection.]

In The Beginning there was… XEROX?

In the beginning there was Xerox Parc. From that private think-tank of a copy-machine company emerged two incredible discoveries; the Graphical-User-Interface (GUI) and the Mouse (mouse). In the fable Steve Jobs is invited to visit in late 1979, to gather knowledge from the computer scientists and R&D gurus and later decides to “steal” everything he sees. Xerox, on the other hand, continues to believe that copy machines are the real future.

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This fable / anecdote is often used to illustrate that Steve Jobs and Apple deserve no credit for the ultimate ubiquity of the software that emerged from the GUI concept and, the mouse that came about cause of the… mouse. It is also said, or at least implied, that Microsoft was fully justified in stealing anything and everything they could from Apple software innovations because “Steve did it first to Xerox”. These kinds of rationalizations are the reason why Apple is still, to this day, not recognized as the source for all tech in the universe.

The more accurate take on this origin story is that Steve Jobs was the first to recognize the ultimate importance of the GUI and mouse combo (after all Xerox never made any real commercially viable attempt to make and market the discoveries from its own R&D) and that the future of the tech world would be built on the bedrock of these early innovations.

“…In fact, turning expensive, hard-to-use, precision instruments into cheap, mass-producible, and reliable commercial products requires its own ingenuity and creativity. This marketplace intelligence is different from, but not inferior to, the intelligence of the laboratory; it just gets far less attention by journalists and historians. In the case of the relationship between the work at PARC and the development of the Macintosh, this blindness leads us to underestimate the originality of Apple’s own work, and the differences between the Alto and Macintosh. “
— Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of “Making the Macintosh“

Further, at the time Bill Gates was madly in love with the wonders of MS-Dos and in particular the money he could bank in licensing it to IBM and all bidders… It was only years later in 1985 when he famously decided to steal the GUI_ Mouse based system software apple was using, in spite of his promises to refrain from stealing when he was shown the secrets during his fabled meeting with Steve Jobs to discuss word and excel, early versions of which were already on the Macintosh. Hence the echos of “Steve did it first to Xerox” became the rallying cry for all those that seemed to justify the direct theft of Macintosh OS to create the clunky-named system called “Windows”.

20 years ago this week, Steve Jobs was on the cover of @TIME, thanking @BillGates for "saving Apple." pic.twitter.com/AhUnLnOZ8t
— Codecademy (@Codecademy) August 24, 2017

This story carried on throughout the 80s and 90s and, all the while, a 1988 lawsuit was pending resolution, which has at its center the accusation, by Apple, that Windows 1, released in November 1985, was directly copied, a.k.a. inspired by the Macintosh OS. In the end, in another famous fabled incident, the suit was settled out of court in 1997, by then obscenely rich Bill Gates, for $150 million, thus rescuing Apple from almost certain Bankruptcy.

Moral of the story? Windows, PC’s and everything Microsoft ever became, can be directly traced back to Apple. This is the most obvious of the various lines of creative attribution leading back to Apple and Steve Jobs.

The next saga: Google’s connection and the debt owed to Anti-trust and Apple, will be more subtle but all the more timely. Timely as in right now this minute. Stay tuned for Volume II of “How Apple Created the Entire Tech Universe and it Finally Makes Sense”

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iPhone 13 Pro live test, How to shoot in Macro Mode (hint: It Just Works…)