Apple enjoyed a considerable head start in mobile photography prowess — it wasn't that long ago that if you cared about taking pictures with your phone, you more or less had to buy an iPhone. That's less true than ever, of course, with phones like the Pixel 6 and Galaxy S22 Ultra cranking out photos that'll give any iPhone a run for its money. Today, though, Apple's released the results of a photography contest that show it still has the clear upper hand in at least one lane: macro photography.
The iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max's ultra-wide cameras double as macro shooters with a minimum focus distance of just two centimeters — that is to say, they can take clear pictures of things as close as two centimeters away from their lenses. To celebrate that capability (and generate some press on the cheap), Apple announced a macro photography contest in January.
The rules were pretty straightforward: take a macro picture with an iPhone 13 Pro or 13 Pro Max and submit it to Apple. No additional hardware like add-on lenses could be used, but photos could be edited however their creators pleased — though Apple did require photographers submit the original, unedited version as well. I gotta say, the results are very impressive.
Like most of the features it crows about, Apple didn't invent mobile macro photography. Android phones have been doing this for years now; the OnePlus 7T was taking macro photos with its wide-angle camera in 2019. But the macro photography capabilities in most Android phones, if they have any at all (looking at you, Pixel 6), are tacked on for the sake of spec sheets — often with junk macro cameras that take grainy, low-resolution photos. That's not a hard-and-fast rule; some phones from manufacturers like Oppo take outrageous macro shots that can see details as small as the subpixels in a smartwatch display. But that's an exceptional case, and the photos aren't especially high quality — they're just very, very close up.
A super-macro shot of an Apple Watch's screen. Taken on Oppo Find X3 Pro.
And yet Samsung, by far the dominant manufacturer of Android phones sold in the US, seems relatively disinterested in macro photography. That's not to say its phones can't take macro pictures; to the contrary, many Samsung phones have dedicated macro cameras. The Galaxy A53, for example, has such a camera — it just happens to be a fixed-focus five-megapixel piece of crud takes photos like this, in broad daylight:
And here again, a photo shot on the iPhone 13 Pro:
I'm aware this isn't a fair comparison — the iPhone 13 Pro costs more than twice what the A53 does. But even Samsung's flagship phones like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, which, like the newest iPhones, uses its ultra-wide camera to grab macro shots, tend to fall pretty flat.
Ultra-wide macro photo shot on Galaxy S22 Ultra.
It stands to reason that if we asked an army of photographers fitted with Galaxy S22 Ultras to take the prettiest close-ups they could (like Apple did with the iPhone 13 Pro), we'd get some very compelling imagery — after all, these iPhone shots are hardly average smartphone photos when it comes to composition and editing. Still, the detail and clarity shown off in the winning shots isn't something you can convincingly add in later in software like Lightroom. Coming from a phone, even a premium one, these pictures are really incredible.
If you've poked around the Galaxy S22 Ultra's camera app, you might have noticed it doesn't have a macro mode. It's not that it can't take macro pictures — its ultra-wide camera is perfectly capable — it's just that the capability isn't highlighted anywhere. To do it, you'll have to either switch on the Focus Enhancer feature (signified by an obscure viewfinder icon of two overlapping circles) or manually switch to the ultra-wide camera. But the results, again, just aren't very impressive.
Ultra-wide macro photo shot on Galaxy S22 Ultra.
The Android/iOS photography rivalry is tighter than it's ever been, but macro photos are one arena where Android's got considerable ground to make up. Given its scale advantages and the ubiquity of its phones, I think Samsung's uniquely positioned to move the ball forward.
I'd love it if Samsung would start prioritizing macro photography more in its high-end phones. I'm not asking for dedicated macro cameras — especially not bad ones — but I want to be able to take photos like the ones Apple's promoting without, you know, buying an iPhone.
You can check out all the winning photos from Apple's macro contest here.