In 2007, Apple shifted the nature of photography by unveiling the first iPhone, a mobile device that boasted the highest quality camera then available on a cellphone. Now 17 years later, Apple has outdone itself with the recent release of the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, the tech company’s newest smartphones which feature the most advanced camera available on a smartphone to date. Not only do the latest iPhone Pro models allow manual level control and creativity to everyday users, they represent a marriage between technological advancement and inspiration from pivotal movements in picture making with new in-app editing capabilities. For the first time on an iPhone, users can manually adjust the f-stop and control focus, while benefiting from a powerful 48-megapixel ultra-wide lens, allowing for macro close-up shots.

Apple’s commitment to furthering photography shines in its new Photographic Styles features. The feature offers customizable mood-based and skin-tone-sensitive options that enable users to control color and lighting with nuance. By merging hardware, software, and aesthetic science, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max reexamine mobile photography yet again, and allow users to capture moments with professional-level clarity, accuracy, and style.

Document’s Editor-in-Chief Nick Vogelson sits down with Chief Aesthetics Scientist of Camera and Photos Pamela Chen and iPhone Senior Product Manager Jeremy Hendricks to talk about Apple’s multi-faceted approach to mobile photography for this newest iPhone launch.

“It was really important for us to understand what about photography has changed because of these leaps in camera technology—from darkroom processes to 35-millimeters to digital to the iPhone—and what about photography has remained important to people over time, regardless of the tech.”

Nick Vogelson: I think this is the first time that it’s felt like there are pro-level features added to an iPhone camera specifically. You can control the f-stops and there’s even a manual focus. I discovered the little button slider toggle at the top of the phone just now.

Jeremy Hendricks: That’s incredible to hear! You’re 100 percent right, we have such huge advancements this year between photo, video, and audio. If you really think about it, these advancements are thanks to new camera technologies. We have new mics on the Pro line as well. All this is tied together with advanced software and powered by our Apple Silicon A18 Pro [processor] on iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. We have a new ultra-wide camera that has 48 megapixels, so you have more resolution for those really great up-close shots. And this really unlocks really powerful video features like 4K 120 [frames per second] in Dolby Vision. This is made even better with playback-speed controls in the new Photos app. People loved the five-x telephoto when we first introduced it, so now this year, it’s available on both models—the larger and the smaller sizes—which is really great. We’re taking photo capture and customization further than ever, and this pushes computational photography further than we’ve ever gone before as well.

Nick: What do you mean by computational photography?

Jeremy: We pioneered computational photography, going all the way back to iPhone 4 when we introduced HDR photos. This now includes Deep Fusion, for example, where we’re able to actually combine multiple frames into one. This lets you take the best parts of each frame on a pixel-by-pixel basis for much better detail. It helps ensure that you get gorgeous color and detail, even in challenging lighting environments, like if the subject is backlit. The key thing to note with computational photography is that it’s a combination of hardware, software, and our Apple silicon working together, so whether you are an experienced photographer and editor or you’re just someone trying to get a great looking shot, your iPhone is doing all of this automatically.

The appearance of light is hugely important in photography. So from higher contrast and more dramatic scenes to lighter scenes with brighter tones, our next generation photographic styles give the option to control the light in the scene, so you can capture the moment as you remember it, or even how you want to remember it. This flexibility is so important. If you think of filters, they often use this one-size-fits-all approach, and it’ll apply one shade to the entire scene, regardless of the subject and the shot, regardless of how the scene’s composed. With these 14 new Styles, we chose to focus on two key aspects: the ability to capture yourself or your subject with incredible nuance for skin undertones, and giving more creative options that affect the entire mood and the entire aesthetic of the photo. It was important to make this customization easy regardless of how experienced you are.

Nick: So the difference between styles and filters is that styles are more nuanced, and can address different shades and tonalities with the whole picture in mind versus just uniformly applying a filter across an image, is that right?

Jeremy: Yes, and that nuance comes out in the customization these styles offer. You can even set your default undertone style and camera settings so they’re applied to every shot you take. For the second set of styles, they’re mood-based, and really can change the overall aesthetic of the shot. [Jeremy demonstrates live examples of applying the styles to a sample photograph for Nick]

Nick: Pamela, you’re from a science background. What’s your perspective on photographic research?

Pamela Chen: I’m the Chief Aesthetic Scientist for Camera and Photos at Apple. I have a background that is a balance of both science and art. I have a photography research background but also have specialized in machine learning, and I’ve been with Apple in this capacity for the past four years.

To develop the photographic styles, we dove deep into the entire history of photography, which is nearly 200 years now. But we also look at people today, both in front of and behind the camera. Why do people take pictures, and what do they like about them?

Looking back in broad strokes, the history of consumer camera technology—from the origin of photography until 2007—can be clustered into three umbrella leaps, if you will. The first one happened in the 1840s when dark room processes were first made available to the public, which meant that people started experimenting with stylizing photography for the first time. The second would be when more portable cameras were introduced about 40 to 50 years later. This is the 35 millimeter camera in 1910 and then the instant cameras of the mid 1900s. The third umbrella leap before 2007 was in digital cameras; the first digital cameras came on the scene in the 1990s. We mapped these camera technology markers against our media, geopolitical, and economic timelines, and we saw specific ways that these advancements in camera technology shaped our global culture around image making. For example, this value that we now place on candid moments. The candid moment really coincided with the advent of these 35 millimeter cameras and more portable cameras, which allowed for more creative compositions, more spontaneity. Similarly, when digital cameras came on the scene, we found value in resolution and the number of pictures that you could take, and most notably, the ability to preview the image before you shot it.

The iPhone came on the scene in 2007 and that accelerated the technological advancements in the 17 years since, as Jeremy mentioned earlier, in computational photography. But the iPhone also led to so many more people having the power of storytelling in their pocket. This obviously led to an astronomical increase in the number of pictures that are taken and seen around the world. That’s also changed the moments that people really value and want to capture. It’s not just the major moments anymore. It’s also about all the moments in between. When we were developing photographic styles, it was really important for us to understand what about photography has changed because of these leaps in camera technology—from darkroom processes to 35-millimeters to digital to the iPhone—and what about photography has remained important to people over time, regardless of the tech. We talked to a lot of people [in our research process], and we came away with a deep understanding of why there isn’t a one-size-fits-all camera setting that can be everything to everyone.

Nick: Right, it’s more nuanced. And the skin tone style shifts certain tones, but not in a one-size-fits-all, as you’re saying. It’s a huge difference.

Pamela: Yes. One of the technologies underlying the photographic styles, like Jeremy mentioned, is the fact that it’s semantically adaptive. For the first time, this feature allows us to control the way that the iPhone camera renders light, shadow, and color relationships, and it creates a whole range of self-expression that really unlocks the camera’s potential.

Now, the mood styles. They consist of a unique color palette, and these palettes have been inspired by photography’s most powerful and relevant styles over time. For example, we have a mood style called Quiet. We went all the way back to those first stylized photographs I mentioned from the late 1800s,1850s or so. This was during the pictorialism movement, when photographers were trying to be taken seriously as [using] a new art form. Their main competitors were painters. During this time, they were capturing these images, and in the darkroom, creating these evocative, dreamy, almost impressionistic scenes where there’s dramatic light and lifted shadows. They were heavily influenced by the Romantic painters of that era. So we tracked this look over time, and we realized that it actually never went out of style; it evolved and it changed as camera technology evolved and changed, but the intentions remained. That’s where the color palette for Quiet came from. It embodies that timeless nature, while also making it relevant for people today.

“There is this photographic tradition, but we also needed to advance the medium so that it would be meaningful to more people.”

Nick: I love it. I studied photography in college right when the technology was at the cusp of digital. I’m looking up pictorialism side-by-side to understand this particular reference.

Pamela: The pictorialism movement is actually so interesting because so much of what we’re talking about here relates to back then. Words could be used to describe what was going on in photography in the 1850s where people were exploring the medium as a mode of self-expression beyond reality, it’s about capturing what you see but also how it feels. This is the Luminous Style. This one’s one of my favorites actually, because if you think about the early days of the internet, we’ve seen so many color palettes emerge that are uniquely digital, and these are colors that we are really familiar with in our online life. Luminous draws inspiration from that digital world that we live in, but rendered into the real world around us. And so the Luminous palette shifts hues towards a softer rainbow of colors, lavenders, mints, with warm bronze, cool pinks and a robin’s egg blue.

You can really see [the range] or shadows as well in our two black and white styles. Of course, black and white photography has always been about capturing light and shadow in those relationships, so we have a stark palette as well as a muted one, inspired by platinum palladium printing, which was the gold standard of how black and white photographs were printed of an archival quality. There’s so much detail in the mid-tone ranges.

Nick: Typically filters are, like, ’70s inspired colors or something. And you said ‘We’re going to one up you all, and reference palladium printing and the pictorialism movement.’ I love it!

And, making Document, we work with a number of photographers who work exclusively on the iPhone. As a fashion and culture magazine, it’s really great to connect and hear all of the science, technology, and cultural elements that go into these camera developments.

Pamela: You’re touching on something that is really near and dear to our hearts too. We want to celebrate what everyone has always loved about photography. There is this photographic tradition, but we also needed to advance the medium so that it would be meaningful to more people. When we design the look and feel and edge of all of these Styles, we’re both honoring these classical photographic techniques and serving these contemporary preferences, allowing people to choose how they want to be seen.