On the iPhone 16 Pro’s Cameras ⇥ aows.co
I said it a year ago, and I still think Apple made a mistake with the 120mm lens. The current lineup of 13mm, 24mm, and 120mm leaves a huge gap between the main and telephoto lenses, missing out on key and very useful focal lengths for everyday situations. I’d rather see a 75mm lens on a 48MP sensor, with the ability to reach 120mm using the fancy cropping the main sensor has.
Last year was my iPhone purchasing year. I went from the 52mm-equivalent “2×” camera available on the 12 Pro to a 77mm-equivalent “3×” camera. Even though I understand the difference between those two focal lengths, I was still surprised by how much of a radical change it was. Relatively tight interior spaces, like those in my house, became even tighter; food photography required me to stand up and back away from the table.
For my purposes, I agree with Vila — the 77mm-equivalent is most often about as tight as I want to go with my iPhone. Perhaps it makes sense to give people two extreme lenses in the ultra-wide and 120mm-equivalent “5×” telephoto; maybe the in-between focal lengths are just too subtle for some people. There are use cases for this more extreme telephoto, like at concerts or getting some nice compression in cities. But the iPhone is now missing a perfect focal length for portraits, and that seems like a glaring omission.