The iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max have nice cameras, a few of the greatest you should purchase in a cellphone. They’ve additionally obtained an unique new function Apple by no means provided earlier than: a macro mode that allows you to take excessive close-ups — simply two centimeters away! — of intricate issues you may barely see with the bare eye. Your pet’s incredibly fine fur, the veins of leaves, and the sub-pixels in your laptop monitor’s display screen are all now inside attain.

But Apple doesn’t offer you a macro mode button per se — it’s computerized. When you convey the cellphone inside 10 cm of an object, it mechanically switches to the ultrawide lens, which some customers discovered jarring sufficient that Apple now helps you to flip off auto-macro-switching in iOS 15.1.

But if you happen to do this, after which manually swap to the ultrawide lens, you gained’t get as shut by default. Here’s a full-res instance:

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

So how do you really use macro mode?

How to make use of the iPhone 13 Pro’s macro mode

Again, it’s computerized. You don’t have to search for a button, you simply have to get shut. Open the digital camera app and get very, very near the factor you wish to {photograph} — so shut that it will get blurry. Then slowly again away till it seems to be crisp. If you wish to be further certain, pull again simply far sufficient that the autofocus (yellow sq.) kicks in.

Hold extremely nonetheless at that distance (two fingers are good, braced is best, tripod might be greatest!) and snap the shot. If you’re taking pictures handheld, chances are you’ll wish to take just a few extra so you may choose the clearest one — at that distance, any quantity of movement would possibly lead to blur.

That’s it! Unless you’ve turned off the cellphone’s auto-macro mode, after all.

How to show off (and on) the iPhone 13 Pro’s computerized lens swap

Hate how your iPhone 13 Pro or Pro Max mechanically switches away from the (superb) regular lens whenever you get too shut? You can now toggle it on and off as of iOS 15.1.

Open the Settings app, go to Camera, then scroll all the best way to the underside to seek out Auto Macro. Toggle that off to disable the swap.

How to manually take macro pictures with iPhone 13 Pro

Hopefully, Apple will add a handbook button quickly, the identical manner you may manually leap to the ultrawide digital camera by tapping “0.5” or the zoom lens by tapping “3” (until it’s too darkish). Meanwhile, you may nonetheless take macro pictures with Auto Macro toggled off — they simply gained’t essentially be as shut.

Switch to your ultrawide lens and observe the identical directions as earlier: get shut, again away, maintain nonetheless. Autofocus will nonetheless kick in, simply not fairly as shut because it does with the automated macro mode.

But it’s also possible to trick the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max into providing you with almost nearly as good a outcome if you happen to simply zoom in your self. Apple tells The Verge that its auto-macro mode is successfully cropping out 3 megapixels’ price of the 12-megapixel picture, which is then upsampled to 12-megapixels as soon as once more, with a bit of little bit of further processing on prime. So if you wish to emulate that very same leap from a 13mm-equivalent subject of view to a 26mm-equivalent subject of view, simply maintain down on the 0.5x button and drag the zoom wheel to about 0.9x magnification.

Here are three pictures of a bamboo coaster I picked up in Maui with wood-burned letters, shot the closest I probably might. The first is an auto-macro shot, the second a 0.5x shot that I cropped to roughly 0.9x on my Windows PC, and the third shot at 0.9x magnification on the iPhone itself. They’re nearly the identical, proper? I feel the auto-macro seems to be the sharpest with Apple’s processing on prime, however none of them are nice and all of them are effective.

So now you realize. If you’re taking any notably epic macro pictures with a cellphone, hit me up on Twitter?