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Look at these stunning amateur Milky Way photos shot on iPhone 14 Pro Max

Updated Nov 9th, 2022 11:49AM EST
iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max color options.
Image: Apple Inc.

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If there’s one area where Apple consistently struggles to blow away the competition, it’s the photography. Apple’s homegrown processors might be incredibly powerful and its operating system might be more secure than Android, but camera comparisons often show that Galaxy and Pixel phones match or even surpass the newest iPhone, the iPhone 14. That may be the case, but in the right hands, the iPhone 14 Pro Max is still a very capable camera phone.

If you want proof, look no further than the MacRumors forums, where one user shared some dazzling photos of the Milky Way that he took on his iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Stunning Milky Way photos on iPhone 14 Pro Max

MacRumors forum goer ToddH says that he took the photos using Night Mode on an iPhone 14 Pro Max. He took the photos at ISO 12,500 and ISO 10,000 in Apple’s ProRAW format and edited the images in Lightroom. The results are stunning:

The Milky Way photographed with an iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The Milky Way photographed with an iPhone 14 Pro Max. Image source: ToddH/MacRumors

Here’s what the user did to the images in Lightroom to make them look so stunning:

I had to adjust the contrast, lighting, some atmospheric colors like green & blue in the raw image. Linear and radial gradient tools to brighten or darken areas of the sky so they match other parts of the image. There is some vignetting with the new iPhone, but it’s not as bad as the 13 PM was. I used the dehaze tool and decreased the texture some.

For the sake of comparison, here’s what the image looked like prior to being edited:

Unedited photo of the Milky Way taken on an iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Unedited photo of the Milky Way taken on an iPhone 14 Pro Max. Image source: ToddH/MacRumors

In order to get these shots, ToddH attached his iPhone 14 Pro Max to his Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer, which is a mount made specifically for astrophotography. Nevertheless, all the photos that the iPhone 14 Pro Max captured speak for themselves.


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Jacob Siegal
Jacob Siegal Associate Editor

Jacob Siegal is Associate Editor at BGR, having joined the news team in 2013. He has over a decade of professional writing and editing experience, and helps to lead our technology and entertainment product launch and movie release coverage.