iPhone 14 Pro Max Tutorial & Users Guide
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iPhone 14 Pro Max (sapphire protective lens covers and integral Ceramic Shield screen protection standard, 8.5 oz./242g) in Apple leather case (1.0 oz./30g; 9.6 oz./272g total).
You can get them at Amazon, or used at eBay if you know How to Win at eBay.
This all-content, junk-free website's biggest source of support is when you use those or any of these links to approved sources when you get anything, regardless of the country in which you live. Thanks for helping me help you! Ken.
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Shooting
Camera App
I use Apple's native Camera app, shooting in its default HEIF format (Settings > Camera > Formats > High Efficiency). You can force this to JPG if you prefer with Settings > Camera > Formats > Most Compatible, but since HEIF takes less space I shoot HEIF and convert to JPG if needed later.
While it's easy to read the iPhone's apertures, ISOs and shutter speeds in both the Photos app (just tap the ⓘ photo info icon) or external software, I'm letting my iPhone set these all automatically as it shoots and reading the data later to report to you. I have no idea what it's doing as I shoot and I don't need to know.
Resolution
All images are saved as 12 MP JPGs or HEIF, unless you choose Settings > Camera > Formats > Apple ProRAW > ON and then Settings > Camera > Formats > ProRAW Resolution > 48 MP, which will save a 48 MP DNG — but only at 48 MP for the 1× camera. I never use DNG; I always shoot HEIC in-camera and save them on my Mac as JPGs, and obviously you can do whatever you want.
Look
I have the "look" of my iPhone set to WARM (Settings > Camera > Photographic Styles > Warm (Tone 0 and Warmth 50)).
Lens Corrections
The 0.5× ultra-wide and the front cameras offer the option of electronic lens distortion correction. I leave this ON at Settings > Camera > Lens Correction, although I've never seen it make any difference.
Stills at 10 FPS top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
It's easy to shoot at 10 FPS: just tap and swipe the shutter button towards the last-shot photo icon and hold!
Macro top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
Simply select your zoom setting and shoot. iPhone figures out how to make it happen, and just does it, which often means shooting with the 0.5× camera and cropping for the selected zoom level.
If you want to keep the full 48 MP resolution of the 1× camera, you can have your iPhone warn you that it's subbing the 0.5× camera if you set SETTINGS > CAMERA > MACRO CONTROL > ON, in which case it will show a yellow circle with a flower in it to let you know it's cropping from the 0.5× camera in the 1× or 2× settings. It doesn't show when it crops from the 1× camera when you're too close in the 3× mode because the 1× camera has 48 MP so you're not really losing anything cropping from it to make 3×.
Flash top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
I never use the flash, except maybe for fill indoors.
Tap the flash icon as you like, and if you need more flash settings, tap the " ^ " icon at the top to see more options at the bottom.
Time Exposures for the Dark top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
See details under my Milky Way photo in my iPhone 14 Pro Max Review.
Hand Held Long Exposures top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
Lee Vining Falls, 11 AM, 24 October 2017. 2½ second time exposure, hand-held. bigger.
How water looks at different exposure times.
All revealed at How to Smooth Motion with Long Exposures on iPhone.
New Feature: ACTION VIDEO top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
For years iPhone video has been so well stabilized it hasn't required any gimbals for superb hand-held results even while walking and moving around for tracking shots.
Ever since I think it was iPhone 5 the screen would look very bumpy as we shot video, however the playback is always rock solid, even if we're walking and holding our phone in our hand. The unstabilized shooting screen tricks many people into buying gimbals, which we don't need with iPhone. Look at the playback image and you'll be amazed.
A new "Action Mode" increases the amount of motion for which the iPhone can compensate. It does this by using a smaller crop inside the full sensor, which quite literally gives electronic stabilization more wiggle room to track camera shake and subject motion. This has been a standard technique (being able to correct more motion by using smaller cropped areas) in professional video for decades.
ACTION VIDEO allows full stabilization even while running or dealing with even more extreme camera motion.
In the Camera app, select the VIDEO mode and look for the crossed-out icon of a runner. Tap the icon, it lights in yellow as the screen blurs for a moment to hide the change in framing, then shoot. As always in video mode, the screen image will be jittery as you shoot because the stabilization doesn't happen until iPhone saves your file. The file looks magnificent on playback.
Transfer Photos & Video to Mac top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
We all have our favorite methods. Many of us just AirDrop and we're done.
I prefer Mac OS' standard Image Capture program to import my iPhone 14 Pro Max' images to a new folder in my base-model 2017 13″ MacBook Pro. While I usually run Mac OS High Sierra to run the older Adobe software I prefer, for ingest I boot into Mac OS Monterey on a separate volume on my MacBook Pro's upgraded OWC Aura Pro NT internal 1TB SSD because Image Capture runs so much faster and better in Monterey. About 1,300 files transfer in about a minute. Boom!
Because my 2012 copy of Photoshop CS6 doesn't read modern HEIF images shot on iPhone, I select all the HEIF images apart from the PNGs and other JPGs saved from the Snapseed app and drag the HEIF into a new folder. I select them all again, right-click and select Quick Actions > Convert Image. I select Format: JPEG and Image Size: Actual Size and check PRESERVE METADATA. I click "Convert to JPG" and it takes a minute or so to convert the HEIF to a new set of JPGs in the same folder that previously had only HEIF.
Once created, the converted JPGs alone are now selected magically. Leaving them selected I drag them back to the original folder with all the PNGs and other JPGs imported from my iPhone, and voilà, I now have a folder with all the images from my iPhone as PNG and JPG and another folder with all the HEIF. I delete the HEIF folder; I always can pull these from my iPhone again later if I need them as HEIF.
I could shoot my iPhone in JPG (Settings > Camera > Formats > Most Compatible) and save these conversion steps (or transfer in other ways that make them arrive as JPGs, like AirDrop to High Sierra which takes longer), however HEIF takes less file space on my iPhone and it's actually much easier to do the steps above than to read about it. Do whatever works best for you.
Photo Editing top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
You can spend a lifetime playing with apps on your iPhone.
Personally I love the free Snapseed app which I use for just about everything.
Subject Extraction top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
iOS 16 adds one-touch ability to select, extract, copy and paste subjects and remove backgrounds.
It's so simple you'd never notice it: in the Photos app on iPhone simply hold your finger over a face or object in your image and you'll see it highlight the object. Remove your finger, you'll see options to COPY or SHARE (email, save, copy, print, assign to contact, etc.) and you're done.
Try it yourself. Snap a selfie, play it back, hold your finger on your face and release when you see the menu options. It's this simple.
Image Search top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
iPhone's native Photos app makes it trivially easy to find anything you've shot purely by location or date, or just tap the 🔍 icon and ask to search by your friend's names or "dog" or "pen" and iPhone just finds it.
I have photos from at least 25 years of shooting film and digital in my iPhone, and it looks inside those photos, knows what's in them, and finds them for me. Yes, iPhone even sees and searches what's inside my saved film scans!
I'll say that again: iPhone has human-like intelligence to look inside the actual visual content of images from just about any digital photo, scanned film or screen shot, and search and find things based solely on their appearances, not needing keywords, metadata, captions or written text descriptions! Of course it easily finds signs or text inside an image as well, like STOP signs.
Mentioning captions, it's also easy to add, search and read text captions and notes to your iPhone photos' metadata (tap the ⓘ photo info icon), but none of this is needed for search.
Visual Look Up top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
If you don't know what something is, your iPhone can tell you what it is! Apple calls this Visual Look Up.
If you see little sparkles on the ⓘ (photo info) icon as you look through Photos, iPhone wants to tell you all about what it is. It can identify kinds of fungus, dogs, plants, pets, animals, landmarks, statues, works of art, album covers and just about anything:
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Sparkles on the ⓘ icon tells you iPhone knows who this is. bigger. |
What it finds for this Great Pyrenees puppy. bigger. |
Charging & Battery Life top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
It charges fastest with the included USB-C lightning cord and your existing USB-C PD charger, for instance, the standard Apple 20W USB-C PD charger. Whatever you've been using since the iPhone 5 will work swell to charge by Lightning.
I measure 26.5W maximum charging power draw, so using a 30W or greater USB-C PD charger, USB-C PD power bank or USB-C PD solar panel with the included USB-C lightning cord will give the fastest charging. It works fine with chargers with any higher power rating, the system is smart enough only to draw not more than than 26.5W, and of course it shuts off when it's full, even if you're connected to a 118W charger.
Mine seems to charge from mostly empty to mostly full (like from 27% to 77%) in 34 minutes.
The standard Apple 20W USB-C PD charger will be about as fast, and the wireless chargers, at 15W, will also be close.
Honestly I'm still using the same cheap 7W wireless charging stand I bought back in 2018 for use with my iPhone Xs Max because I prefer to put my phone on a stand so I can see it, rather than lay it down with a puck-type mag charger.
This is all personal taste. I never run my phone down in the middle of the day so I don't care how long it takes to charge.
The battery is rated 16.68 watt-hours, so it probably takes about 20 Wh to charge it, considering the usual power losses in charging systems, and you'd need about a 25Wh (6,800 mAh) power bank to get 20 Wh for a full charge, or so I calculate with about 20% loss.
If I'm going to be out shooting all day in the wilderness or where there is questionable cell coverage (which uses much more battery power than where there's more signal), I set it to Low Power Mode (SETTINGS > BATTERY > LOW POWER MODE) and I'm fine. I carry a 20,000 mAh Nitecore power bank to charge my iPhone or camera, but haven't had to use it since batteries last so long today.
Heat and High Brightness top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
The 14 Pro Max has an astoundingly bright screen for when you need it in sunlight, however it draws so much power that heat quickly can become a problem, so if you're outside in daylight looking at white web pages (like this one), you're burning a lot of battery, and the iPhone will dim itself after a few minutes to manage the heat.
If you're in hot weather and beating sun this is more of a problem, and I imagine if I lived in the cold that I might never notice it.
Hint: I'd try the dark theme in daylight if you need it, as it will save battery and probably give you more time at full brightness when only the letters are white, rather than every pixel except the letters.
Notifications top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
To find the Notifications Center, swipe down from the top left, then up from middle bottom center (not from the bar at the very bottom).
Remote Control top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
If I lose my Apple TV remote in my sofa (as I did six days ago and still haven't found it), no worries, it's duplicated in an app on iPhone: just swipe down from the top right and look for the REMOTE icon. If it's not there, be sure you added it to your Control Center on iPhone at Settings > Control Center, which is trivially easy to find with the Search box at Settings.
There's also a completely different app called Remote (that's still an app, not an icon in the Control Center) that lets us control iTunes on Mac to control and play from a Mac to anywhere. You even can see all the album covers of music in your Mac on the iPhone remotely!
"Please Return To" Message on Lock Screen top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
My iPod Touch back in 2010.
I create an image in Photoshop with big text with my address, email and other phone numbers that I set as my Lock Screen image. This way if I leave my iPhone someplace, whoever picks it up can contact me to come get it! This article may be from 14 years ago, but you get the idea.
I wish this was a standard feature on iOS. I've found a few iPhones, and never could figure out how to call the owner other than getting nothing more than a first name if I tried to AirDrop to it.
Hint: also set your AirDrop name (same as your iPhone name at SETTINGS > GENERAL > ABOUT > NAME) to something that a stranger could use to contact you. This is a tough one as there are a lot of different places to name things and I'll admit that I'm not sure which one appears when others try to AirDrop to you, and different fields are pulled-up depending on from what kind of device someone else is trying to AirDrop you.
Don't be paranoid; strangers in general want to help you, not rip off your phone or harass you with your contact info. I use a friend's phone number for these, so people don't wind up calling the iPhone that they just found!
Good luck.
Save Now to Save Yourself Later top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
Quick: you're stuck out in the woods with no cellular signal. You need help and need to use the new Satellite Emergency 911 Text feature. How do you do it? Easy: just Google it!
Oops. You have no signal so you can't Google anything. Now what?
I assume iPhone will somehow explain how to use the satellite text rescue feature without being connected to the internet to look it up when we're stuck in the woods and actually need to use the feature, but just to be safe, I looked up the instructions on how to use the satellite text rescue feature now while I have internet access, and saved and labeled screen shots of these pages to my Recents album in Photos so I can find them offline.
This way I can look up the instructions with no signal or internet connection in case my phone doesn't make it obvious. Read these now as there are some things you need to set up before you get stuck in the woods. I use the Tailor app to stitch all the screenshots into one tall image through which I can scroll just as if it was online.
Here are the two pages I saved as screenshots in Photos (hold Volume Up and tap the Lock button to save a screen shot):
Satellite SOS 911 emergency instructions
and
Send Your Location via Satellite.
How to Set Up a Whole-House Music System top of User's Guide iPhone 14 Pro Max Review
This all-content, junk-free website's biggest source of support is when you use any of these links to approved sources when you get anything, regardless of the country in which you live. Thanks for helping me help you! Ken.
Thanks for helping me help you!
Ken.
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