December is here, which in many cities (not only) in the Czech Republic means only one thing – the Christmas decorations on the streets and squares are starting to shine in full, completing the pleasant Advent, and later Christmas. And since this decoration is sometimes really beautiful, many of you will definitely want to take a picture of it on your phone. However, the truth is that it is not just that. The lights shining in the dark are a fairly major challenge for cameras, which older phones in particular do not always cope with very well.
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I have personally experienced more than once that while a given "scene" looks really beautiful to the eye, it doesn't stand out nearly as well in a photo, usually because the camera captures it differently than it looks in real life. I was all the more curious to see how they would handle this year's Christmas lighting. iPhone 17 As the current flagship Applu. So, on one of our evening walks, I took a few photos so that we could get at least a rough idea of what the camera on this year's iPhones can do. And I have to say, it's definitely not bad.
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The aim of this photo test was certainly not to create any works of art, but rather to test how the resulting quality of photos from individual cameras and especially from the telephoto lens is. And I am not afraid to say that the result is really good. Although the telephoto lens has a rather poor aperture of f/2,8 (which is a better standard in the mobile world) and therefore should theoretically falter in poorer lighting conditions, I think that the level of detail that can be captured, especially with 4x optical zoom, is really good.
As for the wide-angle Fusion camera, it does a very good job as expected and it's not bad either. ultrawide-angle lens, although with it you can see that the details in the photo tend to blend together. Another pleasant discovery is the fact that thanks to the anti-reflective layers on the cameras, glare is at least partially eliminated. Yes, they are still there, but to a lesser extent.
There is one major but. You have to take photos in such darkness that it does not yet require active night mode. As soon as night mode is activated and the camera collects a few seconds of data from the scene, the bright objects will be severely overexposed, as you can see in the few images below. In both cases, this is a 4x optical zoom with a telephoto lens.
Fortunately, thanks to the relatively large sensors, all three rear cameras are able to take photos without active night mode even in relatively dark conditions. And then, of course, there is the option to manually deactivate this mode, which I would only recommend if your phone offers you a data collection time. maxat least within two seconds. Anything higher is already quite dark.
So if you're looking to take pictures of Christmas lights, whether indoors or outdoors, this year's iPhones are really reliable in this regard. While there are still some gaps, you can still create a nice memory of Advent and Christmas 2025 with them without any problems.
