iPhone 15 Pro Max 15PM low light telephoto not working

[truesepho]

Did anyone else try the 5x telephoto lens indoor/low light conditions? It very rarely kicks in for me, most of the time it will just switch to wide and crop. I understand focal length and aperture are different, but this wasn’t the case with the 14P 3x, not as much at least.
It’s quite annoying for videos as well. 5x cropped from wide is not great, let’s not even mention 25x…
Any way of forcing the app to use the lens I want?

 

[ManuCH]

No, you cannot force it with the native camera app. It's normal that it doesn't switch to the 5x lens in low light as you would have a lot of camera shake.

You can download an app like Halide to force the 5x camera, and you will see that indeed in low light it's super hard to hold the phone steady enough to get a sharp picture.

 

[truesepho]

No, you cannot force it with the native camera app. It's normal that it doesn't switch to the 5x lens in low light as you would have a lot of camera shake.

You can download an app like Halide to force the 5x camera, and you will see that indeed in low light it's super hard to hold the phone steady enough to get a sharp picture.

Thank you, I’ll try Halide. Bit of a shame Apple won’t let you fix the lens you select though, on a Pro phone.
Is there any decent app like Halide but for videos?

 

[ManuCH]

Thank you, I’ll try Halide. Bit of a shame Apple won’t let you fix the lens you select though, on a Pro phone.
Is there any decent app like Halide but for videos?

I believe Filmic Pro is very good, but I'm not a fan of their new quite expensive subscription model. Another one is Beastcam.