What you are setting up, and when it arrived
Apple announced the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max on 9 September 2026 and put them on sale on 18 September. They start at 1,199 and 1,299 US dollars and ship with iOS 27.
One camera changed. The 48MP Fusion Main camera at 24 mm now has a variable aperture that moves between f/1.48, f/1.8, f/2.8 and f/4.0 using six laser-cut blades, each thinner than a human hair. The 48MP Fusion Ultra Wide at 13 mm, f/2.2, the 48MP Fusion Telephoto at 100 mm, f/2.8 and the 18MP Center Stage front camera all carry over from the iPhone 17 Pro. The chip is the A20 Pro, on a 2 nanometre process.
That single hardware change is why the settings here differ from an iPhone 17 Pro setup. Three iOS 27 features exist only on these two phones, and two of them only work because the aperture physically moves.
Formats: the setting that decides everything else
Settings, Camera, Formats is the first place to go, because what you choose here changes file size by a factor of twenty and changes how every later setting behaves.
High Efficiency or Most Compatible. High Efficiency writes HEIF at roughly half the size of JPEG for the same quality. Leave it there unless something in your workflow genuinely cannot open a HEIF in 2026.
ProRAW and Resolution Control. Off by default. Turning it on puts a format toggle at the top of the viewfinder.
Pro Default. Once that toggle exists, this decides what it switches to. HEIF Max is a 48MP processed file of a few megabytes. ProRAW Max is a 48MP linear DNG of tens of megabytes, carrying Apple's computational processing in a form you can undo in an editor.
Photo Mode. 12MP, 24MP or 48MP as the standing default. 24MP is the right answer for almost everyone: it merges a binned 12MP read with a 48MP read, so it holds more detail than 12MP without the storage cost of 48MP.
The honest guidance has not changed with the new hardware. ProRAW is a liability if you are not going to edit. It shoots slower, browses slower, and an unedited ProRAW looks flatter than the HEIF the phone would have handed you for nothing.
The aperture setting, and when to take it off Auto
Lens Aperture is the genuinely new setting, and the correct starting position is Auto. The camera reads the scene and picks a stop on its own: wider in dim light, narrower when there is depth in the frame to hold.
Take manual control when one of three things is true.
- A group of people at different distances. Set f/4. Narrowing the aperture gives real depth of field, so the person at the back is sharp because the optics made them sharp, not because software guessed.
- A flat subject you want as sharp as possible. Reviewers found sharpness peaks around f/2.8 rather than at the extremes, which matches how almost every lens behaves. For a document, a menu or a landscape, f/2.8 is the safe choice.
- A single subject you want lifted off the background. f/1.48 or f/1.8, standing close, with the background far behind. The same testing reported softer edges wide open.
What to avoid: leaving it pinned at f/1.48 because it sounds impressive. The widest setting is the least sharp setting on every lens, and the phone opens up on its own when the light demands it. The full story sits on our variable aperture page.
Pro controls: where they live, and what is missing
Pro controls are new in iOS 27 and exclusive to these two phones. Open the Camera app, tap the controls button or swipe up from the mode carousel, and the adjustment row appears. Lens Aperture, Shutter Speed, White Balance and a live histogram sit in it, and they work in video as well as stills.
Three honest notes before you rely on them.
There is no ISO control. Apple lists four manual tools and sensitivity is not among them, so you set a shutter speed and the phone still decides the gain. Third-party camera apps have offered both for years, and Apple has opened the aperture range to them through a new API.
There is no manual focus slider either. What you get instead is Smart focus tracking, which holds focus on a subject even when it briefly leaves the frame and returns. Useful, and not the same as setting a distance by hand.
They are buried. Reviewers have been consistent on this: the controls sit at the bottom of the controls drawer, which is awkward one-handed, and you cannot assign any of them to the Camera Control button. The fix is the iOS 27 controls editor. Open the panel, tap Edit, and drag Lens Aperture, Shutter Speed and Histogram into the default row for Photo mode, then again for Video.
The full settings table
| Setting | Path | Recommended | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photo Mode | Camera, Formats | 24MP | More detail than 12MP, a fraction of the size of 48MP |
| Pro Default | Camera, Formats | HEIF Max, ProRAW Max only if you edit | Decides what the viewfinder format toggle produces |
| Apple ProRAW resolution | Camera, Formats | 48MP | A 12MP raw file gives up most of the reason to shoot raw |
| Lens Aperture | Camera app, controls drawer | Auto, with f/2.8 and f/4 as your manual picks | Auto is competent. f/2.8 is the sharpness peak, f/4 holds a group |
| Controls panel | Camera app, controls, Edit | Aperture, Shutter Speed, Histogram in Photo | The Pro controls are otherwise two taps deeper than they need to be |
| Preserve Settings | Camera, Preserve Settings | Camera Mode, Creative Controls, Exposure Adjustment on | Otherwise every launch resets to Photo, 1x and no style |
| Lens Correction | Camera | On | Straightens the ultra wide and front camera edges |
| Macro Control | Camera | On | Shows the flower icon so you can refuse the automatic ultra wide switch |
| Prioritise Faster Shooting | Camera | Off | Full processing per frame, at the cost of burst rate |
| Grid and Level | Camera, Composition | On | A level horizon is most of what separates a snapshot from a photograph |
| Reference Image | Camera, Reference Image | Add Reference Mode if you need provenance | Adds a mode to the carousel. Off by default |
The one people leave wrong is Preserve Settings. Creative Controls covers your Photographic Style, aspect ratio and filter, and without it the camera forgets your style every time you close the app.
Styles 3, Reference mode and the video settings
Photographic Styles 3. Settings, Camera, Photographic Styles sets the style applied to every frame you take. On these two phones the panel gains Texture, with options including Soft Skin, Glow and Film, and a separate Grain control. Pick the undertone style that renders your own skin correctly, set texture and grain once, and leave it. More on our Photographic Styles 3 page.
Reference mode. Settings, Camera, Reference Image, then Add Reference Mode. Shooting in it makes the sensor cryptographically sign the pixel data before firmware touches it, and Private Cloud Compute turns that into a reference image stored alongside the photo, so a later edit can be spotted by comparison. Leave it off unless you need it, because it adds a mode you will otherwise swipe past.
Video. Apple Log 2, ProRes and ProRes RAW carry over, with ProRes up to 4K at 120 fps to external storage. Record 4K 30 in Dolby Vision for anything going to a social platform and ignore the rest, because log footage that never gets graded looks worse than the standard profile, not better. Time-lapse now records in 4K Dolby Vision HDR, and Cinematic mode reaches 4K Dolby Vision at 60 fps.
Disclosure, since it is our own app: ShutterAI renders film and digicam looks live in the viewfinder on photo and video rather than applying them afterwards, and Vault keeps originals so edits stay reversible. It is coming to iPhone this fall, free to start, so it cannot be part of your setup this week. The waitlist is here.
Questions people ask
What iPhone 18 Pro camera settings should I change first?
Set Pro Default to HEIF Max under Settings, Camera, Formats, leave Photo Mode at 24MP, turn on Preserve Settings for Camera Mode and Creative Controls, and use the iOS 27 controls editor to pull Lens Aperture, Shutter Speed and Histogram into the Photo mode row.
Should I set the iPhone 18 Pro aperture manually?
Usually not. Auto reads the scene and picks a stop competently. Take manual control for a group at different distances, where f/4 gives real depth of field, or for a flat subject, where testing puts the sharpness peak around f/2.8 rather than wide open.
Does the iPhone 18 Pro have manual ISO?
No. Apple's Pro controls cover lens aperture, shutter speed, white balance and a histogram, and sensitivity is not among them. Third-party camera apps have offered manual ISO on iPhone for years, and the new aperture range is exposed to them through an API.
Should I shoot ProRAW on the iPhone 18 Pro?
Only if you will actually edit the files. A 48MP ProRAW frame is tens of megabytes and looks flatter straight out of the camera than the HEIF the phone would have produced. For anything posted the same day, HEIF Max is the better setting.
Do Pro controls work in video on the iPhone 18 Pro?
Yes. Apple says Pro controls work across both photo and video capture, so aperture, shutter speed and white balance can be set for a clip. Each camera mode keeps its own controls panel, so add them to Video separately from Photo.