Lab Test of the iPhone 17 Pro – Rolling Shutter, Dynamic Range Trials and Exposure Challenges

Lab Test

by Gunther MachuSeptember 8^th, 2026

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Well, this is not your typical Lab Test headline, is it? When we started to run the iPhone 17 Pro through our usual CineD Lab Test procedures end of last year, we got stuck with a camera behavior which basically renders our standard procedures obsolete. And with tomorrow’s Apple event almost certainly bringing the next iPhone generation, we are just in time with this article – which, we know, many of you have been waiting for quite a while. Curious to hear what’s going on? Then read on …

In November 2025 we started the lab test journey of the Apple iPhone 17 Pro. Even back then, we got very valuable input from some of our readers about the camera behavior, which we stumbled across as well but at least were able to recreate (somehow).

With our documentation we then reached out to our Apple contacts, but despite repeated requests, Apple has not provided a technical explanation of what is really happening behind the scenes of the image pipeline. That’s totally understandable, but it leaves us with speculation on our side rather than manufacturer-confirmed facts.

Hence, we decided to publish our findings anyway – first, to let you know why a standard lab test is not possible, and second, to make you aware of some interesting behavior.

We used the Blackmagic camera app in manual settings and Apple Log 2 for all the tests described further down the article.

Rolling shutter of the iPhone 17 Pro cameras

We have three cameras (13mm, 24mm and 100mm) on the iPhone 17 Pro, and we used our standard 300Hz strobe light to reveal the sequence of black and white bars, a characteristic stemming from the read-out nature of rolling shutter sensors.

Let’s start with the 13mm camera:

We get a very good 5.6ms (less is better) for ProRes RAW in 17:9 (4224×2240). For 16:9 we get 6ms, and in Open Gate mode 7.4ms.

The 24mm camera is even faster, we are below 3ms for all modes (17:9, 16:9 and Open Gate).

The 100mm camera exhibits 5.6ms in 17:9 mode, 5.8ms in 16:9 and 7.5ms in Open Gate:

These are all really good values for rolling shutter!

Dynamic Range of the iPhone 17 Pro – unfortunately it said “No”

Now here is where we stumbled across insurmountable problems. The usual setup is that we put the camera(s) in front of our Xyla21 chart (please head over here to see how we test dynamic range) and then manually expose such that we clip at least the first if not the second and third patch of the chart (it does not matter, but at least one patch needs to clip).

And here we encountered the following, using the 24mm lens, Apple Log 2 and ProRes RAW:

We started with 1/25s shutter speed (hence, 360° shutter) and ISO 101, manual settings. We got 6 clipped patches.

Strangely, when we moved to slightly higher shutter speeds to eliminate some of the clipped patches, we encountered the following at 1/30s, ISO 101:

All of a sudden, we have 2 more stops of dynamic range (counting the non-clipped patches), and please notice that the clipped patches have moved to higher code values in the Luma Waveform chart on the right! This could be a hint at frame stacking (which would require a shutter angle lower than 360°).

The math basically says that moving from 1/25s to 1/30s shutter should reduce exposure by just ~0.26 stops.

But then it got even more interesting as we tapped on the clipped patches on the left of the Xyla21 chart (we wanted the iPhone to focus correctly).

Despite fully manual settings, ProRes RAW and Apple Log 2, the iPhone 17 Pro all of a sudden decided to apply its own computational scene interpretation and at the first moment showed this:

Notice how high the remaining clipped patches sit on the waveform, but about a second later the iPhone settled on this:

The remaining 3 clipped patches moved a bit lower on the waveform, and the iPhone settled on 1/33s shutter, ISO 104. And that happens dynamically, as it takes around 1 second.

In essence, applying an exposure difference of ~0.4 stops moving from ISO 101 and 1/25th shutter with 6 clipped patches to ISO 104 and 1/33th shutter with 3 clipped patches, we created 3 more stops on the waveform chart!

And we can see around 11-12 stops above the noise floor. Which is a very good result for a tiny phone camera sensor!

And quite clearly, results would vary if we tapped a bit more to the left or the right patches.

Let’s do some speculation

As mentioned earlier in the article, we reached out to Apple, but they have not provided any technical details on scene recognition or tone mapping. Hence, we are left to speculate what is happening here.

First, let me summarize what a proper Xyla 21 / IMATEST dynamic range test requires:

• Exposure remains absolutely fixed.
• Sensor gain remains fixed.
• RAW sensor data is processed identically from frame to frame.
• No local tone mapping occurs.
• No highlight recovery changes or frame stacking between frames.
• No scene recognition influencing image processing.

Traditional cinema or consumer cameras in manual mode to a 100% satisfy these requirements, as well as the recently tested Insta360 Luna Ultra (Lab Test here) and DJI Osmo Pocket 4P (Lab Test here).

Tapping the screen for focus seems to bypass all manual settings – however the phone settles close to the inital shutter speed & ISO values. The phone thus seems to be shifting its hardware dynamic tone mapping / tone curve weights based on what it thinks is the new “subject” of the scene.

Hence, despite using the Blackmagic camera app in manual shutter, manual ISO, locked white balance mode, ProRes RAW and Apple Log 2, the Apple imaging pipeline still appears to be applying scene-dependent processing downstream of the sensor once you tap on the screen.

That makes the Xyla21 / IMATEST evaluation as well as the latitude test fundamentally unreliable. And that’s why we needed to abort the lab test at this stage.

Summary

The iPhone is less a camera and more an image-generation pipeline that starts with a sensor. For normal users this is fantastic.

For lab testing it is a nightmare because the camera is no longer a deterministic imaging device. It almost feels like our challenge was not measuring the iPhone 17 Pro’s dynamic range, but determining which dynamic range the phone had decided to deliver for that particular scene.

Nevertheless, rolling shutter values are great for all three cameras, and you can expect 11-12 stops of dynamic range above the noise floor. Which is really good.

What’s your take on the results we have been getting? Please share your experiences shooting with the iPhone 17 Pro & iPhone 17 Pro Max in the comments below.