Apple's hype around the inclusion of its first triple camera rear lens array might leave you thinking that it had invented the whole concept of placing three lenses onto a camera. It ain't so folks, because there are countless Android counter-examples that were there first, in some cases by years, not months.
Still, what you get is a good array for adding a degree of flexibility to your photographic choices. What you get is a trio of 12MP lenses, covering wide, ultrawide and telephoto shooting modes. Ultrawide is especially good for landscape shooting, but it's also a good option to give your closer shots further context.
So here's a sample wide shot:

The same shot in ultra wide:

And then to flip it around, the detail in the telephoto lens:

Apple's entire mantra around its camera software is simplicity and control, and this makes it a very appealing prospect for folks who just want to shoot and get an essentially good result. There's no array of sliders or even that many choices to make when you're taking a shot, so you're very much letting the iPhone camera app make the choices for you. There are some nice new tweaks in place, like video automatically starting if you hold down the still shutter button, so you don't have to switch modes, but it's still very much a guided process.
For the most part this works very well, delivering crisp but rarely over-processed or fake looking photos. Apple's portrait modes remain my favourite for shooting faces thanks to the ability to deliver DSLR-style bokeh to shots, and this year the inclusion of an additional lens means you're not limited to just shooting human faces. Your experiences can vary as to where the bokeh comes in if you're shooting pets or other objects, but it's generally very pleasing.
Then there's the new night mode, which adds low light capabilities to the iPhone platform in a rather explicit way. Low light capability is absolutely a bedrock foundation of any premium smartphone, because just about any mid-range phone can handle good shots in reasonable light.
Apple's night mode is very typical of Apple's general "control everything" approach.
Apple's night mode is very typical of Apple's general "control everything" approach. It's all about control, because you can't actually choose to engage night mode at all for any given shot. It'll only engage if the sensors themselves judge the ambient light to be low enough, at which point an icon with a seconds countdown – typically from 1 to 3 seconds – will appear in the upper left-hand corner of the camera interface.
Like competing night modes, this isn't a counter for a long exposure shot, but instead an approach that takes multiple photos over its shooting time before stitching them together into a brighter and clearer final shot. Apple's software for this is quite fun to watch in action, as you see each exposure taken as it gradually opens up for more light before the final shot is taken.
While you're limited to a maximum of 3 seconds in handheld mode, if you drop the iPhone 11 Pro Max into a tripod, you can bump that shooting time up as high as 28 seconds. You'll absolutely need a remote Bluetooth shutter in that case because any movement, including hitting the onscreen shutter button on the iPhone 11 Pro Max is enough to make it think you're working in handheld mode, at which point your counter maxes out at 3 seconds again.
It's also a somewhat fiddly process getting the touch right to slide up the timing in either handheld or tripod, because the touch zone around it is rather small. Apple is also keeping Night Mode to itself, with no API available to external developers. So if you favour any of the many competing iOS camera apps, you won't be able to use Night Mode with them, at least for the time being.
Still, what matters here is results, and it's a very mixed matter. Last year's Apple iPhone XS Max was easily the worst low light performer against its pack of Android alternatives, and here Apple has done a lot of great work in making the iPhone 11 Pro Max a whole lot better.

I could never have got this shot out of the iPhone XS Max.

Or for that matter this one.
Apple's night mode photos tend towards realistic colour tones, which I do appreciate. Some cameras, such as Google's AI-driven Google Pixel 3 camera, often oversaturate colours, but that's not often an issue here.
However, it's worth looking at the iPhone 11 Pro's night capabilities in a wider context.
To do that, I took it and a handful of competing Android phones to a local park for a deliberately brutal test, shooting in near darkness with just one nearby streetlight providing any illumination. All shots were taken with phones resting on the park fence, but otherwise effectively in "handheld" mode.
The Apple iPhone XS Max in similar tests could barely make out anything, but how would the iPhone 11 Pro Max fare?
Well, first off, here's the competing Samsung Galaxy S10 5G taking the shot in its own night mode:

And then the Samsung Galaxy Note10+ in the same circumstances:

Google's Pixel 3XL only has a single rear lens, but it does make a very good effort under deliberately taxing circumstances:

And then there's the exceptional Huawei P30 Pro:

So how does the Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max compare?

Apple has done a lot of work to get its night mode up to scratch, but it's still a very wide margin between it and the very best Android low light shooting modes. This is a deliberately tough test, and it's commendable that the iPhone 11 Pro Max has come as far as it can – but there's still work to do.
One area where Apple has absolutely dominated in the smartphone camera space is in video, and this is absolutely still the case for the iPhone 11 Pro Max.
While again, you've got to drop into the separate settings app to choose video quality, you can shoot at anywhere up to 4K/60fps in quite stunning clarity, even in handheld modes. It's pretty much the reverse of its night mode shooting scenario; while it's catching up there, everyone else is still busy catching up to Apple when it comes time to capture moving pictures of any kind.
Apple has also beefed up the front facing selfie camera, with a 12MP f/2.2 sensor that captures generally flattering portrait photos with a variety of adjustable parameters. Again it's not flawless, but it's generally good. My own lack of hair often befuddles portrait modes, but the iPhone 11 Pro Max handled it fairly well.

You can also adjust the lighting and other factors with easy to access sliders, including the new high key light mono setting:

You can see on my shoulder how the portrait lighting hasn't quite cut out all of the train seat behind me, but it's still a very good effort overall.
Is the Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max equipped with the world's best mobile camera as Apple would have you believe?
It's a slightly open question. It's easily the best camera array in an iPhone to date, and a significant upgrade on previous iPhone generations in terms of photo quality and flexibility. Portrait shooting and video shooting are particular strong points, and low light shooting capabilities are substantially improved, but they're still not quite best in class.
Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max sample photos





