Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max launched with a new Pro mode that lets users manually adjust shutter speed — but doing so disables the phone’s multi-frame image stacking, resulting in noisier, darker photos, especially after dark. Night mode is also unavailable when shutter speed is set manually.
That’s the finding of DPReview’s camera testing, cited by Notebookcheck on October 12, 2026. The issue affects both models identically. It’s not a bug. It’s intentional: Apple disables frame stacking to preserve the user’s chosen shutter speed, because combining multiple exposures would distort timing accuracy.
So while the feature gives control, it trades off the computational photography that defines iPhone imaging. The variable-aperture 48MP main sensor (f/1.5–f/4.0) remains unaffected by this limitation. Aperture adjustments don’t interfere with stacking. But shutter speed does.
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