Too much grain in my photos

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Level 1

15 points

Too much grain in my photos

My Phone: iPhone X with latest iOS 12.1.3. Purchased few months ago.

I searched about grained photo issue in iPhone and found out tried fixing it by removing the case,cleaning the camera lens and tried factory reset too. Also I tried using different apps apart from the stock camera app. Because I saw that in many articles mentioned that camera app use some kind of algorithm to reduce noice and it cause some water colour effect which is true I can see too much water colour effect when I zoom into my photos.

I'm telling this because I compared unfiltered photos I took from different phones. I even compared a photo I took from my iPhone 6 and iPhone 7. The photo I took from the older iPhone's are better than the X. Colours are not that good but edges were sharp and clear.

Then I used third party apps and took some photos. It gave me better quality images than stock camera app but still I saw too much grain.

I'm not comparing photos with a DSLR camera quality. I'm comparing photos with other high-end phones. And I want to educate community whether it's a good option to buy iPhone if someone's main focus is for photography or to take high quality pictures like Apple advertise on their videos and events. We all know that functionality wise there is no smart phone that can beat iPhone.

So please help me to figure out what is the actual problem with the camera.

Thank You.

iPhone X

Posted on Jan 12, 2019 5:32 AM

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Answer 1

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SiHancox

Level 5

4,953 points

Jan 12, 2019 6:33 AM in response to sujan_7

Grainy images usually has nothing to do with a dirty front lens cover, that shows up as blurry or “misty”, grain is most commonly a function of high iso and low light.

You could try turning off Auto HDR under Settings/Camera and then once in the Camera App leave it off (you basically have manual control of that function). The reason for turning it off is that Apple appear to have messed with previous HDR function and images under less than ideal conditions do now appear more grainy than before, even XS users are reporting dissatisfaction with this aspect.

Not sure about on the X but did read for XS, SmartHDR generally takes higher ISO images (therefore more grain) but then when combining attempts through software to reduce that affect, needless to say it’s not always successful.

I believe (just my view mind you) switching off Auto HDR lets the Camera App take images at a slightly lower ISO rating because it doesn’t need the speed to get several shots of the object for the HDR affect, just a guess mind you.

If you are still dissatisfied with the default camera app you could look towards third party, I currently use Halide and even though it’s using the same lens system the images do generally turn out better under challenging conditions, some of reason though could be due to the slightly higher file size being employed (ie less compression).

Lastly, regarding file type and size, you can under Settings/Camera/Formats choose between high efficiency or most compatible (jpg), the latter is slightly larger in size. Supposedly Apple’s new file system should give better quality together with smaller sized files, but when I’ve compared the two from my X on my iMac I always end up preferring jpg. Note there is a similar setting under Settings/Photos that influences how the file is exported (Automatic or Keep Originals).

Not sure if any of the above will help, but I must admit when I look back at images taken under iOS11 and compare with those taken under iOS12, I’m generally preferring the former.

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