Iphone 11 Pro Extreme lens flare

Dear William,

Furthermore, the mirror like surface of the iPhone 11 camera Square is a “reflection nest” which under certain circumstances will further degrade picture quality when strong light beams are reflected from it.

To my humble opinion, some very simple, non-onerous and well known camera technical rules could improve the iPhone 11 performance and immunity to flare & ghosting...

Yes but we also have some mirror like glossy surfaces on the 11 Pro series which may contribute as well as the rings.

The issue is that nowadays with these large and exposed lenses covers, phone companies have to find a compromise and certainly forgo the lenses covers treatment for the simple reason that it is not scratch resistant and it is therefore very fragile to the point that a protective cap becomes a must. Having caps would definitely change the way these phones are used or rather tucked away in our pockets / bags. This is what may have led phone companies to avoid it.

I’m sure Apple will fix it and make it “one step” as soon as they determine best how to break existing laws of optics and physics.

Find a friend with a Galaxy 10+ or Pixel 4 and prove that they can take a photo of the same light fixture under the same conditions with no flare.

Totally agree, if nobody would complain, noone will know and Apple won't fix it (this or next time). So better be a bit annoying and not accept everything delivered as given. Apparently it's working because i got told that an internal memo made engineers look at it and the more people complain the higher the issues gets pushed up in importance (explained to me by two different Apple Support Supervisors).

Meanwhile my phone is in repair, I tried some software to see how to handle pics taken with night mode. It's fairly easy to make the flares go away with the right toolkit like Adobe Lightroom (paid version however). So what could be Apple's Solution for the hardware problem? 1) Hardware exchange with better build quality (very expensive to roll out) or 2) Software update (AI finding spots / flares in night pictures and removing them (roll out easy / development maybe not so much))...

It’s a manufacturing defect. I’ve been complaining about this to my local Apple store and the extremely polite technician explained it’s because the rear camera lens are a bit further away than normal from the glass guard which creates refraction but overall it creates a better photo and video experience. I wasn’t buying it, never had an issue with such immense flares and flares on my iPhone 5, 6, or 7plus. They swapped out the camera and put a new one in but still have the same issue. I won’t accept this and will be taking the phone back. I purchased my iPhone 11 pro for the camera quality but this is a huge let down with no obvious fix

The limitations involve using state of the art lens technologies without access to specialized proprietary knowledge like that used by Leica to co-design the camera on the P20.

This is why the artifacts on the 11 Pro Max are very similar to that seen on competing flagship phones like the Galaxy S10 and the Pixel 4; those companies also don't have access to Leica's proprietary technologies.

The attitude from Apple corporate/engineering had been beyond disappointing regarding the iPhone 11 Pro lens flare / floating artifacts issues. I personally went through 4 phones (my original purchase and 3 replacements) and ALL have these unacceptable results when capturing still and video imaging.

The hard working support representatives have done their best to help frustrated customers like myself, but the final word from Apple is that "there are no problems, change your shooting style, try removing the undesirable floaters with third party imaging software, or go buy another product."

Some of my previous comments on these community forums have been removed/censured by Apple. I hope this comment can be viewed and weighed in an unprejudiced way. I'm sure that most of us commenting simply want a phone that performs in the way Apple advertised it would. In a glaring (no pun intended) comparison, my trusty 'Ol iPhone 6S reliably captured images without any of these issues.

As an Engineer and keen photographer I have thought about the various specifications constraints which could have led Apple to this compromise and I have summarised these in my previous message in answer to LightrodSilver.

Now, I have no idea if these lenses covers have top notch anti-reflective coating and matt black surfaces on their inner side as this would help... I believe that these lenses covers inner and outer sides are same though... I shall buy some which are OEM just to check and report.

None of you are "deplorables." I do think with more care in composition, people can take some pretty spectacular photos, with these new iPhone's, which until recently are better than I could have ever imagined a cell phone capable of taking.

Your hope that Apple admits anything about a normally occurring artifact will most assuredly go unfulfilled. Given the extremely high praise professionals are heaping on the new camera's in the newest phones, I imagine Apple doesn't consider this an issue. I don't either and feel my phone takes the best photos of any iPhone I've ever owned. Is it perfect? Of course not. Even the best DSLR's can take crappy photos. The old saying "it's not the camera, it's the photographer" has always been true.

Yesterday I went to an Apple store, they were keen to test my iPhone but I declined as they are all suffering from the same flare & ghosting issue. The outcome would have been in vain as it is a design issue.

This is not about replacing the phone with a new one but more about correcting a design issue which is clearly abnormal otherwise people, including image capture / making professionals, would not be complaining about it on this forum in the first place.

The appropriate optics anti-reflective coatings lead to very significant improvements in light transmission whilst reducing refraction and reflection and therefore there are strictly no trade offs in terms of image quality since these anti-reflective coatings will reduce chromatic aberrations, fringing, flaring, ghosting, etc...

The on sensor image formation and therefore picture quality in both day light and low light will therefore be significantly improved.

Hi M: Here's a YouTube link to a quickly grabbed holiday video that I shot with my (then) newly acquired iPhone 11Pro.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvMJ_NNKP94

When reviewing the clip I noticed something unexpected and somewhat odd: At approx 8 secs in you can begin to see a flipped and inverted floating image of the lit portions of the carriage. As the carriage passes the artifact floats and bounces behind and to the sides of the carriage.

Now some will say that this is simply lens flare and I'll again have to disagree and call it floating/bouncing artifacts – i.e., additional lens to sensor anomalies. It was after this viewing that I went back and looked at other video and stills that I had shot and found that many were marred by these types of artifacts. Now I get it about lighting conditions: a lit carriage rolling by in the night. The imagery is bound to show some aberrations – but such a complete and bouncy poltergeist is kinda spooky. What really scares me though is Apple's dug-in position that this is normal.

The optical fix for the ghosting is simple; it is a complete optical design from A to Z.

What is not necessarily simple is that we are not dealing with a camera per se. We are dealing with a camera phone which people throw in their bags, put in pockets, handle by hand i.e. finger prints in the lenses covers, etc... By comparison, is anyone happy to throw their camera lenses unprotected in a bag, put their fingers on camera lenses or even filters ? Of course not !!!

It is this specific camera phone context which makes things so much more difficult and lead to a compromise which is detrimental to what can be achieved in terms of optical performance. Unless changes are made to the current camera phone paradigm with adoption of some systematic efficient protection to the lenses covers then I am afraid things may not improve much...

All smartphones with high quality lenses do; those with poor, low resolution plastic lenses often do not.

Also, here's a whole thread on lens flare seen on the iPhone 8:

iPhone 8 Plus horrible lens flare and ref… - Apple Community

bobneedham wrote:

They had to realize that people are going to shoot many many sunsets, along with night shots (which is a selling point for them) with bright light sources.

So the sunset photo I posted above that I took with my 11 Pro Max is what, then? A composite? A Photoshop job? Or a careful job of composition to avoid flare?

It's the latter.

Apple has never claimed to be a camera/lens company, but they have been justifiably proud of the cameras on their phones, to the point that unless I have to in order to achieve a particular result, I now leave my DSLR at home for all casual photography.

There's an old saying, "The best camera is the one you have with you."

As of a few releases of the iPhone ago, I no longer feel I am making a huge sacrifice by "having" to take a photo with my phone rather than say my Canon point and shoot, which I haven't felt the need to use in about two years.

With the advent of RAW mode in iOS 14.3, I now have even less reason to ever use the Canon, and the DSLR is used when I need very wide angles or more than 2.5x optical zoom.