Iphone 11 Pro Extreme lens flare

And what’s the use of it if you can’t take a picture of a cat in front of a fire place? I know you spend a lot of time defending iPhone’s cameras. But my question is why do you feel you need to on every post?

Perhaps you can point us on what is the right technique m. I spoke with Apple support last night and they did not indicate anything about technique.

my point was just to document that I will have my device replaced, and if there is still the flare, then I will assume the limitation of the phone.

At this point you may as well have your phone replaced.

Basically you want to avoid situations where a very bright light is shining directly into the phone camera lens; you can clearly see the flare on the screen as you compose the photo, so move as necessary to either eliminate it, force it into an area of the frame you know you will crop out or that would place it in an area a third party photo manipulation program like Snapseed could easily cover it up.

The problem is not only with direct light from say the sun ect. - Even simple streetlights from meters away from you they give these green lens flare dots. It's doing it a lot on my 12 pro max, and it's not something you can always fix by angeling the phone or use a special technique, it doesnt always work with the shot you want to take. And since older iphones don't have this issue then we can only conclude it has something to do with the camera lens or the glass covering the lens. My old iphone 8 plus that I had before the 12 did not give me these lens flare dots when taking photos at night of streetlights and things like that. Others like me believe it has something to do with the coating of the glass, or the light bouncing back and forth from the glass and down to the camera lens.

Had the same issue on my 11 Pro Max. I just learned to live with it.

One would expect they have fixed that in the 12, but no, it got worse! My photos and videos have flares all over. Totally unacceptable.

Apple representative said it's an expected behaviour and normal. no professional photographer click pic in front of light source.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68WnVfZ_JLM&lc=UgwULcTunHqzP265N5N4AaABAg.9H2DdSOUvnx9KuaDTewUM6

This photo depicts the sun through hazy clouds with the sailing ship. No subtle change of the composition. The problem occurs with strong light sources. If the sky was clear the green dot would be easily seen.

That's complete nonsense, as if some light clouds would be enough to eliminate the issue from a shot of the sun.

As the photographer, I can say it was easy to see the green dots from flare and adjust my composition accordingly when taking the shot, the same as anyone would need to do using any camera.

And what are these magical compositional techniques that you used in the shot to eliminate the green spot? Can you share a photo you shot with the green spot before you changed the composition of the shot?

Short of shooting with a wider lens and then cropping out the green spot, magically removing green spots and ghosting when there is a discreet bright light source is not feasible.

Actually it is.

As you move your own position and tilt the phone up and down, the flares will change position and either be in an area of no concern or will disappear entirely.

This is what professional photographers and videographers do every day, it's why it takes hours of adjusting camera angles and lighting before a two minute scene is shot for a movie or TV show.

I don't have any comparisons handy because I compose before I take a shot, and if I see flare I react before I ever tap the shutter button, the same as I do with my DSLR.

Are you saying you are getting green dots when you shoot with your DSLR? What lenses do you shoot with? And you have to recompose your shots to get the shot? We’re not talking about common lens flare but prominent green dots and ghosting.

LOL. The iPhone 11 and 12 cameras are trash, and probably that one used by Hallmark too, which makes it even more outrageous considering the price.

Yes, sans the ugly flares and halos, they are great, but there are many instances where you have to shoot at places with light sources. It’s not “a matter of technique” if other iPhone models and basically most other cameras don’t have such problem.

Working around unintended effects is what makes a photographer/videographer more advanced.

A painter doesn’t blame their brushes for not giving the results they want, they learn how to use their tools to achieve the effect they envision.

If all cameras that produce flare are “trash,” then all cameras are “trash.”

In just the past few pages you’ve seen evidence of flare from DSLRs, high end cinema camera/lens combos costing over $40K, and from Samsung’s flagship. It’s a common effect and ironically becomes more of an issue the better the camera and lens system gets.

As I posted in the 12 PM flare thread, you may have to change your position or even your your timing:

At this point you may be asking what all the fuss is about since, after all, you dutifully use a lens hood—a product specifically designed to reduce the effects of flare. Unfortunately, if you are shooting in a direction anywhere near the sun, most hoods will have little effect. In particular, the hoods on zoom lenses need to be short enough that they don't cause vignetting when the lens is at its shortest focal length, meaning that they block very little light in most of the lens's range. If the sun itself is the culprit, you can sometimes hold up a hat or card to shield the front of your lens from the most direct rays, but that isn't always practical, and in some cases the sun's glare from the the surrounding clouds and sky create a messy situation all around. In those cases, your only options are post-processing, or some clever use of HDR and image compositing. (I've been known to shoot a scene with the sun blocked out to get a nice rendering of the shadow detail, and then again without it blocked, to fill in the sky.) The two resulting images can be combined into a single image which doesn't have the flare effects throughout.

[ … ]

Often, avoiding lens flare is simply a matter of timing. If you can capture a sunrise early enough, like in this image of the sun rising through the statue of a bull on the top of the Bakong Temple, or late enough as the sun sets, then the sun can become a natural part of the scene. Of course, those images will still have high dynamic range, so they often require a minus exposure compensation adjustment to expose for the sky, which in turn makes the subject a silhouette. 

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/content/taming-sun-lens-flare-and-how-deal-it

It is ultimately your fault because you are choosing to shoot a photo that induces flare.

In this case the answer would likely be to stand up so the bulbs in the next room are not shining directly into the lens.

If you think a phone with a lesser quality camera works for you because it's flares are less noticeable due to their poorer quality, that's great - you don't need to use a more expensive tool if a less capable one provides results that are acceptable; if you are just touching up a wall you can use the $.79 foam brush instead of the $30 horsehair one.