IPhone 12 Pro lens flare

I am currently using my new iPhone 12Pro Max and I am greatly disappointed with the lens flare issues.

my Last iphone was 7plus and I was so happy doing photography with it and out of a great expectations I bought 12Pro Max but I ended up with a disappointment with these lens issues.

I’m attaching 2pics here, 1st is captured during day time in natural light where you can see a clear reflections to bottom right and the 2nd photo was taken in low light attempting to capture my Christmas tree

Sorry, but that’s not true. We are not talking about ordinary lens flares here. Yes, this happens naturally under certain lighting conditions when taking pictures. What has happened since the iPhone 11 are reflections. Light sources and scenarios are repeated in the photos. To me, it looks like mistakes were made here with either the lenses or/and the cover of these lenses. What happens here is not normal. And no one can sell this to me as normal either.

The artefacts seen on this thread ARE the result of a fault with the lens. I have never posted on an Apple forum before and cannot believe some of the people on here blaming users. Not sure what their motivation is. A few users on this thread have contacted Apple and I’ve read at least one has had their phone replaced.

You don't have to explain what you like or don't like. I think your photo is a really good photo. You could have if you want to, angle the camera differently and you would have not gotten some or all of the flares. You can remove the flares in post processing if you want using photography apps like Snapseed or Photoshop. But if you like the effect, that's perfectly fine.

Some people here are simply unwilling to accept reality or take any responsibility for the photos they take. Instead, they have an unrealistic and impossible expectation their phones should be able to take a perfect photo regardless of the composition, angle, depth of field, subject, etc. They are convinced their phones camera systems are defective, but they're not. They just refuse to learn how to better use them.

Plus we have not seen any examples of this with "light lighting;" they have all been point source intense lighting which the manufacturer of the phone that "doesn't do this" explicitly says to avoid because it's normal for it to happen on their device under those circumstances…

It is normal, you can accept reality or not.

This thread is full of examples of the same artifacts in the same quantity taken by other phones as well as statements from Huawei and Samsung that you refuse to believe.

Ultimately, it's your call.

If you can return your phone, do so, you will never be happy with it.

If you can't, sell it for the same reason.

Apple will not be changing the design of the phone, and there is nothing to "fix."

If you are happy with the flares the P30 gives you, great, only buy Huawei phones from now on and never consider Apple again, it makes precisely zero difference to me.

Continuing to complain about it here will accomplish precisely nothing.

It's a particularly difficult photo to take. Internet search reveals people complaining of the same issue with iPhones going back several years as well as Android phones and DSLRs.

In the case of professional photographers using high end DSLRs, the answers online indicate the proper technique is to use a much shorter exposure and stop down the light entering the lens to reduce flare the apply an orange gelled fill flash to approximate the color temperature of the candles reflected onto the face of the cake recipient.

Obviously that's more work than most people will be doing with an iPhone, but that shows you the amount of thought and work that needs to go into a situation to be able to take a photo without flare.

According to my friend, who is a physicist, the reflections on the photos are caused by the covers in front of the lenses. Basically, it's the same effect as if I were taking a picture through a window pane. The sceneries that are reflected in the window are also shown in the photos. So it is due to the type of coverage. With cameras, people often use appropriate UV filters in front of the lenses to protect them. Their special coatings prevent reflections. Other smartphones do not have such large-area coverings in front of the lenses. Therefore, such effects do not occur.

scorproy wrote:

The problem is more acute during a sunny day.

Reflections from water creating green dots.

Some images posted in this thread shows that.

The iphone camera is awesome. Its just not designed to mitigate these reflections.

Of course it is; even Huawei says to avoid taking photos in those situations.

You can't design something like that out or the designers of the $40K camera you don't care about would.

Huawei even worked with Leica to try to eliminate it, and Leica could not.

It's just the nature of a camera and lens.

I posted this as a reply and it was removed for being 'non technical'. Important for people to see what the mods of this board (ie the same people running the 'it can't be done because physics' lie) are deleting:

My Fuji x100 doesn't have the same flair issues as my 12, neither does my 6s Plus. Definitely the new optics in the 12 are much more prone to dots than the old iPhones. I was in a forest undergrowth setting and couldn't have the speckled sun anywhere in the frame on the 12 without a blue dot appearing, not so for the 6s.

The proof will be in the iphone 13, 14 etc when suddenly the blue/green dot issue has been resolved and all these posters brains will have exploded because that means that somehow Apple must have broken the laws of physics lol

These are classic flares from light striking the lens at an oblique angle and will be seen with any camera with a good lens in that situation.

Flare is an issue with the Pixel 3 as well; both of these were taken with one:

There is literally nothing we can do about it, whether Apple or it’s ultra-fanboys acknowledge it or not. It’s a hardware issue. Just use another camera for such situations. I always carry two phones, so I know when to not use the iPhone and use my other one instead. For most part, I still use the iPhone. It’s still my main shooter. It’s great when there’s not direct light source.

We can only hope Apple considers fixing that in the next iPhones.

Is it a hardware issue as in something caused by hardware? Why yes, it is.

Can you find a camera system that doesn't experience it? Yes, by finding a cheap camera that uses a single element plastic lens rather than a modern multi-element glass lens.

The two phones have different lens configurations, so the lens flare will be different for each camera. But it is still there in both. The iPhone 12 has a better lens with more elements, so there is more opportunity for reflections between lens elements. If I was with you and took a picture with my $5,000 DSLR from the same location you would see lens flare in my photo also.