IPhone 12 Pro Max Lens flare

Then why are you here?

Apple DID exchange my 12 Pro Max yesterday and both the screen color is better (whiter) and the lens flare issue is nowhere near as bad as original one. Engineering told Genius Bar manager that there have been sensor issue with 12 pro Max.

You won't lose your view if you angle the camera a bit differently. Think about this. With dedicated cameras, like a DSLR, you hold the camera up to eye and look through a view finder to capture a photo. This generally puts the lens in the right plane of field to capture a photo correctly. But with a cell phone camera, you are holding the camera away from your body at angles often not optimal for the subject you are trying to photograph. Of course there's no way to put the camera screen up to your eye. You wouldn't be able to see what you're taking a picture of. So angling the phone better becomes harder to do with a cell phone camera. This is why you need to look more carefully at the image on your screen before you take the picture. And if you angle the camera a bit differently to eliminate flares, you'll still capture a decent image. And you'll capture a better image without flares because you angled the sensor better for the scene you're capturing.

I would tell the person who took that photo to first notice the flare was on their screen before they took the photo and to angle the camera differently. As they did so, they'd see the flare move either up or down, depending on how they are changing the angle and use that as their guide to eliminate the angle. They'd still have taken a great photo. But they could have eliminated the flare. And since he took this photo, it can be fixed easily with post processing tools, such as Snapseed or if they have an Adobe Cloud subscription, PhotoShop Express, with the healing brush.

Keep getting ghost banned by mods and having post removed.

However, I propose the issue is improperly coated lenses and use of night mode which exacerbates the issue.

Apple store and C/S agreed that looks bad and had my launch 12 Pro Max exchanged. New one is noticeably improved but NOT acceptable for a $1300 phone.

You are not writing Apple here. Just other users on this user to user only forum.

There actually is a solution. Frame your photos better. Simple. Before you ever take a photo you can see the flares plainly. If you can see them, the photo you take will include them. Angle the camera better and avoid taking photos of bright lights which cause flares, not just for cell phones, but for $45,000 Medium Format Professional Cameras.

Otherwise, to believe Apple can change optical physics on small cameras in a cell phone isn't likely at all.

bobneedham wrote:

And a lens hood on this shot would do absolutely. I consider buying a new lens. My less than $1000 dollar lenses don’t have this problem

You're correct; often you have to change 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

In addition to what William suggested, there are apps you can use in post photo processing which are quite good at removing unwanted flares. I've posted a few times in this thread results using one from Snapseed and since I'm Adobe Cloud customer, PS Express for iPhone. Both offer a Healing Brush and you can simply touch a flare with your finger using the Healing Brush tool and the flares are removed. The photo looks a little odd until you save it, then it's impossible to tell the flares were there in the first place.

I didn’t mean how many people have iPhones in the world or have discussion somewhere, this was about this discussion with around same people in 22 pages , it’s really cool 👍 , trying to understand and solve problems , I’m agree with you 💯 camera is the person who hold a camera , but I think everyone knows how to do that , some good some not , but sometimes devices not Capable to do that because Lack of Features or has a weakness, at the moment in this discussion pages people Talking not about how to learn to shoot nice pictures , but way Apple did this so hard and sometimes no possible , you need jump to the Bushes :))) or raise the camera up or down or left right to avoid light flare , And then your View gone , There's no creativity of your life how you see world , for my self I found that you need point directly douse dots to the light to Hide them or turn away , but again then your photo to high, or you Lose your view . And in that video no one will escape from that light flare from iPhone because it’s not compatible to do that or has weaknesses ,only the way leave that spot or move to Opposite direction , as you said Different Device different story 😉👌

Whether you agree or don't agree means little. The FACT is with Night Mode photography, the dots are an unavoidable artifact, unless you angle the camera to avoid them, which is totally within YOUR control. You couldn't take Night Mode photos with any iPhone before iPhone 11. The same artifacts are common on ALL phones which take Night Mode photos, including iPhone 11, Samsung Phones, Google Phones, etc.

When you create a camera system consisting of small lenses which need a lot of light to create an in focus image, in the dark, which doesn't do this, you'll be VERY RICH.

I have been conducting a bunch of tests and I think I know what the problem is. The "flares" are exactly the same color as the sensor. Light, coming in through the lens, is reflecting off the sensor onto the rear of the lens, then reflecting off the lens back onto the sensor. The only solution would be to move the sensor further away from the lens, which would make the phone considerably thicker and heavier.

That’s a common lens flare which is caused by the light entering the front lens element at a sharp angle. Easiest way to get rid of it is to use your hand to prevent the sun from hitting the front of the lens. The sun is out of the frame so your hand will not be in the frame.

I Just chatted with an apple care agent and sent her the pictures and she said to me that the phone must be checked if not changed. She also mentioned that this is NOT normal.

There are no software filters, and polarized filters do not eliminate lens flare.

Coated and circularly polarized filters can sometimes reduce flare but at the cost of dramatically reduced light transmission, often two f stops or more, turning your f/1.6 normal lens into an f/3.2.

It’s only one way to avoid this , turn your iPhone to other directions :))) every single iPhone and other phones like Samsung S21 Ultra has this problem , some has small dots minimal flare , some Like 12 pro MaX and S21 ultra has terrible flare blue dots, in some picture they are big sometimes small, but there is no way to avoid them where is so much street light or others lights , same video , specially when car lights on you need point iPhone camera Directly to the car light but if you move a little bit to other directions you getting reflection , in single situation you can avoid this I'm agree but not others way where is so much lights, you getting UFO like light:)))) , even if you turn back some how iPhone catching reflections because sensor is a big , the problem is that there All lenses don't have an anti-reflective coating , maybe this is not Apple issue maybe some manufacturers who makes this lenses, anyway Whatever you say or others this is a Definitely a problem of all new smartphones , next step is new iPhone 13 maybe with a DSLR technology, but at the moment for most people this is a sad that you can’t take pictures without this

Nope. It's not a hardware issue. The flares by nature will be in the opposite direction as reflected off the sensor. You can get as many iPhone 12's you want and at the angle you took the photo, they'll ALL do the very same thing.