Love the cameras. But horrible lens flares.
And it seems it’s defective:
One the right, above the window. Green flares from tube lights to the left.
In the middle of the picture:
On the TV screen:
Will try out during the day and post
I can't remember if I showed these two photos here in this thread or in another one on this topic.
Here's a picture I took with flare. I could easily see the flare on my iPhone 12 Pro Max screen before I took the photo, which you could have seen if you were holding my phone as well:
Is my phone defective? No, of course not.
Without moving my position at all, I moved the angle of the camera relative to the scene and took this photo seconds later. Notice anything different? The flares are gone.
I've been taking photo and video on the 6s Plus for 4 years, I know how to avoid normal light flares and have never experienced anything like this.
Provide a link showing a Huawei producing the same 'flare' as the cluster of green dots on the wooden post reflected from the water. That's just obscene.
cjcampbell wrote:
With normal lens flares, you can usually get rid of them with lens hoods or by changing camera angle slightly. On the new iPhones, however, these artifacts will appear in almost any picture with a bright light, no matter how much you adjust the lens angle. Yes, throughout history in photography some shots are "impossible photos," but with the iPhone it appears that making all photos "impossible" is now "normal."
Your first statement is provably untrue unless you only take photos of bright lights in conditions designed to induce flare.
I can take photos of bright lights and induce flare; I also can shift the angle slightly and it goes away.
As far as daily panics on Big Sur, please create a new thread if you want to discuss that, as it's simply not an issue others are experiencing.
I understand that some internal reflections can happen with any camera, what we're debating is the PRONOUNCED LEVEL it happens to the new iPhones. That image isn't comparable.
it's possible to use improved design to minimise this as much as possible. Apple hasn't done a very good at this, hence design flaw.
If you want to give up Night Mode, coatings would help. But then Night Mode would be pretty much impossible as not enough light would be able to pass through the lenses to the sensors for the cameras. It's all a limitation of optics on small lenses. As we've been saying over and over and over, Apple cannot bend the physics of optics.
cjcampbell wrote:
The whole reason lens hoods were invented was to reduce lens flare, so my statement is demonstrably true.
Yay, an admission that lens flare happens and that certain subjects provoke it.
There are plenty of other threads about kernel panics in Big Sur and I only mentioned it in passing. But your claim that other people are not experiencing this issue is demonstrably untrue.
As a person who reads these forums regularly, please point me to some of those threads.
Not to be snarky, but to help.
in fact, every claim you have made in this thread is demonstrably untrue.
I have posted photos from other devices every time anyone posted "Show me this on an (X)" or "This doesn't happen on a (Y)" showing that it, in fact, does.
It has to be something about the way these lenses has been placed or something, or maybe because thyey are getting bigger now? My previous iphone 8 plus did not give me all these flares or dots. Dont even think I have seen one on the 8 plus. But my new 12 pro max gives these green dots almost every time I take a night photo outside where there are lights. So annoying.
No, I'm not being hard on anyone. People are here moaning and whining that they expected much better performance from a camera phone. People here are unwilling to accept any responsibility for the poor results they're getting. People here have totally unrealistic expectations backed by pretty much NO photographic skills. Does that mean people should be semi-pro or pro photographers? Of course not, but when it is clearly and simply explained things they can do to minimize or eliminate the flares, most seem to gloss over that and continue to complain that their phones are defective. They're not defective and that's my point. People need to learn how to use their cameras better and simply altering the angle of the camera, a beyond simple concept and thing to do couldn't honestly be easier.
I never said my photos are perfect. They're far from perfect. But they do appear to be better than many of the awfully photographed pictures people keep posting as evidence of a defective camera system. What people keep posting is poorly photographed photos. Actually, some of the photos are actually not bad, they just didn't do anything to avoid flares. It's not something they're accustomed to doing, because this may well be first ever camera system they've ever used, which can take a clear photo in darkness. The reference to "my iPhone 8 didn't do this" is a poor reference. iPhone 8 couldn't take a photo in low light with the resolution iPhone 12 is capable of taking. And so, people are shooting more photos in low lit situations at bright lights, which are being rendered with flares - a naturally occurring artifact. An artifact with some care can be eliminated. Or an artifact which will continue to be present in low light photos when no care is given to doing anything to eliminate them.
Finally, if your rice is perfect, I'm betting the first time you cooked it it wasn't. You probably had to try a lot of times to make perfect rice. Was the rice defective when it wasn't perfect? Nope. The cook got better at making perfect rice.
People should accept that no camera system is perfect. And when someone takes a crappy photo, think about what might have gone wrong and try to make the photo better the next time.
Or just keep complaining here on a user to user only forum, which Apple doesn't participate in and won't in any way make their photos better or them better photographers.
I don't inhale smoke of any kind, but thanks for your concern. I'm not angry. I'm astonished people can't seem to get even after being offered suggestions on how to deal with these artifacts that they themselves can do something about this yet they continue to assert their phones are defective. You are absolutely correct that I can't fix people's lack of skill. To put it in your analogy, give a bad cook the absolute best ingredients and they'll more than likely make a terrible tasting meal.
Still, I keep offering my advice so that new people coming to this thread will possibly learn their phone isn't defective and may possibly benefit from the things I'm sharing.
You take care as well and stay healthy and safe.
“Sorry, but I find it hard to imagine ANY professional photographer would not understand flares and how to work with them. If some are indeed "professional" and they are here complaining about a camera phone, I have to question their pro skills.
If you find that condescending, I'm sorry, but it's honestly laughable a true pro wouldn't understand this.”
True pros do understand flares. They also can spot defective equipment. This is defective. This is beyond normal flare.
No, I do not expect a camera phone to perform as well as a professional camera. It has a tiny sensor and relatively simple optics. At the same time, I don’t expect it to be one of the worst I have ever seen.
Pretty sad when you can't even take a simple picture of a Christmas tree. No, this neither normal nor is it "easily avoided using basic photographic techniques." Raw amateurs take photos of Christmas trees all of the time without any lens flares. But not with this camera. Changing angle does not help.
This was a test shot, using a DJI Osmo 4. Nice unit, works well with the iPhone Pro Max. I found no trouble mounting the phone with its Apple leather case. But the flares are still there.
Any "software update" that might address this would only degrade the camera the rest of the time.
It's not "100 times worse" and the dots are not larger or brighter, though the enhanced light gathering of the camera may make the flares more noticeable than on older phone cameras.
There's a similar thread about the camera on the iPhone 11 that shows flares aren't much different than they were on last year's phones.
There are flares on the wide angle lens, but they may be less obvious.
It's a great example of a poorly framed photo of a VERY bright light, which if it had been framed better could have been without the flares. This was totally within your control. The flares would have been plainly visible before you took the photo. But you took the photo anyway, so you got what you could have seen.
Can someone explain why when you start a video from the ultra wide camera it won’t change the quality to the main lens? It remains using the bad quality of the ultrawide camera. Also why doesn’t the ultrawide lens show lens flare? Only the wide and telephoto show it.
Every other premium smart phone shows the same "green globs"; here are two Android examples:
Likewise, Tokina glass shows something similar; again the top image is from an iPhone 12 Pro Max, the bottom from a $5000 Canon DSLR with a Tokina wide angle lens.
That I do not know or if it is even possible. I do know you can edit the filters on videos but I don’t know if that will rid the flares? I’m not tech savvy at all. I honestly think the camera takes such beautiful pictures and have never felt the need to edit or learn how to. I have learned to take photos away from the light and problem solved. My 12 yr old is walking me through the editing process on pictures. I am completely new to editing and photoshopping...she just learned basics through her Art class in school.
IPhone 12 Pro Max Lens flare
