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.
Look through the massive number of pages in this thread. See example of photos I've posted, where I captured the green flares and then from the exact same position a second shot where I angled the camera relative to the subject and the photo contains NO FLARES.
That's what makes me qualified. I've proven how to do it.
Seriously.
Optics and physics haven't changed but our expectations from ever better cameras have.
When phone cameras were sensors behind cheap plastic lenses, it wasn't a big deal; now that they are multi-megapixel photo devices behind glass lenses, other issues come to the forefront.
Lens flare is something photographers have always had to deal with, now phone photographers do too.
Yet the video mentioned above was shot with iPhone 12s, and many other professionals use their iPhone 12s in their work every day.
It's not a matter of a device having or not having flares or artifacts, it's a matter of avoiding conditions that induce them.
One example:
CNET: Why iPhone 12 Pro Max's camera is so exciting to pro photographers
That doesn't mean the next big budget Hollywood film will be shot on an iPhone rather than an Alexa or Red, but have they been used to shoot footage that has been used in films and television? Yes.
Ultimately it's just a tool, and whether that tool is appropriate for the job at hand is a decision for the creative (that's you) to make.
You can't. Feedback to Apple goes here --> Feedback - iPhone - Apple
If you want a fast shot however, instead of defaulting to night mode, choose the flash, which will turn off night mode. Keep in mind if the light is so low night mode would be required to take a decent photograph, without flash or night mode, the picture will be grainy, maybe even unusable.
If you take the time to peruse this thread you will find many posted examples of similar artifacts generated by virtually every other premium smartphone on the market, including those from Google, Huawei, LG and Samsung along with Panasonic digital camcorders.
Truth is that has failed their customers with this problem. I have spoken with pro photographers and they ve all told me that lens flare do indeed exist but at no circumstances this kind of “flares”. No dots and not shadow reflections. Again, I strongly believe that should run a lens replacement program and try to fix this problem. Taking the max device only for the cameras and yet you cannot shoot. Lens cover won’t work...
While it's true Apple uses some Computational Processing in their photography wizardry, that's more taking huge amounts of data in low light to piece together photo's with clarity unheard of until very recently. But for Apple to decide what should be in a picture or not in a picture and to remove data the lens sends to the sensor would not, in my opinion be a good option. What if the camera sees things and removes them, yet you didn't want them removed. And that CAN include flares in some situations. Personally, I don't want the camera to make such decisions for me.
What they need to be able to figure out is how to let enough light into the sensor, either with redesigning the lenses or the lens surrounds to minimize artifacts and that's not an easy challenge given the tiny nature of the lenses in a phone. In a DSLR, you would use a lens hood to minimize the artifacts from very bright subjects. But then you would NEVER use a lens hood at night as it would reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor and to be honest, DSLR cameras don't have the magical ability to do what an iPhone can do at night, unless you have the camera on a tripod.
We're dealing with limitations here. And I do get that many here feel let down by some of the results they're getting. But blaming Apple or the camera is not the answer. We have to learn how to use the photographic tools we have in our hands to take the best images we can and accept that some situations are going to result in recorded artifacts we don't want.
Apple can't do anything about it because it's a limitation of optics.
Feel free to choose an Android next time.
Oh, and once again, here's a wonderful comparison of flare on the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra.
This photo came through my FB stream. Because of the ghosting I suspected it to be a 12 PM. This is the 3rd time I have identified a potential 12 PM because of the obvious ghosting. This could have been shot with any camera or phone. It was a 12 PM. I’m 3 out of 3. So if I move the sun in multiple positions following the Rule of thirds the ghosting would go away? I think not - I tried it and it didn’t. Maybe I should have moved down the beach a mile. Sure, that’s the ticket.
Well I never had any of those flares on either the 6 or the 8, so for me it's not normal. And as you can read from others the flares are much more prominent on the later models like 11, 12, and 13. Also the video example from the car reviewer is a bad example because his camera is so close to those lights, so im not surprised if that would give some flares.
It’s normal, so no, you can’t fix normal.
Apple disagrees with you. They don't think it is normal.
They will also generate the same artifacts, but choose the device that works best for you.
. Those photos show flared light sources, quite normal, and don't show any misplaced ghost reflections or green dots, so are actually evidence that one plus is doing it better
[Edited by Moderator]
As a reminder, seen in a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie as shot with over $100K worth of professional digital cinema camera and lens:
IPhone 12 Pro Max Lens flare
