Iphone 12 Pro Max Ultra Wide angle lens issues

Nope, after two months of back and forth they come back saying it is a problem but is a normal behavior of that lens. Every agent I spoke to and chat with agreed the images are grainy. We tried everything from taking pics/videos in well lit room day time, to updating , restoring & even a replacement phone. Nothing worked, even the replacement phone has same issue. They sent the issue to apple engineers and they seem to not have an answer, except saying “it’s normal behavior”. It’s definitely defective and not as advertised. I don’t understand how they didn’t fix such a huge problem.

Listen mate, I know all about photography as I do it for a living so don't chat to me about apertures, sensors and ISOs. The conditions for the test were not dark at all, but a significant amount of noise still appeared. This is neither pro or magic and it needs to be sorted out.

Badluckboy wrote:

Listen mate, I know all about photography as I do it for a living so don't chat to me about apertures, sensors and ISOs. The conditions for the test were not dark at all, but a significant amount of noise still appeared. This is neither pro or magic and it needs to be sorted out.

Oh good, then you know when there is limited light available for a digital camera at a limited aperture you get noise since you see it every day; your definition of "dark" has nothing to do with what the camera/sensor sees as "dark."

If you think the behavior is abnormal, feel free to let Apple know of your concern:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

All of us here are just other Apple users, and Apple does not read these forums except to check for violations of the Terms of Use.

I have the exact same issue on 12 pro, i first noticed the poor brightness of video using ultra wide lens, while in the exact same lighting conditions the wide lens video is marvelous.

I also noticed the noisy output in ultra wide in almost before sunset.. So actually there is a decent amount of light out there.

I contacted apple support chat and no feedback other than a reset to factory settings.

I don't think it's a hardware issue, but apple to confirm.

The sale for me (that's why I ended up here by searching the web). The wide angle is very very noisy (close to unusable) when tje light is low. Especially around the corner of the images. It looks like it lacks AI. Maybe a future upgrade will solve this. I very surprised to see that we're just a few to notice that issue.

Badluckboy wrote:

Me and my girlfriend are having the exact same problem when taking videos! With pictures it’s not as blurry because there is more post-processing going on. This is not “Pro” at all!

Nonsense - it says "Pro," not "magic."

The aperture of the wide angle lens is f/2.4 as opposed to f/1.6 for the normal lens.

A smaller aperture means a lower sensitivity to light.

You have to learn which lenses are best suited for shooting under what light conditions and choose appropriately.

Exactly so don't tell me my business. The ISO would only go up if there isn't enough light hitting the sensor. I know for a fact that there is enough light in this room for an aperture of 2.4. The ISO should not be going up if it is. If it's not a software issue there must be a problem with the sensor itself. So stop trying to make it seem like user-error when it isn't. There are plenty of other people who are starting to notice this.

Same exact issue here, wide modes using the same lights in my studio which are adequate for all other iPhone and settings produce noisy, grainy and unusable results on the iPhone 12 Pro Max. No problems natural sunlight but everything below that level is pretty bad, this is not an actual low light situation, it is a weakness of the product. Feedback left in the form linked in the comments here

I agree with ultra wide showing a lot of noise especially in video mode. I’m also experiencing what seems to be a bug when switching between ultra wide and 1x. The image jumps slightly to the left, and more aggressively snaps to the left in video mode. View clip: https://youtu.be/Yd5v-BSDvOI

I feel like the low light noise in the video of the 12 Pro Max is just part of the issue. The compression artifacts are much more of a noticeable problem for me and can show up while shooting outside mid day (cloudy). When shooting in 4k they show up as giant blocks/blotches so visible that you would have to scale it down to 320 pixels wide not to find them distracting. I would rather look at actual noisy grain that made use of the large resolution but I often end up with noise on top of huge solid blotchy blocky artifacts. The ultra wide angle is pretty much unusable for video. The wide and telephoto are fairly decent, sometimes great, but all of the lenses have issues with how the compression algorithm deals with shadow areas, even if you have well lit, healthy exposure on half of the frame. I've been testing it a lot under various conditions and it can produce amazing imagery. I'm just getting into 10 bit video on the Filmic Pro app and I'm really hoping they can make an improvement to the compression algorithm/codec. That said, I'm going to test it side by side with my iPhone 7 and decide whether or not to return it and wait a bit longer for the tech to catch up. If all I cared about was taking stills I wouldn't be feeling this buyers remorse. It's a great stills camera to have with you.

The ultra wide on the iPhone 11 Pro and 12 pro are simply terrible in terms of quality. Basically they are extra camera bin parts left over from the iPhone 7/ 7 plus. Same sensor just wider Lens on top. It’s amazing Apple even gives us this ultra wide camera at all. All they talk about in their keynotes, is iPhones superior photo quality. Yet the ultra wide provides you with only horrendous results with nothing but noise and artifacting, even with ample lighting mid day. The photos from the ultra wide has some of the most noise in an image I have seen in years. Maybe one day we will get an ultra wide camera that is similar in terms of quality to the main sensor but that probably won’t happen.

Was the issue resolved for anyone? I am talking with apple support and they did diagnostics and say everything is fine. I updated and restarted nothing works. The images from ultra wide camera is so grainy and it just gives low quality video while the zoom is 0.5x , when I change the zoom during the video it gets back to normal at 1X. I know the camera change makes it and it looks very obvious. How can there be such a huge flaw and apple has not fixed it ?

I absolutely agree with you. I bought this phone specifically for my real estate needs. The noise in a room full of natural lighting is ridiculous. In no way is anything taken on this wide angle lens usable. I am truly disappointed.

The jump to the left is simply because you went from one lens to another and thus one perspective to another. Its the same as when you look at an object and close one eye. If you switch to the other eye your perspective changes.

Then best return your device for a refund.

If you want to vent, doing so here accomplishes precisely nothing.

You can express your dissatisfaction here:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple