iPhone 13 Camera is blurry

How many of them are 13 pro max? Try the test I wrote earlier it is very easy. Shoot a Live Photo and edit it. Just pick another key photo and you will come up with a very soft image. Try it, it is very easy. Something is wrong with either the processing or the lens. My guess is the lens. It is too soft.

I see this "Pro" argument tossed around a lot, and the larger issue is there is no strict definition of what "Pro" means.

An ever-increasing amount of "Pro" photographs end up on Facebook and Instagram or other sources online, and many of the images posted here are certainly completely suited for that.

If you mean "Pro" as could you use your iPhone 13 Pro to shoot a wedding and leave your DSLR/Mirrorless full frame camera home? Not at 12 MP resolution.

Still, you could certainly shoot stills and the video from the iPhone 13 family of devices is on par with many other digital video cameras, even professional 4K models.

I can certainly understand how some would prefer a more RAW image with less processing, and it seems there are options, from shooting in ProRAW to shooting in a third-party app to get that.

If you want to discuss that, no one would have an issue with that, it's more when people post that the camera is either "defective" or "broken"; it is not.

I never had other smartphone since iPhone 3s so I can't say much about it.

My baseline is the said Canon G7X MII and I does feel the gap in sharpness department is narrowed. For scenes with difficult lighting iPhone's deep fusion usually achives better balance in overall color correctness, brightness level and vibrant contrast. If I don't pixel peeping, iPhone image is usually more pleasing to the eye.

Regarding night scene (Christmas), I heard complaints and experiences myself over exposure at high light and clipping of shadow that causes blown out bright sign, blurred detail and color shifting, and all of these very often are amplified by its aggressive HDR processing.

Dialing down EV for 1/3 or 2/3 steps will usually make big differences.

I never posted image here and can only wish my luck: the left one was taken with -0.7 EV; the right one was taken with full, it's terrible in almost all regards.

https://share.icloud.com/photos/079aUp3cYgxCFUA0BEjxRjCCg

I haven't seen widespread reports of Macro focusing issues either.

In the end, if you feel your phone is not working properly, take it in for analysis:

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

It sounds like you've already done that, so the next step would be to show the store personnel the difference between one of their demo iPhones and yours.

Just made another comparsion between iPhone 12 Pro Max and iPhone 13 Pro Max. Same conditions, 1/100s, iPhone 12 shoots with ISO 100 and f1.6 while iPhone 13 has ISO 80 and f1.5

In result, you clearly see the differences.

Here‘s the 12 Pro Max

And here the 13 Pro Max

The more I use mine the more I’ve decided the 1x lens is the primary culprit in addition to the software. The 3x if I am in full daylight has actually done pretty well. For example with a car as a subject. The 1x seems to have trouble focusing for documents on a counter, have to pull back some compared to my 6S and even then the text on the docs seems noticeably out of focus compared to my old 6S. I haven’t used the ultra wide much. I went ahead and bought Apple Care to buy me some time to see if Apple does anything about this. I’d like to take my phone to the store but I don’t have a lot of confidence that the staff are going to be able to discern what I see in the photos being soft.

Most people don’t feel the way you do, so be careful with the royal “we.”

You are also in no way addressing Apple here, we are all just fellow users and Apple Engineering does not read nor act on your comments here.

Should you want to make Apple Engineering aware of your feelings, you may do so at this link, where your comments are indeed read by those who can assign an issue to be examined or worked:

Feedback - Camera - Apple

The image is still processed EXACTLY like the examples shown here in bright light or low light... doesn't matter... and they look exactly the same in ProRaw and with the top rated third-party camera apps I've tried. THIS IS DEFINITELY something wrong with the way the cameras process the image prior to saving the file.

This was the same on the 12 Pro Max as well... I unfortunately had to move back to android for now.

It's a false perception probably because of obvious superior colors of 13 sensor and ios software.

If you do a 100% crop on the letters of books you will notice that details are best preserved by the aps-c camera, then the 8, with 13 showing the most miserable details.

I am not good at color editing but if you manage to edit the aps-c and 8 colors/white balance to match the result of 13, you will definitely notice the 13 is the poorest detail preserving image.

You may want to return it if you can or sell it and buy something else.

You're obviously unhappy with how it performs, and the industry on average is thrilled by it, indicating its behavior won't change from what it is.

Independent photography sites like DXOMARK have given higher smartphone marks to the Huawei but lower marks to the Samsung, and my personal testing has revealed far more "computational photography" artifacts on the Samsung and PIxel than on the iPhone.

Since Huawei can't legally be sold in the US, its camera quality is of little consequence to me.

Hello!i found this comparison.

Lens x3 tele. cropped.

iPhone 14 pro Max left vs iPhone 13 Pro Max on the right.

It looks like 14 pro is using a different (photonic 😅🤭) way to process pictures.

It looks much better than the "oil painting effect" of iPhone 13 Pro .

Did anyone notice this?

[Edited by Moderator]

I have an iPhone 13 mini for a week now. A +750€ phone with supposedly superior software and hardware.

All you apple warriors here can now be quiet for a minute please. The camera close range issue is unacceptable.

I was talking to an apple employee online already and went to the Apple Store. Where another employee made a picture with my iPhone 13 mini, looked at it speechless, and tried the same on his own 12 mini. And his phone performed just fine.

So we instantly arranged a repair. He couldn’t believe his company is selling such a device. So I’ve got a whole new camera installed. And I already have the phone back now. But nothing changed. It’s still the worst camera I’ve had in an iPhone… I don’t expect a 3000€ DSLR. But I want to be able to take pictures of a note on a post-it. Now I’m sitting here and can’t even take a picture of a pack of gum without taking a step back and abuse digital zoom to the limit.

Everything else about this phone is perfect. But this lens is really a pain for daily tasks. It’s not only a pain, it’s straight unusable.

I don’t want to hear a word about wrong expectations or any other excuses that does not work towards a solution. Nobody with eyes installed to their head can deny that issue the camera has. Everything bellow 12cm is impossible to focus. And even the 13 Pro Max with the fancydancy Makro Mode can’t reach an older iPhone.

„It's not an issue, it's minimum focus distance, a parameter of every camera system as that's how optics work.“

Yes. I know. And that’s exactly the issue here. You can’t change the lenses of an iPhone like you can on a proper system camera. So you’re basically limited to the manufacturers camera design choice. And apple made a bad choice.

Any camera in a phone is supposed to be able to capture a wide spectrum of possible scenarios. So a compromise between those is desirable.

Most manufacturers these days solve that by adding lenses. Fair point. Looks weird, but does a good job.

But you cannot sell a phone with two lenses that is still not capable of properly capturing a common way people make pictures.

It‘s like selling a car that can only go above 30. And to solve that you have to constantly apply the brakes. That’s basically how it feels like to zoom in like an idiot and loose all your pixels by doing it. It’s neither convenient, nor efficient.

Also regarding the wide angle lens that is used for macro by the pro: How is that lens different to the wide angle lens on our 13 mini? Looking at the spec sheet it’s pretty similar. Just a slightly different aperture. The third tele lens doesn’t matter in our case.

So when their design choice makes it impossible to take close ups with the normal lens of the mini, why they haven’t at least solved that by doing the same as the Pro does with the wide angle?

Again. It’s a poor lens choice because they decided to not solve that „focus gap“ another way.

And people have every possible right to be mad about this.

I fiddled around with it for quite some time now. Read many articles about it that also tackling this complaint and trying to find a solution. And yes, the take a step back and zooming in seems to be the preferred workaround for most of them. But still nobody is satisfied.

But if that’s the one and only method to take a non-blurry picture of smaller sized items it’s still really bad for a 800€ phone. Doesn’t matter if you take the pro or the mini. The pro is surprisingly bad too.

I don’t know what phone you currently have, but try two things please and tell me you’re satisfied with it: take a picture while zoomed in and see the resolution compared to a normal picture. They’re identical. This is as you might know due to the artificial upscaling of the zoomed picture. That’s fine but I’m many cases not desirable.

It basically looks like the „posterised“ effect in photoshop and really messes with your picture.

Im telling this because that upscaling and messing takes effect every time I use that preferred „step back and zoom in“ workaround.

So… you might already see my issue here. Many many pictures I made with a 800€ phone looks like I’ve used a really old and bad camera and ran it though an upscaler software in post to get the most out of a bad camera.

At least 1/4 of my photo library is now artificially modified. When you decide to use digital zoom this is definitely desirable. But of course everyone with at least a little bit interest in cameras hate digital zoom and prefer the native resolution. Understandable if you ask me. So you move your *** and come closer to the thing you want to make a picture of. Oh well, that’s not possible anymore. You you have to live with messed up pictures made with digital zoom.

And now we pretend this is fine even tho a fair share of customers complain about this. And apple doesn’t even bother to explain why they made it that way.

Asking Apple to fix anything here in a user to user only forum gets you nothing. Apple isn't here.

Provide feedback to Apple here --> Feedback - iPhone - Apple