iPhone 13 Camera is blurry

Hi,

I recently upgraded form the iPhone 12 Pro Max to the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Upgraded - at least, that was what I thought before taking the first bunch of Photos. Unfortunately, I often have to do some - I won't call it Macro Shots but let's say Close-Ups - in available light. Never hat an issue with the 12 Pro Max but with the 13 Pro Max, pictures seem slightly softened, not that crisp and also out of White Balance.

I switched off the automatic switching between the Wide and Ultra Wide Camera (the Macro function was embarrassing), at least, Apple gave this option on 15.1, but still, the pictures look like they were shot with an iPhone, few generations older. Also, the 13 seems to need a bit more of distance between the lens and the object. Has anyone experienced the same?

Have an appointment at the Apple Store tomorrow but after reading this thread, I'm not sure if an exchange of the phone will help. After using 12 generations of iPhone, I never thought that buying a new iPhone will be a step back, especially regarding photos.

If you're running iOS 15.1 or later, there is a switch under Settings -> Camera where you can shut off "Auto Macro."

However, be aware that also means you will need to manually select the ultra wide lens if you plan on photographing anything located closer than about 6" from the phone.

By making the same picture with a iPhone 12 pro and see the difference.

If you zoom in on your buckle it is also blurry. Sharp oke, but with a oil painting effect.

There are 1000 complains on the internet about this. The 12pro of my wife makes much better pictures.

If you have “Auto Macro” turned on you have to be careful to keep your distance to the object the same, and you need to tap and hold to lock the focus.

Use camera modes on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

To help you understand what this oil painting effect is, you can see same zoom/crop on 2 different Apple devices, 11pro and 13pro.

(Pic from a IPhone 13 Pro user, RuivoM on Reddit to make it clear.

i found this after experiencing same on iPhone 13 Pro and comparing same shot with older iPhones )

I experienced this Oil Painting effect on iPhone 13 Pro display, shooting on iPhone Pro RAW, using iPhone 13 Pro native camera app.

I don't know your experience about contrast but in the 13 pro shot, highlights are obviously burned out compared to 11 pro shot :D

By the way i m talking about Oil painting effect, not better color contrast etc.

Dogcow-Moof wrote:

Regardless, as always, no one here can do anything about it, and Apple Engineering does not read these forums.

I don't agree. Other users here are sharing knowledge and helping each other. Be positive! :))

No complaints here but sharing knowledge to send better feedback to Apple and find solutions, workarounds between us.

cheers

Dogcow-Moof wrote:

Remember, when the light level is too low, the 3x zoom does not use the 3x optical zoom, it is simply a digital zoom of the image from the 1x wide angle lens.

That's exactly the point. You can also test or understand it by cover up the wide-angle camera in poor lighting conditions and with 3x zoom. Then you will see that the iPhone does not use the telephoto lens and the picture remains black.

I think that because the 3x telephoto lens of the iPhone 13 Pro is naturally not very bright, the photo quality is felt to be worse than, for example, with the iPhone 11 Pro or 12 Pro. Personally, i would prefer the 2x lens again.

Hi Is this your first Iphone? I can provide a lot of images compared to my previous iphone 12 pro max that show exactly this difference. I even requested a replacement unit and it is exactly the same. This processing makes images worst. I also had a 11 pro max before the 12. There is clearly something that does not working correctly. I agree with nuama 100% except that part with the size of pixels.

According to the exif data, the respective "right" objects were used, which does not make things any better. I don't think it was so noticeable with the iPhone X // 11 Pro // 12 Pro because the 2x telephoto lens was not so weak and 2x digital zoom is not as noticeable as 3x digital zoom. What surprises me is that none of these tech bloggers on YouTube etc. at least pointed this out.

And yet they wiull tell you that their iphone is fine and more capable than the 12. I do not need to perform the test I see it. I am a mac user since 2006 and also a phographer. This is not right and they need to address this right now.

Also I found another way to check the processing. Shoot a live photo and make key photo another one from the batch, you will see that it is not processed and it is very very soft.

It's not about me not being happy with the camera. I am firmly convinced that there is a fault in the camera module or the telephoto lens.

Maybe it's possible that other users have other lenses or sensors that are defect.

Writing here that the camera is great and putting everything into perspective and subliminally accusing the users of faulty operation does not help anyone.

I have now noticed that my iPhone 13 Pro's telephoto lens is barely able to take a picture even in the best lighting conditions when the wide-angle lens is covered.

If I don't cover the wide angle lens, the most I get is a 3x digital zoom image. This then looks like an oil painting image.

I did the same test with an iPhone 11 Pro, the telephoto lens gave good images after I covered the wide angle lens.

What bothers me a bit is that there is a function active in the iPhone or camera module or in the iOS that overwrites a defective camera module. It feels like a deception to me as a user. If I wasn't an ambitious amateur photographer, I might not have noticed it.

Obviously it wasn't a test in bright enough daylight if the optical zoom was being used.

Simply being outdoors in daylight isn't enough.

If it was in bright daylight, have your phone examined, as my telephoto lens is used all the time, as shown in my last post.

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

Can you perform one test on your phone? I just tested right now and this is so so so weird. If you cover the wide lens and you try to zoom in to more than 3x you get no picture at all. It is like that there is no telephoto lens there at all. If you try to zoom out to 0.5x it works and switches to the ultra-wide. You can clearly see the transition when the camera switches to the ultra wide but you do not get this transition when it switches to the telephoto. It only digital zooms using the wide camera module.

Hi,

I just wanted to chime in, I've just moved to an iPhone 13 pro from my Oneplus 8 pro the lens flare and image sharpness is very poor compared to what I'm used to. I spend a lot of time editing and post processing pictures and have spent a fair amount of time staring at pixels before coming here.

Also, a friend and I had a shootout recently ( he was with an iPhone 11 pro ) where we went around the city centres taking pictures of Christmas installations and most of the photos on the iPhone 11 sharper than what I was able to capture :( . I don't usually see any issues when the subject is near / medium distance, but when at a few meters away and there is a large contrast in lighting, the 13 pro is failing miserably. Its a pity as i really love the phone and os but camera is sub par.

Dogcow-Moof:

Sharpness is the least concerned to me in this case. They were shot with 77mm without manually selecting focus point; in this complex and far reaching scene, who is qualified to tell the focal plane?

it's the color shifting, disappeared texture detail and fussy outline around everywhere that I believe been caused by the over exposure which was totally determined by Camera's full auto-mode.

The following is the same comparison photo added a few call-outs denoting what I meant:

(Sorry for not able to directly showing it on the web page; the stupid forum complained my 600KB photo exceeding its max. size limit of 5Mb).

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0FfnWbHNREcRMpGRoeVC6VEQg#IMG_1768