iPhone 13 Camera is blurry

It pains me to say this, but this may be my last iPhone. For the price, the quality is far subpar from what I have come to expect. Now, I’m aware that Tim Cook is not exactly Steve Jobs, who always managed to get the right people to create a superior product, but under Cook’s tenure, I’ve seen quality and innovation lag far behind, while prices continue to sky rocket. A friend lend me his Huawei phone, and another his Samsung phone, and their photo quality were far superior than the Apple, specially the Huawei. I wish there wasn’t a ban on these phones because they clearly outpace the iPhone. I didn’t foresee having to carry a digital camera along with my phone everywhere I go. I’m extremely disappointed on this phone.

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.

Fact remains: whatever DXOMARK might say, a side by side comparison with the 11 Pro cameras is enough to show far more bizarre artefacts, detail loss and erratic performance than their own 3-year old past flagship. There's just no way to defend Apple over this and abstractly quoting "the industry" doesn't change facts.

Last, given this is a global forum, a user's experience with another OEM's camera is very consequential indeed to the other readers!

PS. If the cameras are indeed "working as designed", then they weren't designed very well.

[Edited by Moderator]

Thanks for sharing this example. very helpful!

i think that is always useful seeing examples with iPhone previous model.

I understand that light condition is low but also that the thing we are focusing here is the processing to remove the noise that looks more like oil painting. 11 pro telephoto has 2.0 aperture, 13 pro has 2.8. it means that 13 pro ones tends to "capture" less light.

Did you try to run the same test using portrait mode instead?

I personally noticed that the processing using this mode is different lately. it was not when i bought iPhone 13 Pro at day 1.

Note that no other smart phone brand allows you to control processing either.

The way to avoid it is to use a third party app such as Halide, Lightroom Mobile or Snapseed to shoot all your photos in RAW mode and do processing of your RAW image in the app.

In full agreement. The camera on my 13 pro max is almost unusable! I had an 11 pro max with an incredible camera! It took amazing photos. I’m at a loss as to what to do. This phone was $$$$ and I absolutely hate it. Even the reception sucks! 🤔😩

I hear you. I returned the 13PM and went back to my 11 Pro Max for that reason. Other than the battery life, it's been a huge relief both in terms of ergonomics and camera performance.

When it comes to the cameras of the 13 generation, I was just talking about it with my bff who recently "upgraded" from the XS to the (regular) 13. He's thoroughly disappointed with the camera, and he hasn't noticed any overall performance improvements other than it being "a bit faster". He showed me just how hard it is for the 13's camera to focus on items like the fabric of his pants, whereas his XS does it immediately. He said he realised the issue when his phone would struggle to focus on QR codes on the spot, and he'd have to pull back and forth until he got it right.

I find it completely unacceptable on Apple's behalf to sell something "new" that's not even on the same level as a device that's existed for 4 years already.

Yes, I agree. Switched from 11 Pro to 13 Pro because if camera upgrade but the front facing camera produces horrible images, the telephoto is awful in even modest shade/low light, and shooting video with the wide lens, even using expensive nd filters (that worked great on 11 Pro) produces far more glitches and stutter, making half of the footage simply unusable. All the fuss about pro-res etc means nothing if the lenses themselves (or sharpening algorithm) is so seriously sub-par. I won’t be upgrading or taking Apple’s word again on new phones until I can see proof these ‘upgrades’ are anything more than huckster hype

I guess I'd like to reiterate that the problem I'm seeing is a little different than most of the comments on this thread. Overall, I'm pleased with the 13 pm. Mostly I take landscape pictures, and they're great. Even when hiking down the mountain at dusk, with the trail barely visible by the fading sunset, the pictures are amazing. To me anyway.

That said, I also take a lot of wildflower pictures. Usually these are sharp and clear, even in "macro" mode. EXCEPT for red flowers. It seems the auto-focus mechanism is blind to red. If it's looking at the pixels in the main image sensor, it's acting like it's only picking up the green ones. If it's using the "lidar" thing, somehow even though that's infrared, it not seeing the regular visible red flowers - it focuses (quite nicely, alas) on the more distant background - the green foliage, or brown dirt... White and blue flowers focus nicely. (Maybe it's time to get a DSLR? Sigh.)

I have the same probpem and nine of the suggestions here fix the problem. It even seems to be random. I can take a few pictures and they come out good and then, in the next few minutes in the same place, sane lighting everything they next batch come out like your second one. they look like a cartoon and distorted with all the edges shaved off. nothing is crisp.

Oh no, my daughter bought a new iPhone today especially to have a better camera. She had an iPhone 8. On her new iPhone 13 mini selfies are way worse than before on the 8. Blurry even. She was so happy when her phone arrived, now she is in tears. Come on Apple this can't be right?!? For this kind of money? I'm furious!

I'm really sorry to read that @bleblans. I felt the same when I realised my expensive 13 Pro Max couldn't keep up with my 11 Pro. My friend is also furious that his new 13 is less versatile and produces poorer results than his old XR. I returned my 13PM and unless Apple fixes the situation with their next phone I'm likely to jump ship.

To add insult to injury, there are people in these forums who will do their best to convince you it's the best camera ever therefore it's "your" problem or "it's not the right phone for you". If only they had the resolve to say that face to face to you, me or your daughter.

And there you have it. The gaslighting from affiliated accounts.

It's not a camera effect. It's a camera defect. There's a difference and it's got nothing to do with "our needs". Our need is a camera system that performs at least as well as a 5 year old iphone.

How can it be classed as an 'effect'? HDR shouldn't equal god awful photo quality, my first ever iPhone was a 4S and I swear that would have taken better selfies in lower light!

When you pay over £1,000 for a phone, you expect a half decent photo, it's ridiculous. I am an hour drive away from the closest apple store and I shouldn't have to drive 2 hours just for them to look at it. You can clearly see from my photos earlier in the thread how awful they are in low light, it needs sorting ASAP

Sorry man, you mean to tell me all these people (50 pages by now) had wrong expectations. The pictures (selfies, front camera) are far worse than from a previous iPhone (6). You telling people they are better while they clearly are not does not help.