iPhone 13 Camera is blurry

I'm listening. But how would my agreement or disagreement matter. You fail to realize you're only speaking with other users here. If you're not happy with the quality of your photos, handing out here commiserating with other users is not going to help you get better results at all. Apple isn't here. Engineers are not reading these threads.

If you're not happy with your camera, schedule an appointment at your Apple Store Genius Bar and let them see it.

The photo of your kid, I personally think was taken too close. Hence much of the oversmoothed area. You could have cropped in after taking the photo a bit further away. Which camera did you use? Do you know? Given how close you were, it may have transitioned to the Ultra Wide, which is not optimal for a portrait photo. And this is kind of my point. Experiment with what works and what doesn't. There is no perfect camera system.

In counterpoint to your kids photo. I just took this photo of a guy I work with. I took it further away, the cropped in after I took the photo. Notice anything smoothed? Nope. Nice and in-focus.

Does my iPhone 13 Pro Max take better pictures than your phone? Nope. I took a better picture.

Also the image you did share of the leaves shows the exact problem that I, and I am quite sure, others are having with the iPhone 13 Pro cameras. You can claim loss of quality all you want, but the only loss occurring that you can clearly see are the little blocky pixels. That weird texture on the leaves that looks watercolor-like is what I am talking about.

I took this with my iPhone 11 Pro, standing quite far away and with digital zoom. This is not perfect, and I do not expect it to be. But the detail on the tree does not seem watercolor-like. It seems blocky, but that is expected. It’s iPhone, not Nikon, Sony, or Canon DSLR or Mirrorless.

But, look at the difference between these two photos.

Left is iPhone 13 Pro camera app using RAW settings. Right is the same photo file put into Lightroom, with no adjustments made by me. The over processing on the left apparent. Nevertheless, while I don’t have a good flower comparison at the moment because I do not have access to all of my old photos:

This is from the Lightroom version, and it still is not as clear as photos in the past have been.

Still the same photos quality even after 15.1. I am starting to think we may have a hardware issue.

look at this picture that I took at breakfast this morning. No focus, no detail, nothing.

[Edited by Moderator]

sorrry to ask this question its out of the topic but is anyone here noticed that there is something on the ultrawide lens when you look closely using flashlight? there is something wide inside the lens around the corner of the circle? i will put the picture here for better view. is anyone has this issue?do you think this is normal? some of my friends who is using iphone 13 pro they also have this white circle inside the ultrawide lens please share your thoughts

So! I found a temporary fix.

If you download Adobe’s editing app, Lightroom, for mobile, you can use the camera in the app.

I have RAW only used in the camera app so this may be affecting it. But it will take two photos, one HDR and one DNG. The DNG version is the best version.

Unfortunately it does not automatically save photos to your camera roll, but, the quality is infinitely better.

I have attached a comparison of two photos. The left was taken in the default camera app, and the right was taken in Lightroom.

I don't think that's not what people are saying here. It's the software processing that's causing the issues. Since you consider DXOMark as experts. Here is what they have to say on the same article you shared regarding the front facing camera.

Which is consistent with what others have been saying here. I noticed that the selfie camera is performing just fine when outdoors 90% of the time.

jbolus wrote:

You're numbers are also wrong. Apple sold 50M smartphones (meaning all variants even previous gens) NOT 50M iPhone 13s.

Gartner says Apple sold almost 80 million iPhones in Q4 of 2020 alone:

Estimates are that Apple has sold over 1.9 Billion iPhones since they were first introduced and that there are around 1 Billion active iPhone users worldwide:

https://backlinko.com/iphone-users

According to Reuters:

Jeff Fieldhack, research director for Counterpoint Research, said the reported Apple production cut could also be part of the iPhone maker's normal launch process of over-ordering devices to be prepared for an initial customer rush and then trimming orders as sales trends become clearer.

Fieldhack said iPhone 13 sales appear to be healthy and higher than last year's iPhone 12, and Counterpoint is not changing its estimate of 85 million to 90 million iPhone 13 sales for the fourth quarter.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/apple-set-slash-iphone-production-due-chip-crunch-bloomberg-news-2021-10-12/

This screenshot does not show any sort of mention of perhaps using smaller numbers for conciseness and easier representation of data. So in that case, you are wrong. This says, 80,000. 80 thousand. That is NOT 80 million.

isazavakos wrote:

This screenshot does not show any sort of mention of perhaps using smaller numbers for conciseness and easier representation of data. So in that case, you are wrong. This says, 80,000. 80 thousand.

Read the caption immediately above the table which states the numbers are given in thousands of units sold.

80,000 x 1000 = 80 million.

not saying that the camera is not excellent but talking about some "issues"

This from camera experts (DXOMark website you linked).

On the right you can find the Oil paint effect on iPhone 13 Pro Max (strongly visible in second shot with lettering).

The portrait shot was in daylight condition. in lower light condition it was even stronger)

You can find higher resolution shot here:

https://www.dxomark.com/google-pixel-6-pro-camera-review-a-big-leap-in-image-quality/

This comment is not to compare iPhone 13 pro with Pixel 6. is just to showcase this Oil paint effect that gives a blurred look to the shots.

This effect was not present in iPhone 11 Pro and previous models and is giving a painting / illustration look with loss of detail.

It could be useful having back the possibility to shot without this effect and without HDR too .

I’m seeing the same. I moved from the 12 Pro to the 13 Pro Max. I know how to capture sharp images. This phone’s camera is alarming blurry. This image has been sharpened and details defined with my go to software, SnapSeed It’s still blurry

That’s because the focus was clearly on the couch cushion behind the cat which looks razor sharp.

Because of the wider aperture of the iPhone 13’s wide lens, choosing a focus point is more important than ever because of the reduced depth of field.

Wow the pic and your cat really look amazing. Even the light coming from the window is captured really well.😍

by the way I tried downloading the picture and it look like this. I know that I cropped it a lot but in previous iPhones model the effect was different.

I just wanted to know if you post-processed the shot or you uploaded it as it came , straight from your phone.

thanks a lot! ☺️

Without knowing how you took the photos, its hard to know what might have gone wrong with the 13 Pro on the right.

I just took this closeup of the buckle on my Apple Watch band with my 13 Pro Max. I'm not sure how it could be more in focus than this?

Same here (hey lobsterghost1, didn’t know you were a Nikon shooter too.)

The right hand photo looks like it may have been taken with the wide angle lens too close for it to focus properly as opposed to the ultra wide lens in Auto Macro mode.

Quick and dirty 13 Pro Max shot that isn’t even off a tripod or in decent light: