Are these signs of camera defects with my iPhone 13 Pro Max? I keep getting these lens flares when taking photos and videos with bright sources of light. Happens allot with the sun during day and bright lights during night.
iPhone 13 Pro Max, iOS 15
Yes and they're normal. Before you take the photo, you can easily see the flares on the screen. Alter the angle of the phone relative to the bright lights and you can eliminate the flares.
While these two photos were taken on iPhone 12 Pro Max, you can see what I'm talking about.
This photo show lens flare:
Simply angling the camera differently without moving at all produced this photo:
There is a thread in the forum by a professional photographer where his has posted pictures from an iPhone 4 all the way up to a $50,000 camera. You may be a photographer but you are weak on your understanding of physics.
Hi lobsterghost1, Great example. I showed my wife your pic examples because I was having a hard time seeing the difference, until she pointed it out to me. Different eyes see different things. I guess this is why they call photography an art. I just got my iPhone 13 Pro Max and really want learn the camera features. I have a lot of practice ahead of me. Thanks Much for the leasons.
Lens Flare ! And that too of this level wasn’t expecting in I phone 13 ! Thought I’ll be taking good sunrise sunset pictures while I’ll be at sea but now it seems like it will be **** to first adjust the phone and then take the pic ruining all the angle!
No it is not in the case as describe ,the camera did nto focus correctly and chose wrong lens .the focus or lens tha tthe camera chose was wrong and could not adjust the ligth properly until i occult one of the lens. I will show photo when its happen again as the flare was so important htta the photo was usuless
The camera did not "choose the wrong lens."
This explains the behavior you saw when you occluded one lens.
like any other option you can set on the camera, seems like this could be one. Imagine all the tech in these phones, LIDAR, 5 nm circuits, trillions of operations and something known to be the most powerful phone on the planet, all the pre/post production settings you can have not the camera, etc. etc. Surely, these AI helpers could easily find these flares and extrapolate the background to illuminate them. Like any filter you can apply, make that a thing!
I’m sure they are looking at that for unskilled photographers in the future but you are looking at a lot of processing and battery power. I think we are going to need a battery breakthrough to make it happen and they are going to need an option to turn it off. I also think in its first 3 iterations that you and others will have a thread saying it doesn’t work right and ruins your photos
How can this be any kind of "expectation" when it's never happened on previous iPhones as tons of people are saying to you? I've never seen it til now on my new 13 Pro Max. I've never seen it on other iPhones. Why would I suddenly "expect" lens flare that didn't happen at all before? You can't just tell people "Oh you never noticed it," that's just nonsense and calling people liars about what they are saying.
We have a legitimate complaint here. It wasn't present for most people before, and suddenly it is very noticeable all the time. I had one white flare floating around when I first took a picture, I thought it was a stupid bug flying around, because it was so unusual and totally UNEXPECTED. Now I see flares like every time I take a photo and have to make adjustments. With or without a protective cover on the lenses, makes no difference.
We don't use or own $50K cameras. We use iPhones. The problem has not been so prevalent as in this new one. Apple needs to just tell people the issue and that it will happen, and should have done it before selling them, if it's such a "normal" occurance now. Because it most certainly was not "normal" before!!
And there it is again. Basically calling all people liars who say they haven't seen it on previous iPhones. I'm sorry you HAVE seen it, the majority of people coming here are saying WTH is this I've not seen this on previous iPhones.
I won't repeat myself. Apple needs to acknowledge this. Argue all you want to. I've never seen it on an iPhone til now. Not mine. Not my friends. Started on 12 for anyone I know.
Interesting. I am testing in on the light in my kitchen and I notice the reflection does not happen with the ultra wide lens (0.5x). Do you know why that is? You can see it above to the left of the light in the normal shot.
Then you'll have to teach me how to do this cause no matter how I went around the tree or tried to angle my way out of it it didnt work. Also the pics you guys post are always the same ones showing some rare situations of flares from the iphone 8.
One thing I noticed on some of the pics I took the other day was that a few times there was some bigger lense flare dots on the screen but after I took the shot and checked the photo those bigger flares were sometimes gone, so that tells me that the iso 15 is doing some magic here in some situations like I also talked about before on this forum. It was someone on reddit who first noticed this.
Will try to get some pics up as soon as I get my hand on my old 8 plus, my dad bought it so I have to wait till I go home for christmas.
[Edited by Moderator]
There's little relevance in posting photos from an iPhone 8. The camera is not nearly as capable as iPhone 13 Pro. And I'm sure you'll see some flares in an 8, though the cameras in iPhone 13 are so much more sophisticated.
Just to know, how can you be so sure?
Don’t make me wrong….. I don’t want to push you, but considering that there is a lot of AI on our phone may be it be possible. Look what Luminar or Photoshop can do in post processing
It would be absolutely reprehensible for Apple or for that matter ANY maker of camera systems and software to remove data from photos. No camera system on the planet I'm aware of, artificially removes data from photos. There are software tools one can use after a photo has been taken to edit photos, such as Lightroom's Healing Brush. But that is and should only be used by whoever took the photo.
Samsung, nor Google, nor Apple, nor Canon, nor Nikon nor Fujitsu, nor ANYONE else removes data from photos.
I have heard people suggest they saw artifacts removed in "Live Photos" on iPhone. That is also not true. People seem unaware a Live Photo is actually a timed video recording. It's almost impossible for someone to hold the camera completely still during the capture of a Live Photo, unless the camera is on a Tripod and the shutter was released remotely, meaning the camera didn't move, even a fraction of a millimeter from start to finish. But in a Live Photo, since virtually no one does that, they are moving the camera during the capture and flares can and are often moved during the capture. But iPhone is NOT removing any artifacts in a static photo, nor a Live Photo.
You are however, absolutely right about "post processing." But that is after the photo is taken and as I suggest above is entirely up to the person who took the photo to process it further after a photo is taken.
Some are complaining on this and other threads they find the photos the iPhone takes to be “over processed” due to Deep Fusion yet you want Apple to automatically remove what it thinks is lens flare from photos.
That also means missing Christmas lights, incandescent light bulbs, perhaps buttons on clothing and so on. I can’t imagine what it would do with something like Nashville’s lower Broadway where the landscape is full of neon signs full of bulbs that would look like lens flare to AI software.
Some third party photo apps claim to be able to remove it, and that’s where the ability should remain.
iPhone 13 pro lens flare
