iPhone 13 pro lens flare

It’s a normal physical phenomenon.

It depends on many things like the optical scheme of lenses, so that, on certain angles, rays of light enter without reaching the sensor directly and green dots and reflection appears. Trying to avoid this, lens hood are used on professional camera. Lens can have also treatment like coating. Or you can try to change angle. Many users have noticed that on iPhone this phenomenon is more evident. You can see it on internet or examples on youtube. I have also experienced this when I moved to iPhone 13 pro max from Note 20 Ultra or using my Fuji X-T3 , which have flares but not so many. Other, on this community, say that iPhone is equal or better than other about camera. Is it true? There are no Apple’s engineers here to solve things can’t be solved. Unfortunately the only choice is to accept your iPhone or return it back. Personally, I have choose to accept it because I love it for other reasons. I wish Happy New Year to all of you. bye

Physics doesn't work like that.

Ironically, the better the optical performance of the lenses, the more noticeable lens flare will be.

A cheap digital camera with poor plastic lenses will display little almost no flare at all.

Look at all the people complaining the iPhone 13's photos are over processed; imagine if they tried to automatically remove flare and buttons and other circular objects started disappearing from photos.

Because you simply can't.

Look at many commercial motion pictures - you can't even easily avoid it when spending millions of dollars on cinematography.

B&H Photo: Taming the Sun: Lens Flare, and How to Deal with It

This cannot be solved ASAP or any way. Read this thread to learn why this is normal. YOU, however, can angle the camera relative to bright lights and see the dots move and even be eliminated with careful camera placement.

The lens flairing happens because of how the lens is constructed. The size, shape and placement of the different components in the lens determins how the light is going to bounce and shine on the sensor.

There is not really anything you can do about this, accept from maybe angling the camera in such a way that makes the flairing less noticeable.

In my oppinnion, lens flairing is super cool, and i often use it to frame my photos. Here are some of my photos, taken on my iphone 13 pro max, where i've integrated lense flairing to make the pictures a bit more spicy! Hopes this inspires some of you to go out and snap some awesome photos;)

Lawrence told you: Use standard photographic and videography techniques to avoid flare.

Here's a nice article from a camera lens rental site:

BorrowLenses: What is Lens Flare? When and When Not to Use It

Here's a nice piece from photography site FStoppers:

How to Prevent Lens Flare in Your Landscape Photography

Yes they do.

A brief Internet search will reveal ample examples; I've compiled several here:

iPhone Camera Lens Flare and Reflections - Apple Community

Here's Samsung's take on it.

For fun:

Canon DSLR with a Canon 50mm f1.8 II lens:

Panasonic Digital Video Camera:

Samsung Galaxy S20:

$50,000 ARRI Alexa Mini cinema digital camera with $10,000 Cooke Lens:

Sorry but you can't always angle your way out of the lense flares, I tried many times but most of the time it's just not possible unless I point it in a different direction, but then I don't get the shot that I want.

See the big reflection from the sign in his image, if I took a picture of this with my compact camera or my DSLR camera, I wouldnt get this kind of reflection at all, so no it's not normal. It's the way they positioned the lenses, and they also need coating to reduce the flares. They just need to do something about it and fix it.

They're an issue with all sorts of devices because of physics and optics.

Panasonic digital video camera:

The next two are from movies shot with $50,000+ digital cinema camera/lens combos like this one:

and even when being used by professional cinematographers on sets with a professional lighting design crew, you still see the occasional flare:

Where did I say it was common? Is lens flare common? Sure, some photographers and videographers use it to make art with it, you've seen examples of it in movies I'm sure. And as you've seen evidence here a $50,000 camera can have it. The better lenses you use the more pronounced it will be when you don't have the skills of a trained photographer and the knowledge of how to avoid it and use it. Apple can do a lot of things but they cannot change physics or the properties of light. The older the camera and lens technology, whether on a phone or a camera the less extreme lens flare will look. So if you don't want to learn how to deal with it find an older iPhone 6s and it won't be as much as a problem for you when using video.

There is a big difference here.

That AI spits out images humans may want to take a closer look at.

You want the AI to summarily remove photo image data.

It is no more pronounced on the 13 than it was on the 12 or 11 for that matter, and likely others; you have simply noticed it, are aware of it and are now actively looking for it.

Once I noticed the effect several years ago I began to see it everywhere in stills, YouTube video and all over TV.

It hasn’t been that noticeable in theatrical films because they dedicate several million dollars to post-production to erase such things pixel by pixel, just as you could by the use of a utility such as Snapseed.

It was very common, in fact there are dedicated threads here with the exact same complaints - "this never happened before" and "I can't take any photos without this happening."

It's no worse on the 13 than it was on the 12, or 11, or Xs, or… and it remains completely normal.

Which would be a completely normal effect.

Each of the lenses is in a different position on the back of the phone, yielding a different angle towards any light source, plus each has slightly different optical properties.

Lens flare will not look the same between the lenses and in fact may occur under different circumstances.

You may not have seen it, but it was happening.

If you don't want to believe what I say here, you can see for yourself here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253200214?answerId=255995138022#255995138022

If it wasn't on previous iPhones, where did the examples there from the iPhone 6, 7 Plus, 8 Plus, Xs, 11 and 12 Pro Max come from (as well as the examples from the Google Pixel 3 and 5, Galaxy Note, Galaxy S20, Galaxy S21 and Canon DSLR?)

Apple isn't going to acknowledge something that is normal and expected, sorry.

If you buy a phone with a bad camera that uses plastic lenses you won't see it, as it's more obvious the better your optics get.

Unfortunately this is a common issue on majority of mobile phones and their sensors. However reading all comments and replies I have to disagree that this can't be avoided and is present on all expensive cameras. Having myself goPro Hero 7 Black, lens flares are present but does not appear as a ghost artifacts or UFO dots like some are calling them. As for the mobile photography there are brands that have partnered with ZEISS and optics are coated with their T* Coating, which significantly improvers this physics phenomenon. Example phones are Vivo X70 Pro +, Sony Xperia 1 Mk III, or new Xperia Pro-I. It is heavens better compared to iPhones Pro begining from 11 models until the present ones, which are known to be more sensitive to this issue, then other mobile phones due to the design of their camera optics and materials used (plastic in most cases) vs. glass for Xperia Pro-I. Apple is also not on the same level of computing photography as e.g. Google, who is using multiple algorithms to make it better post photo shoot. At the end of the day it is take it or leave it decision and if take it, learn to live with this and try to make it better by adjusting angles. This however only applies to still photography and not to the video.

Kris