iPhone 13 pro camera quality issues

Hi everyone,

I upgraded from the iPhone 11 Pro to the 13 Pro last week. The main use of my phone is for my business; I am a nail technician so need a good camera that can take good quality photos of my work.

With my 11 Pro, towards the end, I found it easier to take a video whilst holding the camera still and then taking a screenshot to get a better quality, high definition image. I just found that this allowed me to get closer whilst maintaining quality as the camera whilst still capturing good quality images, wasn’t as sharp.

Today I’ve had my first customer since upgrading to the 13 Pro and we had a complete nightmare trying to get a good quality video or photo of her finished nails. I started with my usual process of trying to take a video and whilst the nails were a good high quality for a split second, the camera would then change and produce a very grainy and blurry video. I tried cinematic, I tried pressing and holding to focus the camera but nothing worked.

I then proceeded to try and take a photo and the quality of the photo was less than my 11 Pro would produce and despite holding the camera very still, produced a blurry image.

We spent 10 minutes going backwards and forwards and trying different things but nothing worked and the end I had to borrow my customers phone to take a decent photo and video which was quite embarrassing.

I have attached in order, the photo I took and, the image that my customers camera captured and a screen shot from the video. You can clearly see the difference in quality.

A quick Google shows that a lot of people are having issues with this camera, I know it’s high-quality but perhaps there are some teething issues and I’m just trying to work out what I can do to change it or whether it is just best to send this one back and have another of the phone I was using without issues. Problem is it’s cost me quite a lot to upgrade to this phone and if I can’t use it for the sole purpose I bought it, it’s a very expensive luxury that I cannot afford.

I haven’t had problems with taking photos of anything from a distance but being able to take good quality, close-up photos of nails is of paramount importance to me as it is my business.