iPhone 14 pro max zooming glitch

I have contacted Apple support and even send video samples and demonstrated the issue remotely to them. Customer service officer Brian assisted me and sent this “issue” to their engineering team.

He got back to me a week later with their engineers reply.

“it is suppose to work like this and there is nothing wrong, so no patches or update will be made on this issue”

and the case is closed.

i can’t say much, but only feel disappointed on this.

I think I found the issue, there is a lock camera button in the camera settings that disables the switching between cameras when recording video. I enabled it and tried to zoom in and it did not glitch. Hopefully this is the solution.

Guys, there is simple solution for that.

Tap Settings->Camera->Record Video. Then swipe down to the bottom and turn on Lock Camera.

That's it! No more glitch, jump etc while zooming.

Iphone doesn't switch lenses while zooming with this option on.

I got Iphone 14 Pro.

As described at the link above, automatic switching is enabled each time you open Camera unless you:

1) Enable Macro Control

2) When in Macro Range, tap the Macro symbol to shut lens switching off:

3) Go to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings and turn on Macro Control

When macro switching is turned off as noted above, you can tell as the phone will no longer switch lenses to focus on something nearer than the minimum focus distance for the wide camera.

You can do cinematography on iPhones but you don't use digital zoom and zoom between independent focal length lenses on a phone.

Cinematographic zoom uses actual zoom lenses, not a digital zoom that would jump between the available .5x, 1x and 3x optical zoom lenses located at different locations that result in parallax shift.

If you had three Arri Alexa with different focal length primes mounted to a base next to each other, would you expect to be able to seamlessly switch between them to create a faux zoom? Same with the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

This third-party article explains the camera system well (it covers the iPhone 13 Pro Max, but the iPhone 14 Pro Max uses the same lens system.)

iPhone Life: iPhone Camera Zoom Explained: Optical Zoom vs. Digital Zoom

That's because whenever you're not at precisely 1x, 2x or 3x you're using digital zoom, which is not recommended for high quality shots, and then when it reaches the even multiple it shifts to a completely different lens located at a different position on the phone.

Professional videographers would never do this for precisely that reason.

There's nothing wrong with the phone, you can't beat the laws of physics when it comes to optics.

I tried many solutions and I think this might help. On camera Settings, enable 'macro control'. Then, open your camera, zoom, and object, and then disable the macro option (yellow on the left bottom side). Apparently, that is causing the issue.

I found this thread as I have the same issue. A fix which I hope is temporary until Apple have a solution is use an app that does not change lens on zoom. Not ideal but I have been using FilmIC Pro. That has a button on screen where the required lens is picked and then the zoom is restricted to the ability of that lens. It does mean that one cannot zoom from full wide to full zoom but in the real world it is very rare to need that. Most of the time selecting the normal (1) lens covers every shot needed. I used to be involved in pro video production and a lot of zooming in and was considered very amateur.

One way to stop it is use a camera app that does not automatically switch between lenses. I use ProCam which has screen buttons to select which lens to use. Then the zoom buttons only work within the range if the chosen lens. It’s rare to need to zoom from minimum to maximum when shooting but it stops accidentally zooming across the kens change and getting the glitch.

There's nothing to fix.

Zoom uses (IMHO horrible) digital zoom when between the native resolution of the individual lenses on the phone and then jumps between the lenses with some parallax shift.

There's nothing to fix because it it is normal.

Zoom on a multiple lens phone, whether from Apple or an Android, works the same way.

This is why photographers and videographers use dedicated zoom lenses to zoom.

It does not solve anything though. That only works as as it blocks zooming from one lens to another. Some other camera apps do that anyway. I use Procam for video as it has a select button to choose lens. It stops accidentally getting the glitch by going from one lens to the next but the cost is a reduced zoom range.

ANSWER:

I’ve looked into this extensively.

I even went to the trouble of booking a repair through Apple care. After dropping off my phone for repair I was told by an Apple representative a hour later (after I got him) that is a known issue.

Apple’s software does not compensate for the skip, glitch, stutter, shuttering, etc. (whatever you want to call it) that happens when the zoom is transitioning from one camera lens to another. Which is obviously super frustrating (infuriating) when you’ve paid over $1,400 CAD for this phone. So I f you’ve planned on using this phone to film it defeats the purpose of even having the phone. Apple didn’t even think to give you the ability to lock the zoom onto one lens in order to avoid accidental skipping.

I haven’t looked into 3rd party apps that can fix this yet. So I’d love to hear if someone has found one.

Very disappointing Apple.

It does somewhat if you tell Camera not to do automatic macro switching:

Take macro photos and videos with your iPhone camera - Apple Support

Sadly, you can't control whether the iPhone uses digital or optical zoom for 3x as light conditions change.

As always, tell Apple you want this capability:

Feedback - Camera - Apple

Ok, now, somehow, I fixed it ! K went to the camera setting, changed it to 720p HD and now it looks good.. strange 🙄

This does seem more noticeable on the 14 than it was on my 12 but my solution is use a video recording app that works in a different way. I use Filmic but this is not an advert for them and there may be others that do the same job.

The app I use has a selector to choose between the three forward facing lenses and the selfie lens. Once the lens is chosen the zoom will only work within the limits of that lens. That would seem to be a big restriction but with a little planing it is rare to need a shot that covers the range of all lenses and if I am just recording for personal use, holiday shots for example, the slight jump is not an issue. I find this app is better if zooming anyway as it has a single finger zoom slider on the right edge of the screen which gives a smoother image than the standard options.

I think we all use the zoom too much anyway. I worked in commercial video recording years back with big heavy shoulder mounted cameras which made it a lot easier to get a steady shot but the zoom was more often used to frame the shot or just zoom in to focus than it was to actually record while zooming.