iPhone 14 pro max zooming glitch

I am so disappointed because I specifically got the iphone 14 pro max because it's supposed to have the best camera in a phone. I understand the camera jargon, but it feels a lot worse than other iphones and I dont see androids having this problem. It's a major let down.

I’ve just changed my iPhone 11 Pro to an iPhone 14 pro. I’m a frequent user of Instagram so I take lots of pics and videos and I’ve encountered this issue too. It was so annoying and very disruptive when you need to take a quick video/picture of a specific moment. The camera switches among the lenses before and during taking a video/pic. I’ve checked for solutions and nope, the toggling off for macro lens didn’t help. As lots of my friends bought iPhone 14 pro n max, i asked them if they’ve experienced that and all have the same issues. Apple please update the IOS to solve this auto switching camera lens. It’s really not helpful at all and I’ve heard people complaining on iPhone 13 Pro too. Why do we need this auto function to switch between the camera lenses when we obviously know what we are shooting? Why can’t it be an icon on the UI to toggle it? I don’t have such issue on my old 11 Pro? I don’t feel like I’m having an upgrade on the UX

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.

That’s a good solution, but also a problem. If you need a third party app to fix the problem clearly something isn’t right. Especially if it hasn’t been addressed by Apple. Regardless, customers shouldn’t have to purchase or download another camera app given how much the device costs and the anticipation that went into the new camera features. Clearly people are not happy about it and Apple has a responsibility to make this better.

Ya they should fix this problem within the iPhone camera or IOS itself. I don’t think we should get a third party app for that. If we have to depend on another app to take a normal video/photo then what’s the use of the existing camera function?

And no, by turning off lens switching for the macro lens doesnt help because it was not turned on in the first place. I’ve tried toggling it on n off just to see what happens, hoping the glitch might go off after the toggling but the problem still exist. This camera switching happens even when I’m not even zooming in. It was at x1, at its original settings with macro lens auto function turned off.

Responding to rwillia532a, could be a parallax error but disagree with the statement that it "physically must happen". My Canon 24-200 SLR lens has barrel distortion at the widest range, arguably something that "must" happen on a lens with such a huge zoom range. However, Canon digitally corrects it so that, as long as the photos are viewed through their software, the problem is unnoticable. Horrible design on Apple's part. Inexcusable really.

Responding to Dogcow-Moof, that 100% wrong that it can't be fixed. It CAN be addressed with software correction but Apple has been too lazy to do that. See comments above about digitally correcting barrel distortion. If barrel distortion can be digitally corrected, so can parallax error.

I'm not sure it's even parallax error at all. As you said, when you switch from one eye to another, an object appears to move. The problem I'm seeing isn't so much a motion problem as a change in brightness and clarity. I think the actual problem is a difference in quality between the primary lens and the "secondary" telephoto and macro lenses. I've noticed in low light shooting, inside museums for example, that the secondary lenses are not as bright as the primary lens. I don't think they capable of opening to as wide an aperture (because they're inferior lenses due to Apple cutting corners) so you see a difference in brightness at the lens switch.

Responding to mega-watts, bingo! It's an Explanation not an Excuse. The bank can Explain how your deposit inadvertently went into someone else's account, but that situation is still Inexcusable and the bank needs to resolve it.

Regarding the numerous comments referencing Apple's reply that it is just to be expected, absolutely pathetic. Other multi-camera phones don't have this problem. Just another example of how Apple doesn't live up to the hype and isn't worth the money.

Responding to rwillia532a, could be a parallax error but disagree with the statement that it "physically must happen". My Canon 24-200 SLR lens has barrel distortion at the widest range, arguably something that "must" happen on a lens with such a huge zoom range. However, Canon digitally corrects it so that, as long as the photos are viewed through their software, the problem is unnoticable. Horrible design on Apple's part. Inexcusable really.

Responding to Dogcow-Moof, that 100% wrong that it can't be fixed. It CAN be addressed with software correction but Apple has been too lazy to do that. See comments above about digitally correcting barrel distortion. If barrel distortion can be digitally corrected, so can parallax error. Explaining why video looks like crap when the zoom crosses from one lens to another doesn't excuse the problem.

I'm not sure it's even parallax error at all. As you said, when you switch from one eye to another, an object appears to move. The problem I'm seeing isn't so much a motion problem as a change in brightness and clarity. I think the actual problem is a difference in quality between the primary lens and the "secondary" telephoto and macro lenses. I've noticed in low light shooting, inside museums for example, that the secondary lenses are not as bright as the primary lens. I don't think they capable of opening to as wide an aperture (because they're inferior lenses due to Apple cutting corners) so you see a difference in brightness at the lens switch.

Responding to mega-watts, bingo! It's an Explanation not an Excuse. The bank can Explain how your deposit inadvertently went into someone else's account, but that situation is still Inexcusable and the bank needs to resolve it. Explaining why video looks like crap when the zoom changes from one lens to another does not excuse the problem.

Regarding the numerous comments referencing Apple's reply that it is just to be expected, absolutely pathetic. Other multi-camera phones don't have this problem. Just another example of how Apple doesn't live up to the hype and isn't worth the money.

The more videos shot on my 14 Pro Max I look at, the more I am convinced it is NOT parallax error switching between camera lenses but rather inferior quality of the telephoto and zoom lenses because I see notable CONTINUED difference in brightness and color depth (how rich/vibrant the colors are) in the ENTIRE footage shot with the telephoto verses primary lens not just at the point of lens transition. Parallax error would only explain a momentary glitch at the moment of lens change. But I see washed out colors in the entire length of footage shot at telephoto and richer color depth in the entire length of footage shot with the primary lens. So, of course, when colors are more muted/washed out with one lens and you switch to another lens with deeper and richer colors, you're going to see a transition.

Some of that may be because the telephoto lens is a 12 MP sensor and the main lens is a 12 MP section of a 48 MP sensor unless you're shooting in ProRAW.

Regardless, I don't notice a difference in most of my shots, but it's always going to be dependent upon what you're shooting.

It won't make a difference for anyone shooting professional video because you'd never use video straight from the camera without color grading anyway.

For me it’s most noticeable when zooming through the various lenses. I enjoy recording my son playing basketball and every time I zoom from 1x to 0.5x or when it crosses the 3x zoom there’s a huge jump and change in light.

Once you go over 3x zoom you're using digital zoom, which will significantly degrade quality as digital zoom always will regardless of device.

Optical zoom on the 14 Pro/Pro Max is only at the precise levels of .5x, 1x, 2x and 3x.

Anything in-between is digital zoom.

Well, for brightness of lenses, I wouldn't really call that inferior.

If you're used to using DSLRs, you'd know that the f-stop of a lens is based on the focal length of the lens.

A 70mm lens would need to have an iris 9x larger (in area) than a 24mm lens in order to have the same f-stops. I would be very interested to see what that phone would look like.

That said, that would just be a question of the camera having those cameras ready to go with the appropriate shutter speed and iso.

I was having the same issue too. Only kinda fixed when I changed my video recording mode to 4K at 60fps. But this setting doesn’t allow you to zoom in from 0.5x to 9x in one video. Different zoom ins also cause different lights and the light jump in the videos are not subtle at all. Really dissatisfying.

I got my IPhone pro (not max) with the same problem, before sending the device to Istore, I had also grey screen when sliding between the zoom options, and when recording a video, it gives me limited options of zoom - 0.5-1/ 3-6 and so on… Today I picked my new device, went home, and guess what? No grey screen but the exact same problem !!! 😡😡

I am having the same issues. I like taking videos and zooming in and out. I had an iPhone 11 Pro max and it worked perfectly but now this iPhone 14 pro max showing big jumps when zooming in and out. It is very annoying.