Blurry pics on iPhone 14 Pro Max (iOS 16.0.2)

Cannot emphasis enough how important it is that we all raise tickets, issues, and log with Apple so this gets the attention that it needs.

like any big company the way Apple prioritizes is based on tickets, issues, feedback and public pressure.

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

FIXED IT! (Sort of…)

Basically, two things are at play here:

1) Apples Image Processing (and the QUAD PIXEL sensor technology is mostly at fault.)

2) The way the camera’s are programmed by default.

The first issue is the main root of the problem. The quad pixel sensor technology reduces the amount of resolution depending on how much light is needed on the image. Basically: Low light, sensor clusters pixels together to capture as much light as possible, you end up with at 7MP RAW image from the main camera, as opposed to the 48MP expected resolution (happened to me several times now.)

Here is an example of this issue:

The second issue at fault is that , specially for subjects that are closer than 1ft or so, the native camera app at 1x zoom switches from the main camera, to the ultrawide camera because the main camera can focus that close. It’s not too much of a big deal, since most people shoot subjects further away than 1ft. But it’s good to be aware of that.

To fix it (sort of) you unfortunately have to use a 3rd party app like HALIDE to override the software on the camera module and prevent it from doing the QUAD Pixel rubbish that makes a 48MP sensor output a blurry 7MP image. Even in low light, from my experience, HALIDE still provides better looking pictures, that are actually 48MP.

Ugh same issue here’s an image the quality is so poor When zooming in. Is there a setting a should be changing?? I heard I could change video and photo to 4K but it will take a lot of space on the iPhone . 🤯😭

I am having the same issue! I’m upset I spent money to get a better camera and the image result is horrible. The iPhone 12 Pro camera captures much better images. Comparing the photos taken with an iPhone 12 Pro, OnePlus 8 Pro, and iPhone 14 Pro, the image of the iPhone 14 Pro is horribly blurry, grainy and unusable compared to the other phone images. The iPhone 14 Pro camera appears like it was technology from 5-8 years ago. Apple please fix this camera!

Having the same issue, called Apple support. They’re apparently aware of the issue and the software team is notified and “working on the issue”. They also said they’re unable to tell me how long the “fix” software release will be, could be 1 months. Could be 6 months…

also offered me a phone swap but my phone passed all hardware issues so swapping the phone won’t really solve the issue.

Agreed! Halide 2 proves its software, not hardware. You can literally see the iOS software changing the image. It’s beyond silly!

Resetting your phone, exchanging your phone for another, having them try putting in a new camera. None of that has worked for anyone in this thread. It is a software based issue 100%

As OP stated. The best thing any of us can do is continue to report it via this feedback link in his original post or calling them and opening up tickets. If you’re all upset about it, get upset enough to take the extra steps to report.

Link:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

I think the key is we need more people to mark me too on this and also report this problem via the feedback link:

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

Somehow Apple needs attention brought to this that its a very real and noticable issue.

Also when I was on the text support chat they gave me this link to submit feedback about my issues. I did. Have not heard anything since. Perhaps we all should send in our examples. Product Feedback - Apple

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

if we all keeping reporting about the photo quality- even if we’ve already done so, perhaps if all of us maybe finally Apple will make a software fix? I just updated to the new software yesterday and sadly the photos are as muddy and grainy as ever. Has anyone been able to successfully downgrade? I really want my iPhone 11 back.

Same! Extremely frustrated with the constant autofocus- and inability to capture a quality photo of a moving object. I have a 2 year old whose on the move and since upgrading to the 14promax, every single pic of her is blurry! My 12 pro was better than this!

I have the same issues. Very grainy and blurry. I also have an issue with videos switching modes while I’m recording and going blurry for long periods of time. I’ve got the latest update as suggested elsewhere, but it’s not effective at fixing the issue.

Yeah I see it but fr, all those pics look good 😉

Seriously tho, I gave up. The camera is my favorite thing about a phone and the frustration was just getting to be too much. I got the S23 ultra and back k to have no issues. I just use sunbird for imessage 😆

Will do. The focal length change is one issue and I think this video does an excellent job explaining it https://youtu.be/-E0iNG6uTxk

And he points back at who makes the number one third party camera app Hailde’s Lux blog.

https://lux.camera/iphone-14-pro-camera-review-a-small-step-a-huge-leap/

1. they fail to do testing using faces 2. from that blog link if you go way down to the processing section “Starting on iPhone 13 Pro, we’ve started to really see mainstream complaints about iPhone camera processing. That is, people were not complaining about the camera taking blurry images at night because of a lack of light, or missing autofocus, but seeing images with odd ‘creative decisions’ taken by the camera. 

Ever since our look at iPhone 8, we noted a ‘watercolor effect’ that rears its head in images when noise reduction is being applied. At times, this was mitigated by shooting in RAW (not ProRAW), but as the photography pipeline on iPhones has gotten increasingly complex, pure RAW images have deteriorated. 

iPhone 13 Pro would rank up with the iPhone XS in our iPhone camera lineup as the two iPhones that have the heaviest, most noticeable ‘processed look’ on their shots. Whether this is because these cameras tend to take more photos at higher levels of noise to achieve their HDR and detail enhancement or other reasons, we cannot be certain of, but they have images that simply come out looking more heavily ‘adjusted’ than any other iPhone:(why they didn’t show the same shots on the 14 PM here that look equally bad and include faces is a big miss in the review)The two selfies shot above on iPhone 13 Pro demonstrate an odd phenomenon: the first shot is simply a dark, noisy selfie taken in the dark. Nobody is expecting a great shot here. The second sees bizarre processing artifacts where image processing tried to salvage the dark shot, resulting in an absurd watercolor-like mess.

With this becoming such a critical component of the image, we’ve decided to make it a separate component to review in our article. 

For those hoping that iPhone 14 Pro would do away with heavily processed shots, we have some rather bad news:it seems iPhone 14 Pro is, if anything, even more hands-on when it comes to taking creative decisions around selective edits based on subject matter, noise reduction and more.