Blurry pics on iPhone 14 Pro Max (iOS 16.0.2)

Just found something that seems to help so far, complete ******** that we even have to do this. Really getting over Apple and Samsung is starting to look like an option 🤔

Settings- Camera- turn off “lens correction”

still ****** off at this 🤬🤬🤬

just a quick update from my side. I called Apple today, they ran a hardware diagnostic which included testing the sensor etc and everything passed. I got an appointment at the Genius Bar next Monday to have a tech look at my phone. I’m not going to be too optimistic, but I did a little more research and side by side comparison with my 12 Pro today. The pictures are more grainy on the 14 pro but why…. Well looking at the picture details I noticed the ISO picked by the camera in the 14 Pro was 640…. The same picture in the same light with the 12 Pro was ISO 160! So started making sense… higher ISO = Grainier image! By default the 14pro still takes pics at 12megapixel so unless you switch to raw mode and select 48mp the images compare to the 12 Pro aren’t going to improve much. Even though the lenses are much bigger, the 3x optical capability must reduce enough light that the camera has to pick higher ISO values to compensate for the loss of light in the new lenses. If you go into a bright light setting, the 14pro will lower the ISO and the image becomes less grainy.

its definitely a light level problem in normal images, but in bright settings 48MP will result in non grainy pictures.

the fact remains that many of us take photo’s indoors, so this becomes a problem.

I guess I have to wait and see what Apple says next Monday.

Well I downloaded Procamera which allows for manual control and so far I’m seeing greatly improved images!

I think Apple has some work to do to their camera app….or software in general. Pretty sad that not more people have discovered this on their 14pro phones. I guess everybody thinks it’s new so it must be better 😁

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.

however it goes well beyond the “more manual” and “point and shoot is dead” argument they try to make for the iphone 14 pro max. This phone is not capable of focusing, and not capable of holding a focus when I set it, and fails to auto focus. It’s like the camera workings are made with worn out, stretched, old gym sock elastic.

I also spent about 90 minutes on a text with Apple Support with their app option to contact by text (so I get a record of the chat. Never again with phone voice calls)

Same as with the first phone they ask you to restart and a list of other standard things, run diagnostics, ask about any mag safe things you use but swear it has no issue. Eventually they want you to take it to the Apple store. I did this with my first 14 pm and was treated pretty poorly. I was “crazy lady” and “too dumb to use the camera”. After calls back to support because it was still grinding after the update and wouldn’t focus I got this 2nd phone as a replacement. It seemed better at first but it’s failing to focus obviously now. September to December is not a long time to have two phones with failed cameras.

if I do have to go back to the Apple Store, I’m taking my framed degree BA in Art / Graphic Design with me so maybe they cut the crap.

I fixed this on my phone by going to Settings - Camera and turning off View Outside Frame and Lens Correction. Photos look great now! I’m not sure which one did the trick. But I hope this helps someone else.

True Tone is a display technology and would have nothing to do with the software processing on the camera. The issue is that this is the first year in a long time that Apple has changed their camera hardware. The software based computational photography has just not caught up. It took google well over a year to adjust their software when they finally upgraded their camera on the pixel. Apple is way more pompous and hasn’t even admitted there is an issue. So I’m imagining it will take a lot longer. The issue is definitely software as I’ve stated because I can fix the blur issues using google photos.

Like I’ve said, you change get a replacement, clean the lens, erase the phone, it’s not going to help. This is a SOFTWARE issue with the computational photography. It’s broken and Apple won’t even acknowledge it. This is why you’re seeing the post processing. The software they are using on all phones now with iOS 16 is borked because they updated the hardware on the 14 pro. We can’t fix it. They have to.

I can’t even take a picture of a chapstick tube and have the whole tube in focus. Only one part and the rest will blur. And I’m well within the minimum focusing range. Crazy.

I sometimes get a pretty good photo (clear but waaaaaaay oversharpened) and my photo preview always shows a clear shot. That’s what makes me believe it’s software based. Something in the computing of the image I’m taking is failing. Because it seems the smart decisions the software makes aren’t too smart and actually can’t keep up with the improved camera lenses. I did go to apple (several times) and got my camera replaced-same issue. And it also passed all hardware checks. It’s crazy to me that apple KNOWS the issues about this camera (confirmed by apple engineer on call) but won’t address them. This phone camera is impacting my work and making me crazy. Especially bc if it didn’t process so badly I think the photos could be great!!

Spent nearly 3 hours on the phone with Apple Support today- she made me Reset my phone (a pain, already had done that, but she said Engineering makes you run through all these steps) She had me take the case off, clean the lenses etc. Of course, that didn't help. So she had me take screen recordings of the phone's inability to focus in Ultra-wide, 1x, 2x, and 3x, and also while shooting video. She said she would submit the recordings and grainy photos to Engineering and they'd get back to her with next steps in 5 days. I suggest all of us take the time to do this. It's such a pain, but if enough of us submit tickets to Engineering maybe they will fix the software at least? I know that won't help with the minimal focal distance and smaller aperture though :( - if all else fails, my mom said I could switch phones with her and downgrade to her 12 and she'd take my 14 as she doesn't care as much about photography. Imagine downgrading from the "top of the line iPhone" ! This is crazy.

Thank you for the link… I left a message there in feedback in bugs too.. and I even have it with the 16.0.3 update as of today. Oct 20th… still not focusing…

I also called Apple’s support and the rep said “it is a known issue” even after the 16.0.3 update… but it’s good to see it being mentioned here as well… and I told her “My iPhone 14 Pro Max’s camera will not focus!”

Such a shame … I hope they get on it and give us an update again fast

Thank you again very much for the link

iPhone 14 pro bought for macro pics. Agree that any attempt at digital zooming on camera blurs the image. I downloaded images onto my pc thinking it might be a problem with the iPhone digital zoom. I’ve compared similar downloads images with my iPhone 6S with macro lens adaptor. I can digitally zoom on my PC upto 194% with iPhone 6S and still retain a lot of clarity. The iPhone 14 pro images break up well before 194%.

So my conclusion is there is a fault with the iPhone 14 pro image and isn’t related to the phones digital zoom. I’ve just updated to 6.1.1 as was using 6.0.2 so will take more pics tomorrow As I’m concerned it’s not going to be an easily fixable software update if no improvement tomorrow then phone is going back for a refund. Will update tomorrow.

I´ve been doing some testing on my side also and I noticed that the pictures in RAW 12mp look sharp and with the correct saturation and HDR, meanwhile the normal HEIC pictures look oversaturated and HDR is badly applyed, also less sharp than the others. But neither of those are blurry really, it´s just that when i zoom in too much they lose sharpness obviously. I will continue doing tests and will try deactivating the "lens correction" option en the camera settings to see if that helps (i think it will and a lot).

Exactly! It seems the stock normal HEIC pictures are ruined by postprocessing compared to the past generations. For the time being i’m using Proraw on 12mp with lens correction off and it takes some very decent and sometimes amazing quality pictures.

Seems someone from Apple has been in and deleted quite a few replies and comments. Wonder why

anyway thanks to whoever mentioned the Halide 2 app as my photos are much better on that. Which goes to show this is 100% software related. If a 3rd party app can make it work why can’t the original manufacturer?