Back Cameras: How Does iPhone 13 (or 12 or 14) Pro Focus?

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Level 1

22 points

Back Cameras: How Does iPhone 13 (or 12 or 14) Pro Focus?

I'm asking because I'm an old film-SLR photographer who is frustrated by not finding a way to force these cameras to focus at Infinity, even in the third-party apps that I've tried.

To understand this problem, it would help to know how the focus mechanism actually works. In particular, does each lens have a physical stop at Infinity (and at nearest focus), as an SLR would, or is it all up the the software in the various camera apps to determine this from sharpness or some such? -- JCW2

Posted on Jan 21, 2023 11:07 AM

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Answer 1

Omar_A1

Community Specialist

Jan 23, 2023 6:28 PM in response to JCW6

Hello JCW6,

Thank you for reaching out to Apple Support Communities.

These steps may be able to help:

"Adjust the camera’s focus and exposure

Before you take a photo, the iPhone camera automatically sets the focus and exposure, and face detection balances the exposure across many faces. If you want to manually adjust the focus and exposure, do the following:

Open Camera.
Tap the screen to show the automatic focus area and exposure setting.
Tap where you want to move the focus area.
Next to the focus area, drag up or down to adjust the exposure.
To lock your manual focus and exposure settings for upcoming shots, touch and hold the focus area until you see AE/AF Lock; tap the screen to unlock settings.

On iPhone 11 and later, you can precisely set and lock the exposure for upcoming shots. Tap , tap , then move the slider to adjust the exposure. The exposure locks until the next time you open Camera. To save the exposure control so it’s not reset when you open Camera, go to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings, then turn on Exposure Adjustment."

More details can be found here: Use iPhone camera tools to set up your shot

You can also provide feedback regarding the Focus of your iPhone's camera here: iPhone

Hopefully this helps.

Cheers!

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Answer 2

JCW6 Author

Level 1

22 points

Jan 24, 2023 12:53 PM in response to Courcoul

Dear Courcoul -- Thanks for chiming in! Did you see my other thread (Force Camera Focus to Infinity? - Apple Community? Which iPhone do you have now? Does it behave the same way (in ProCam) as mine does in Lightroom Mobile (LrM)?

On the iPhone 13 Pro neither the iOS camera app nor LrM suffers from the problem you mention of shooting through a glass window.

By the way, LrM also allows you to fiddle with all the settings manually. It's just that the focus slider doesn't make much sense nor work as advertised. In manual focus mode LrM also puts green borders around the edges of objects that are supposed to be in focus. Unfortunately this is not helpful, since the depth of field suggested by these green highlights is much greater than in the actual image.

All of this is why I was hoping to get info on the actual hardware, as asked here. -- JCW6

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Answer 3

JCW6 Author

Level 1

22 points

Jan 24, 2023 10:11 AM in response to Omar_A1

I thought this was posted in a hardware area, but you've given the same (software) answer as to my other thread. Please read beyond the first paragraph! This is not at all responsive to my question. -- JCW2

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Answer 4

Courcoul

Level 6

18,564 points

Jan 24, 2023 11:34 AM in response to JCW6

I hear you, reason why I acquired the ProCam app to be able to fiddle manually with the settings as desired, though i miss the automatic stabilization. On the 13 PM, am suspecting the default camera app uses the Lidar thingie to guesstimate the distance and work with that, bad if you have for example a glass pane in between and want to focus on the scene beyond. Especially since Ye Olde 8+ did not do this and did not have Lidar.

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Back Cameras: How Does iPhone 13 (or 12 or 14) Pro Focus?

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