iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Blurry and Out of Focus

I held on to my trusty iphone 7+ until this year where iOS 15.7.9 could no longer work with watchOS 9.

I was never an avid photographer and simple concepts like how times zoom or focal length baffles me. For my normal use case of taking close up shots of static objects, my iphone 7+ was just a simple point, adjust the focus slightly and the pic comes out pretty.

Ever since I “upgraded” to an iPhone 15 Pro Max, I started to think that I have received a lemon. Besides the overheating issue that consistently happywhen I view the photo album and do simple edits like cropping, the problem with 5x zoom lens resulting over exposed and grainy pics totally frustrates me.

I have already factory reset my phone once and none of these problems go away. I waited for iOS 17.1 to be publicly released on October 24th but that never happened either.

I wish I had done more research on the camera issues starting with iphone 14 pro.

Yesterday I reset the phone and install the IOS Software via MACbook. It didnt change anything. The front camera still take grainy and blurry selfies. Comparing it with Iphone 12 and 13 series the difference in 14 and 15 series are huge. The better the camera features the worse the photos. Hope Apple will take these comments and provide a solution as soon as possible. Maybe an IOS update, or maybe a filter for the camera like android products. They can provide a filter like bright & beauty & smooth options. Hope this front camera problem will solve. It is so sad to capture Darker, blurry blemished, grainy cold selfies with the latest Iphone of Apple.

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I’m so devastated that I’ve spent so much money on this phone. I got my last Apple phone in 2020 when my daughter was born and I loved it. I ran out of storage so have I saved and saved and saved and got this new 15 pro with 1tb storage so I could continue to take beautiful photos of my family. And thought it would last me at least another 3+ years. But all the photos are terrible. Grainy, like they are kinda out of focus or something. Awful colour capture, it looks dull af… almost like an instax photo. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am and how much I regret my choice. Everything I read said ‘this camera is amazing’ - absolute tosh!!

This is frustrating. The price of this phone is super expensive. I just hope Apple will do something about it to fix this issue. Maybe a software change or update. I just noticed my pictures were all grainy and blur.

My wife came home mad since her (regular) 15 takes worse pics than her old 12. Anything with little movement comes out blurry. Even outside. Tested tonight. It’s horrible. Even my SE takes sharper pics. Now what? Pray everyday for a fix? This is crazy. None of the pics look great from kids etc.

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Wondering what they told you, i have the same issue and i also have spoken to apple support and sent a screen recording of how the camera looks before you take the photo and after and they sent to engineers and when i got the call back i was told that the engineers said this was normal so it just sounds like we got new phones with crappy cameras.

I also facing this problem apple! When i open my camera preview image is really cool but when I click it after clicking image is really blurry , grainy and bad it’s like I clicked in some low end device. lol someone please tell me is it hardware issue or software issue? Because I am very afraid I hardly adjust a money for this phone and this happened with me camera working really bad front and back both same situation please apple help me for this issue

I had the same issue. Photos were taken as if they are in portrait mode in every single photo. Focusing on one place, blurry elsewhere. I switched off Photo Portrait mode, I switched off Macro control, I also switched off depth control and anything with depth, portrait, macro from preserve settings. Now it is much better, yet it is not better than my iphone 12PM, so disappointed.

If I had an iPhone like that I would return it immediately, or anyway I’d immediately book an appointment at the Apple Store to test the iPhone and if still in the 14 days cooling off period just hand it back

I was in contact with Apple support for the same problem. I sent a lot of logs and I sent photo comparison between an iPhone 13 and my iPhone 15 pro max and the difference was incredible. The photo taken with the 13 was crispier and with many details, the 15 was blurry and out of focus. They called me 10 minutes ago to tell me that the technician has inspected everything and said that my camera hasn’t a problem since both the 13 and the 15 were working as intended (😅) and if I want I can reach an Apple Store for further investigation. Forgot to say that I opened the practice 2 weeks ago and in two weeks I sent diagnostics log and different pictures/screen recording. Can I be annoyed more than this?

silviah225 wrote:

Mine is just as bad! One day old and I’m very disappointed!

I was hoping since it’s my first iPhone I just didn’t know where to make the changes..

So return it. If you bought it from Apple, you have 14 days to do so.

This problem specifically reminds me of something that happens with one of my SLR lenses, and it might be for the same reason. 

I have this same issue with my iPhone 15 Pro, but only with the combination of two conditions:

• Using Apple’s native camera app while the phone is on a tripod 

I don’t have this issue at all when hand-holding it, with or without night mode. I also don’t have the issue when using the ProCamera app and a tripod. 

One of my SLR camera lenses has optical image stabilization, but that feature is specifically supposed to be deactivated when using it on a tripod, because otherwise, the photos will look like… well... my iPhone 15 Pro photos when I’m using the default camera app and a tripod. 

…which is to say, pretty terrible. 

The lens just constantly seeks to readjust, because it doesn’t know what to do with itself when the shutter snaps and it’s actually not being jostled. This is a known and entirely expected issue, which is why the manual explicitly says to switch it off when using a tripod. 

Apple should probably look into what its own implementation of optical image stabilization is doing. The phone has an accelerometer, so it should be able to automatically deactivate OIS whenever it sense that the phone is actually stationary. 

I have the same issue with my 15PM and went to the Apple store today to have it checked out. They said that there are no hardware issues but asked if I wanted to swap out the lenses. The lenses are $250 and they are willing to swap it out for free. I'm thinking that this has to be the fix; otherwise why would Apple offer to swap out the lense for free. I'm not sure if I should do this. Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you.

I have the same issue. Jumped from 12 mini to 15P and what a disapointment. My main frustration is even bigger in the portrait mode. Face gets all blurred and outside face everything better focused. This is very bad Apple! Im heading now to the store to return my new iphone.