iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Blurry and Out of Focus

man, for me it looks like you're from Apple team trying to tell me: this blur is a cool new iPhone feature, it performs like a 5500$ setup. Sorry, but I don't buy it. If you can't see that there is clearly something wrong with lenses in iPhone 15 pro, then I can't help it. I'm dealing with top Sony cameras and Zeiss lenses on daily basis, so I know how sharp they are. And it has nothing to do with this topic really.

On text it is visible the most. When you portrait something you will also see a way less details than on 13 pro. Just spend some time and compare few shots, you will know what I and other here mean.

omg... this looks like a photo from iPhone 5, not 15 pro.... The bluriness and grain aren't the only problem of this new lens. There comes pretty heavy distortion as well, and the autofocus is just terrible, way worse than on iphone 13 pro and even iPhone XR. It very often doesn't focus on the place you tap on the screen.

There isn't a focus issue with the main camera per se, you just need to be conscientious about it as all auto focus systems can focus on the wrong object or get focus wrong.

A $5000 mirrorless pro camera will get it wrong, too.

As the camera systems get more sophisticated on the iPhone, more standard photographic techniques become important.

It would be nice if you could just point and shoot and have it focus in the right place, but that's a dream, not reality unless your camera system has such a small aperture that the entire field of view is within the depth of field of focus on any given point - which often was true for older phone cameras.

The iPhone 13 has a radically different camera system with different lenses and a much smaller sensor:

• iPhone 13 Pro: 12 MP sensor, normal lens f/1.5 with 1/1.9" sensor size with 1.9µm pixels, minimum focus distance approximately 4"

• iPhone 15 Pro: 48 MP sensor, normal lens f/1.78, 1/1.28" sensor size with 1.22µm pixels, minimum focus distance 7.7"

Yep, optics dictates that a larger sensor means a larger minimum focus distance.

Again, you have to work to get a $5000 mirrorless to focus where you want - it often gets it right, but it often gets it wrong, too.

Fstoppers: 4 Reasons Why the Autofocus of Your Camera Is Failing

In your logic every obvious malfunction of the 15pro is justified, because it's a different sensor. Well the sensor is different, but the issues are serious and are not "normal" by any means nor could be justified by 48 mp. I know how full frame cameras with large sensors are behaving (cause I work with them on daily basis) so I have a good comparison.

Autofocus and general sharpness across the frame of iPhone 15 pro aren't normal or expected, period. If you have other opion - fine, I just dont' want to waste more time discussing it.

And for the record: using Sony's mirrorless system I never had any serious issues with autofocus. Of course sometimes it doesn't hit the target but these are rare situations. On iPhone 15 pro its sometimes 50/50 wether you nail the focus or not...

I have the same problem. I’m a photographer and it’s obvious that the front camera of iPhone 15 Pro is blurry and out of focus.

I am familiar with high end cameras and post processing. I’m using Sony A7iii and edit my photos in Lightroom.

Unless you have the actual phone (iPhone 15 Pro), you won’t see and understand where all of these people are coming from. The photos are out of focus — the reason why they look so grainy.

I noticed one thing today on my friend’s iPhone 14 Pro Max. The photos appear vibrant (similar to actual scene) when shot but when you quickly go to photos and check it, it immediately decreases the color and vibrancy of the shot image. It takes about 1 second and it’s noticeable on iPhone 14 Pro Max but not on iPhone 15 Pro Max probably because of faster processor. But both the models are stripping off the saturation and iPhone 14 Pro Max reduces color more than iPhone 15 Pro Max. However the blurriness is more in iPhone 15 Pro Max. I did not shoot in RAW mode. It was HEIF at 12 MP. So both the models have their pros and cons.

CourtneyID wrote:

I am having the same issue. Apple, please fix this

Apple does not read here in this user-to-user forum for feedback or suggestions. You can, however, let them know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Apple appears to have largely fixed the selfie camera and flash problems that processed into unusable images (but deletes posts that say how. Ridiculous). The results are still very grainy but it is much more “wYSIWYG” in coloration and lighting and you don’t see the processing take over and change it to worse. I think the sharpness is fixed. Seems so at first glance. I’m hesitant to get too excited yet but it does seem fixed on my iPhone 15 Pro.

Does anyone here have the lenses covered by the case? I got one of those cases that has the camera area cut out but has a second small cover for the lenses only. I wondered then and now if it is contributing to the distortion of the pics that makes them so “low light effect.” It would seem not because my video is good and my burst mode is better and selfie camera is terrible by far, but ?

Apple's given us the tools, it's up to us to use them.

I can say the same for photos taken with my DSLR, which the cameras on the 14 P/PM and 15 P/PM are nearly the equivalent of.

Personally I find most to be razor sharp, especially if the face is detected with the yellow box.

If the face isn't detected, you have to set focus, and if there are multiple subjects, as always with large aperture lenses, you need to pick and choose to get the result you want.

I regularly shoot with a 105mm ƒ/1.4 lens and encounter the same issue, it's just the way optics work. You can pick extreme focus on their eyes or their nose but you won't get both.

That's not the camera's fault.

If you shoot those portraits in areas with a lot of light, it will approximate stopping down of the lens yielding greater depth of field.

I also wasn't trying to demonstrate a depth of field problem (or lack thereof), but rather I was disputing the notion that these cameras are horrible and incapable of taking a good photo.

Personally I would much rather have the face be the focal peak rather than the eyes.

I'm not trying to defend Apple, though the feature works beautifully. Read the Canon and Nikon forums and you will see people making the same complaints about eye AF on the R3 and Z9.

The yellow box denotes the face has been detected as a face; what part of that face is the focus peak is not disclosed, just as with face detection on cameras like the Nikon D850.

It has worked "perfectly" so far because with older devices with smaller sensors "sharp focus" was in fact soft enough you couldn't tell, not unlike when you move from a 12 MP sensor mirrorless to a 48 MP sensor mirrorless.

In the end, leave feedback at the link I gave and Apple will try to address it as they are always working on it; it's just even the photographic "big players" don't get it perfect.

I’m having same issue with my selfie camera and even back camera changes pics after clicking but front is worse

I’m still under return period but not sure if this can’t be resolved in future software upgrade

view before taking pics is perfect so I assume it’s a software processing issue

anyone has a partial fix

There really isn't an issue here per se, it all depends on what you are taking photos of and how.

For example, the 1x camera on the 15/15 Plus has the exact same resolution as the 15 Pro/Pro Max, and even has a shorter minimum focus distance because of its use of a smaller 1/1.56" sensor as opposed to the 1/1.28" sensor used on the 15 Pro/Pro Max.

Also obviously, there is no optical zoom level above 2x on the 15/15 Plus.

The 15/15 Plus also do not support ProRAW/RAW photos, but those options may be of no concern to you.

If you find the 15, 15 Plus or the Pixel 8 Pro, all of which independent reviewers have found to have not quite as good a camera as the 15 Pro/Pro Max, to better suit your needs, those are the devices you should use.

Many people "upgrade" to a Pro or Pro Max series phone, but if you never use the additional capabilities, there's no reason to do so.

For example, the sensor size differences I mentioned above have obvious side effects in terms of minimum focus distance, but many will never notice the additional quality provided by the larger sensor in the Pro/Pro Max, particularly if you don't shoot in 48 MP mode.

It then just becomes specsmanship for those who don't need and won't use the additional capabilities.

For example, if your photos are never used anywhere but Facebook, Facebook automatically downsamples photos with resolution of anything greater than 2048 pixels, so photographic resolution over 4 MP is completely useless for that site.

If you're never going to need a 3x (Pro)/5x (Pro Max) optical telephoto lens, there's also no reason to get a 15 Pro/Pro Max if the camera is a primary consideration.

Same problem here! The iPhone 15 Pro Max's camera doesn't give the expected result. The image has a terrible quality, the photo is grainy, it costs too much to focus the lenses correctly. It is impossible to take photos of documents in which all the text is clearly, blurs the edges of the text and is only sharp in the center. It's really annoying and problematic the issue of the focus and the graininess of the photo, I come from an iPhone X that takes photos with better sharpness quality than the iPhone 15 Pro Max. For me the camera is indispensable and I'm having a very bad experience.

Selfies aren't good either, the photo shown in the preview is beautiful and once you take it, it changes to grayish tones and starts to look grainy as well.

Please solve this situation, it is very worrying. I've read that it's a general problem of several users and it's terrifying to think that it's hardware issues. I updated to the latest iOS 17.2.1 but it doesn't solve anything!