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iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Blurry and Out of Focus

Hi All,


It seems im not having a very good experience with the new iPhone 15 Pro Max. Coming from a 14 Pro Max the pictures were great. nice and sharp, never had issues with "blur" or "grainy" photo's.


This new iPhone seems to be a downgrade in the photo's it can produce. I'm constantly getting very grainy photo's even with the slightest bit of zoom after the photo has been taken.


I have tried all resolution's etc (12mp, 24mp, 48mp HEIF & Pro Raw.) this has affected th 1x and 5x camera.


My 14 won me a few awards for photo's and consider myself fairly knowledgeable on iPhone Photography. The 15 just isn't putting out good quality images.


All photo's are stored "on device" so there is no iCloud trickery happening.


The below is an example of what I am talking about.



[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPhone 15 Pro Max

Posted on Oct 2, 2023 8:01 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 8, 2023 5:14 AM

I am soooo annoyed about this! I purchased the iPhone 15 pro for the camera and complete disappointment so far. All photos are blurry, grainy, and just remind me of the iPod touch. Apple please fix this! Can’t figure out if this is a software problem or a hardware one!

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526 replies

Nov 22, 2023 12:02 PM in response to Doesntmstter

Same here. I think the most obvious scenario is when you try to make a photo of the text document. This is just unacceptable, my old iPhone X made way better pictures with sharper text. Actually this looks like you accidentally shaked the camera (I tried like 10 times, every single one of them looks blurry). So far for me this issue is NOT software related: I tried turning off every single camera setting, macro modes, portrait, picture format, compression etc. For comparison I took 2 photos of the same document, using iphone 15 pro and iphone 13 pro, EXACTLY the same lighting conditions, same camera distance. The results are shocking:

Nov 23, 2023 12:55 PM in response to Doesntmstter

Came here exactly for the same thing. I came from iPhone 14 Pro and now I'm using iPhone 15 pro, I think the problem may be post processing done by the phone. And if you want to look something weird, take a look at this photo. It was taken at night. The pixelation on the faces was done by me before uploading, but notice the girl on the right what happened to his left arm.

It was taken on regular resolution, on night, without any filter or flash or weird thing.

Nov 24, 2023 3:52 AM in response to ziem_as

Note that photos uploaded to this site are converted to a downsampled JPG format a maximum of 5 MB in size, so they are not an accurate representation of the clarity and resolution of the actual photo.


I don't use A4 pages, nor do I have a copy stand, so I can't do what you request, but this is a recent random photo I took with the normal (1x) lens on a 15 Pro Max:


Nov 24, 2023 4:33 AM in response to ziem_as

The 13 Pro Max had a completely different camera system:


12 MP sensor, 1.9µm pixels, 26 mm equivalent f/1.5-aperture lens


The 15 Pro Max:


48 MP sensor, 2.44µm quad pixels, 24mm equivalent f/1.78-aperture lens


Note also similar complaints have been raised against competing phones; here's a photo from a post complaining of a similar effect on a Samsung Galaxy S23:


Nov 24, 2023 4:50 AM in response to ziem_as

My photos of text have a slight edge blur as well, but this is not a defect, it is an unavoidable consequence of taking a close up image of text with a high MP sensor at a small lens; it's optics at play.


You can duplicate this by taking a photo of a page of text with a high end DSLR and a lens with a focal length of approximately 28mm at f/1.8.


For example, do you find this text to vary in sharpness across the whole photo?



I do, and that was taken with a $4500 DSLR and a $1000 lens with a 45 MP sensor.

iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Blurry and Out of Focus

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