iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Blurry and Out of Focus

The photos from the front facing camera are very grainy and pixelated. It looks good before you hit the shutter. When the photos are taken they look so pixelated and grainy. Apple please fix this.

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:

Has anyone got an answer from Apple? I can't find the "Helpful answer" , if there has been one?

Will there be a software update? Or is it hardware related?

Thanks

I think all you who are writing here needs to contact Apple. I have.

They replaced the unit. But the new one is as bad. Support said they knew the issue but who knows if they understood and it was more than a month ago. But customers needs to make Apple aware of this.

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.

It looks like this photo was taken with Night Mode, which merges several photos taken in random succession to create a single photo.

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:

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:

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.

And will we blame it for the large sensor as well? Bigger sensors have better low light performance, so this theory won't stand.

anyone here surprised that Apple calls it normal? Me not....

I am experiencing the same blurry image with iPhone 15pro max

this blur image i have not seen in any earlier iPhone 13 pro max, 14 pro max i used , apple should come out with immediate fix for this issue

You're now complaining about noise reduction and the effects of computational photography, which are what most users want to see from the camera; that's the new norm whether it's the iPhone 15, Galaxy S23 or Pixel 8.

If you've never seen a "correctly working" photo from a 15, then it may be that your expectations are not what Apple and other phone makers have opted to provide, compared to the duller appearing lower resolution output from older phone cameras. I'm also presuming you're using the 1x lens with absolutely no digital zoom.

For example, do you think this photo has aggressive noise reduction and plastic features?

It was taken with a $5000 Canon R3 mirrorless camera and $2000 lens and produced by an award-winning photographer who was paid quite well for their work. It is an accurate reflection of what clients and others expect from their photos today (despite the fact I personally find the smoothing rather over-aggressive resulting in a "plastic" look, but I'm not the one paying them for their work.)

People don't want "accurate" photos anymore, they want what they believe the photo "should" look like according to what they see on Instagram and Snapchat.

Sometimes I also think the iPhone's processing is a bit aggressive, but I also know Apple provides ProRAW for less processing and RAW mode via Halide or Lightroom for those who want none at all that they don't add; most people demand photos they can post to social media with zero edits, not even hitting the magic wand button to optimize brightness/contrast.

Computational photography is a sometimes controversial topic, but in the end these are the results consumers demand from their devices.

There is an excellent YouTube video you can search for entitled Smartphone Cameras vs Reality! that covers these issues in great detail.