iPhone 15 Pro Max Camera Blurry and Out of Focus

Just wanted to share my captures. I’ve just upgraded from 12PM to 15PM. I have noticed the same “blurriness” annd “lack of detail” as others. sometimes the blur increases from the centre of the pictures to the outside.

However my more significant issue is the volume of noise in photos from the wide angle and main sensor. Thee biggest issue is the very poor quality shots using the ‘macro’ mode. The macro mode produces terrible quality and artifacts within the images across the entire captures. Almost alike to a very low resolution.

Below is a picture of the LEGO fox using the macro (wide angle). There is no crop here and was taking in daylight conditions. This quality isn’t acceptable.

Above is using the main sensor. I have cropped to show the lack of detail and “blur” on the edge of the postage label of the iPhone return box. Again not acceptable.

finally below again using the main sensor there is an apparent lack of detail, although not as clear as the previous pictures, the image has a general lack of clarity. Especially compared to my 12PM. A general lack in edge detail on any slight zoom.

apart from the camera issues I am very happy with the 15PM. A great device which I am looking forward to owning. Hopefully a software update can help this.

good luck to everyone else.

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.

JackThr1ll3r wrote:

Unfortunately I bought it a month and half ago…at this point yes, if it’s just one day old you could return it

I wasn't responding to you. I was responding to someone who explicitly said they bought it a day ago.

You will need to work through this under the warranty:

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

My 11 pro max is taking better quality photos. 15 max has clearly some camera quality issues. Focus is really bad! Swithching cameras by itself when doing close up photos ( please bear in mind that macro is off!). I’ve compared few other 15 max in Apple Store and they do the sam etching so it’s clearly not problem with individual devices. It’s so annoying! I regret it so much buying it! I use my mobile to take photos for my work and I’ve taken thousands of photos with my 11 max and no issues, while I only needed to take few with 15 max and can clearly see the difference. Not worth the money.

After getting my camera lenses changed by Apple I went to a museum with a friend who has the iPhone SE. we took the same photo with each camera. Hers was better quality and better focused all around. Seriously this is crazy.

I’m getting a replacement phone but don’t hold high expectations. I will never buy another iPhone again until it’s out at least 3 months and possibly never again.

Those wanting a fix, I encourage you to call Apple support and make your voice heard. Apparently this forum serves just for all of us to complain and sympathize with each other, but not to get the problem fixed. For the fix, you have to contact Apple support.

It's for iPhones 15 pro and pro max Leave macro toggled on in camera settings, and try this Open the Camera app and go to Photo mode, tap on the screen what you want in focus, you'll see a yellow square and the 'sun' focus icon, the f symbol will appear on the bottom left, tap it, it'll turn yellow. Tap the top of the camera screen where the up arrow is, it'll open the menu and show you the ƒx settings, it's a cursor you can adjust how much you want to be in focus, let me know

Apple has leverage even now with a flawed expensive product because we’ve all gotten rid of our old phones, mostly as a prerequisite to getting a new one and therefore no choice to go back to old one and it’s not like we can go without. I am everything Apple/Mac and you make the excellent point: I’ve got a brand new $1K product and I’m on a pointless company discussion board hoping for a fix instead of getting this fixed immediately. We are just “hoping” some day it gets fixed. Imagine if this was a car. It’s not far off.

ps. The camera is sharper when not using raw but it is absolutely mind-blowing that Apple has made such an obviously massive mistake in selling the 15 (pro in my case) before the cameras and software were delivering results we expect from any camera let alone one that touts all it does. (I’m left with this: I can: record video, and take pictures (with a big asterisk **** 1, don’t use raw but you still won’t get sharp results consistently, 2. Don’t ever take a selfie again with the main button. Take only with the volume button for multiple images in a row so it bypasses processing, but of course that button isn’t quite convenient). And prepare to be ****** using camera for anything but video (which I believe is fine but not 100% sure).

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:

man, try to take a picture of a document. If you tap on center, you get a blurry ring. Tap on the top, you get a blurry bottom. Taping isn't helping, it looks like the lens can focus only partially now.

If I were that close I would be using the macro lens, so what are you trying to test in your example, the .5x lens, the 1x lens or the 5x lens?

Note also that a photo of a page of text taken with a $4000 DSLR/lens combo would not be perfectly sharp from edge to edge.

The photo I posted above is neither blurry nor out of focus.

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.

MummieYah wrote:

I hope apple will do something to fix this problem with IP 15 PM camera, It’s not satisfying making us feel that we just wasted our money

It looks like in this image your camera has front-focussed ie the focus point chosen by the camera is set close to the lens. I am getting excellent results from my 15P but experience hit and miss focus also

it’s plain and simple: all 15 models have issues with blurry, water paint images. With all lenses, in all circumstances. Any body can see this clearly. Even without comparing to older models. My wife saw it with the first pic she took. I saw it comparing 8 different 15s in stores against 12/13/14/SE.

So we don’t care much about reviews or scores. Even after replacement it’s still there. With latest software still there.

So, we are now waiting and praying for a fix that might never come.

[Edited by Moderator]

You say you don't care about reviews or scores, but those reviews are showing the cameras to be the incredible devices they are. You may perhaps not be a fan of the computational photography approach taken in modern smartphones, but Android phones are even worse in that respect.

You may want to try shooting in RAW mode with an app like Halide and applying minimal processing to see if that produces an image more suitable for you.

Also, never, ever shoot at anything but an optical zoom level.

Thats why I asked for the photo details, it shows those settings.