Q: Iphone 4s Takes Pictures Upside-Down???

Sorry to reply in this way but page 11 seems to be broken for me and I can't reply to jblmacuser in the normal way.

jlbuser said:

The reason this is so confusing and frustrating are as follows:

1)  Too many people that post on this site attack each other instead of trying to be helpful

I can only speak for myself here and say that I'm not attacking anyone, just trying to point out to the people offering alternatives that that is ONLY helpful to the people reading this thread and is an AFTER THE FACT HACK/Solution. The millions of users out in the real world (who probably don't even know this is happening) are sending photo's and video upside down to family and friends etc.

Now cue Whitesnake...

As I mentioned previously in another thread (yes I'm being forced to cross post now), the following information was taken when uploading a photo (taken as advertised by Apple advertisements) to regex.info/exif.cgi

EXIF — this group of metadata is encoded in 12,278 bytes (12.0k)

Above is the point of the whole thread. Exif is telling the software to rotate the picture 180 BECAUSE IT WAS TAKEN UPSIDE DOWN.

1) if this was intentional then this makes Apple sloppy and I don't think that would be the case.

2) I personally think it was an afterthought so hopefully it will be fixed soon.

And <whitesnake chorus blairing in the background>

EXIF DOES NOT WORK ON VIDEO (point 5 of category 5 PROBLEMS). It is an image standard, ie mainly jpg and tiff (and some sound files).

Does anyone else see the delicious irony here? Steve Jobs hated Google. Google gives away stuff for free that he spent his life building value for... and selling for billions of dollars each year. The fact that iphone users are using Google software to fix problems with his beloved iphone must have him rolling over in his grave.  Sorry Steve, I think your former company is letting you down now.

So, philzgr8, by your logic this would be a design flaw in my $2,000 Canon 60D also?  Hum, I rather doubt it.  As far as my post goes, I was just trying to provide helpful information.

If your $2,000 Canon was designed and marketed as the ulitimate high tech multimedia device, then I would either say it is a design flaw or a questionable decision on their part. 

By any reasonable persons standards, if you are shown how to hold the camera and the result of holding it that way was that all of your photos were upside down then yes it would be regarded as a design flaw. What some here appear to be missing is that the iPhone is also designed to be used as a video camera and the issue occurs with videos also. EXIF does not even apply to videos FFS.

PS. The point I was perhaps ineloquently making was that the EXIF theory has been thoroughly debunked as having any validity at all because if that were in fact the issue then surely videos would not be handled incorrectly when one considers that the EXIF standard does not even apply to them. If I was a little harsh then I apologise but a read of the thread would have made that fairly clear.

How about the iphone sticking with the exif setup when the phone is obviously being used as a camera and setting the flag to "0" when communicating.  The photos taken by the camera will be saved and transferred as they currently are (and I will get the appropriate software) but when I send photos (communication) from  my Iphone , the phone will pass a copy through a program which will rotate the images appropriately and set the flag to "0". 

For photos, lossless rotation is possible on JPEG images if the image size is a multiple of 16 in both directions - I believe that's right. So there are tools out there to do it and presumably an alternate camera app could resolve this.

Doesn't help video.

jcgrumman wrote:

 

How about the iphone sticking with the exif setup when the phone is obviously being used as a camera and setting the flag to "0" when communicating.  The photos taken by the camera will be saved and transferred as they currently are (and I will get the appropriate software) but when I send photos (communication) from  my Iphone , the phone will pass a copy through a program which will rotate the images appropriately and set the flag to "0". 

Why complicate things even more? How about Apple flip the internal camera 180o via a software update and be done with it? Then if the camera is held anyway other than upright, the EXIF information will be correct.

This will then fix the video issue when taken upright.

Around and around we go :-)

Comparisons with high-end cameras aren't fair.  It isn't one!  But they are also not fair because a high-end camera shows the on-screen display the same way up as the native orientation of the shot.  The iPhone doesn't (the on-screen display rotates as you rotate the phone).  The correct answer is that, if the icons rotate to show where the bottom of the camera is, that should be the bottom of the picture.  Or stop rotating the icons.  End of.

That said, I am not really bothered about photos.  It takes 2 seconds to turn in pretty much any software (windows comes with the "Windows Photo Viewer" which does an excellent, free and quick job of it).  To my knowledge rotating images doesn't result in a loss of quality... and if it does then not noticable enough to care - you shouldn't be using an iPhone camera if you care that much about image quality!!

The real issue, which no-one is really talking about, is Video.   There is nothing out there (that I can find easily) - and certainly nothing that comes with a PC pre-installed, which will rotate a video.  And I believe rotating video DOES result in a massive loss of quality.  Same principle as above - if the icons on-screen suggested to me I was holding it upside down then I would have thought - "oh, I'd better turn it the other way up!".  But they didn't.

Can we stop going round it circles now ;-)... and Apple, if you are following this at all, could you comment please??

I don't undrstand how rotating the camera 180 degrees will solve anything except putting the "shutter button" on top.  Without changing the software there is only one foolproof way to hold the camera and avoid potential issues.  I took a bunch of pictures and videos of my girls (6,8) skiing and held the camera either; home button down or home button to the right.  The latter pictures and videos are fine.  The former are rotated 90 degrees.

I wouldn't send a friend or business associate an email in a foriegn language and expect him to get an interpreter to read it. 

cvoce wrote:

 

Around and around we go :-)

 

Comparisons with high-end cameras aren't fair.  It isn't one!  But they are also not fair because a high-end camera shows the on-screen display the same way up as the native orientation of the shot.  The iPhone doesn't (the on-screen display rotates as you rotate the phone).  The correct answer is that, if the icons rotate to show where the bottom of the camera is, that should be the bottom of the picture.  Or stop rotating the icons.  End of.

 

I agree

 

That said, I am not really bothered about photos.  It takes 2 seconds to turn in pretty much any software (windows comes with the "Windows Photo Viewer" which does an excellent, free and quick job of it).  To my knowledge rotating images doesn't result in a loss of quality... and if it does then not noticable enough to care - you shouldn't be using an iPhone camera if you care that much about image quality!!

 

I think there is a loss of the raw file which is not ideal.

 

The real issue, which no-one is really talking about, is Video.   There is nothing out there (that I can find easily) - and certainly nothing that comes with a PC pre-installed, which will rotate a video.  And I believe rotating video DOES result in a massive loss of quality.  Same principle as above - if the icons on-screen suggested to me I was holding it upside down then I would have thought - "oh, I'd better turn it the other way up!".  But they didn't.

 

I went to a "computer guy" who had received a video from his daughter that was rotated 90 degrees (home button down).  His windows programs played the video sideways but his Arcsoft Total Extreme program rotated the image automatically after dragging and dropping.  If EXIF data is not involved in the video files how did this happen.

 

Can we stop going round it circles now ;-)... and Apple, if you are following this at all, could you comment please??

If you take a video the same way using the landscape of portrait the video comes out fine..

Also even taking a image portrait is still not correct,

This is not good as i paid $850 for my 32gb

My windows 7 pc will not let me rotate pictures that are uploaded from my 4s

Once they have been uploaded i can not rotate them to the right way they have

To be . I get the error message that windows cant save the rotated pic because

There is a problem with the file properties !

Has any one else had this same problem ?  The 4 allows me to rotate but the 4s

Piece of crap wont rotate them .

I have advised apple of this but they cant help ! They tried on a apple mac and had no

Problem rotating&amp;saving . Maybe they should hand over a mac so i dont have this

Problem &amp; why should i have to download a 3rd party software to rotate&amp; save my pics ?

Hey richardfromwyndhamvale check out my post on Jan 21st. There is a simple workaround to your problem. Google picasa allows you to fix multiple pictures in one click.

But why should i have to download picassa? The iphone4 has no prob rotating and saving

Pics , i have picassa already but why cant i rotate&amp;save with windows7 ??

Can easily save my pics with the 4 , which i dont have to rotate ? They all show the correct way ?