iPhone shows photo usage but iTunes correctly shows no photos

Kill the photo app from multitasking and reset your iPhone. (Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button together for at least ten seconds, until the Apple logo appears.)

Did you ever saw 0MB in Camera Usage? Maybe the Camera Roll can't go to 0.

Did you check for any Photo Streams you might have?

Go into the Photos app and click the Photo Stream button (bottom right).

If there are any photos there, you will have to delete them.

That is probably what the memory is reporting.

I had the same issue and couldn't figure out why iTunes was reporting several MB of usage after I deleted all photos from my phone.

(If this doesn't solve your problem, I have no clue.)

Itunes is not the only app that sincs your photo library to your iphone. It is one of the ways you can sync your photo library, but it is not done exclusively through itunes. Iphoto also is responsible for syncing photos to your iphone, and I believe you can resolve the problem by checking your iphoto settings. I had a similar problem, but I fixed it using an external hard drive (which may have been unnecessary)

It could be that even though you have emptied your camera and unsynced photos, iphoto is still connecting to your Iphone and importing photos. I had the same problem bc pics were taking up too much space on my Iphone. I bought an external hard drive, and moved my entire iphoto library from my computer to it. I then deleted everything off my computer, so that all of my pics were only on the external hard drive. Then I backed up my phone to the computer, and the photo storage (that wouldnt go away at first even though i had no pics on my phone!) finally went away and showed the actual memory taken up on my phone.

I dont think that the memory is reporting photos from your photo stream, especially bc you said you dont use photo stream so why would they be there? I believe the problem comes from iphoto, and can be easily fixed.

I'm sure you could do this without buying an external hard drive. Check your settings in Iphoto and make sure that it is up to date. They just released a new version of iphoto that might be of some help. Make sure that iphoto isnt trying to connect to your iphone when you connect it, and then restart your iphone and it should work.

I have the same problem and none of these answers helped. I even restored my ipad and somehow lost some apps in the process (reinstalled manually) but the 1.2gb phamtom photostream was still there despite having no photos on photostream at all. Only an issue on my ipad3, not my iPhone 4S even though both use the same username.

I have the same issue with 4.9gb of phantom photos showing on my iPhone. Any ideas?>

I figured it out for my iphone. Same issue: lots of usage (1gb) to 'photos and camera' under iPhones storage stats even though I have no photos or videos on my phone in any app. Solution for me:

I went to settings - general - usage - iCloud - manage storage - select ur phone then a list of all the things to be backed up appears, specifally camera roll. Turn off camera roll backup and when it asks if u want to delete the backup say yes since obviously nothing is on ur camera roll to back up now anyway even though it says a lot like mine said 1gb mistakingly. Of course then turn it back on. Then it will update to the current real size (went to .5mb but better than 1gb). And at that point my storage in general updated my 'photos and camera' size to .5mb as well. I guess the phone's storage count reflects iCloud's figures not what actually is on the phone.

And even before this solution iTunes said I had nothing in camera storage but there was 1gb 'other'. Now it's back to normal. All these problems started when i ran out of space even thiough my iphone said i had nearly 2gb free. but then iTunes said I had 4gb 'other' and 1.3gb free (which one is right, iPhone or iTunes stats?) so I restored as new and unfortunately my iCloud stored camera roll used to restore photos were all blurry and it was a pain to get them back on camera roll correct (had to use my computer's stored photos) and it lead to these more new issues. Store ur photos on ur computer too in case iCloud does this to you. But I still had that 1gb other until I tried the above!

I had same issues, I deleted all pic and realized that the main thing was deleting all pics in "Recently deleted items" solved all my problems.

You are right! This new feature deletes the photos from this deleted folder just a month after you have deleted them from the Cameral Roll!

I had the same issue as Jjj 739am. I didn't erase all my photos from the cameral roll as I didn't want to empty my iPhone. Unchecking the upload to the iCloud got some MB free, deleting the "recently deleted items" did the rest and now iTunes is in concordance with the iPhone! 😀

Thank you, Jjj 739am!!! This solved my mystery photo storage. Went from 9.5GB to 0 after the iCloud backup trick.

I've been searching multiple forums for an answer, and one answer I've found is that you may have unplugged the phone or device while it was syncing. In any case, the only solution that worked for me was backing up to my computer from the Summary tab, and then selecting "Restore iPhone..." Also, make sure you transfer all of your photos from your phone to iPhoto because after restoring, all of the photos will be gone.

Now, before this I had 1.78 GB available, and after restoring I am left with 7.6 GB free. However, iTunes reports that I have 350 photos still on my phone, but when I checked my phone, there are 0 photos in my album. So I went into my Settings > Photos & Camera and disabled iCloud Photo Sharing. I am part of a couple of albums where we share photos of my son to my family members. After removing this option from my phone, iTunes now reports that I have 0 photos on my phone (you will have to click Sync again on iTunes to reflect this change). I am going to toggle this back on, because I now know where the extra photos are now coming from.

Hope this helps someone.

My device:

iPhone 5, 16GB

I managed to get rid of the phantom usage. Restoring iPhone and resetting the phone settings/data do not work for me.

I had to move the Date on my phone earlier by 1,2,3 months and found the phantom photos in the Recently Deleted Folder. Next, I deleted the photos manually from the Recently Deleted Folder and the usage got freed up from my iPhone.

Hope this works for you

Thank you @txforever! This finally worked for me! I had to go back just over three months but was able to get my phantom photos from 2GB to 57MB. You saved my phone!