iPhone 5s Distorted Warped photos

johnfinn68 said:

Jan 2, 2014 12:21 PM (in response to RichmondDan)

The distortion is obviously from the software as it changes depending on focal length. I think the distortion correction in the software is ill matched. The distortion is worse (in my experience) when taking portrait oriented photos as it makes people look long. When held horizontally, the distortion is less aggressive, or only noticable on the edges. The distortion is worse on my 5S than it was on my 4S.

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I took my iPhone 5s in to the Genius bar due to grainy photos with faded color tones as well as photo distortion (fishbowl-like effect). The Genius bar staff changed the camera on my phone. This did not help with the distorted photos. I agree with what Johnfin68 said, above, except that I have pretty bad distortion when holding the phone in landscape orientation, too.

I went back to the Genius bar the same evening. I was initially told I was not holding the phone steady enough and that they could reproduce this issue with their phone in the back. I have always been careful when taking photos and I had not experienced this with the iPhone or iPhone 4s. At that point, I was told it was a software issue related to image stabilization and to leave Apple feedback - which I did as soon as I could get to a computer.

I hope Apple corrects this issue. I have not even tried video yet.

I still have a 4 iPhone. It now distorts terribly and it didn't before. I think it's the new iOS7 software. This is horrible and very frustrating.

I wanted to provide an update: I spoke with the customer service agent from the Apple store where I had my phone serviced a few weeks ago. The camera had been changed out (as stated in my ealier post), yet the photos seem just as bad, if not worse. The customer service agent said she would "escalate" the issue with Apple - I do not know what that means as I have heard nothing.

Anyway, I ended up giving my silver 5s to my daughter, and I picked up a gold iPhone 5s. The photos are much better - not grainy, color is better, no focusing issues. I am not saying the photos are perfect, but they are WAY better than my first iPhone 5s. I think some of the cameras are just defective.

My wife's iPhone 5S (silver) is having the same problem.
I was looking at the photos and came away very surprised to see my head looking taller (vertically extended) than I remember it from the last time I checked the mirror.

There will definitely have to be a solution with the next update. I hope Apple will take care of this problem. Its very annoying and not even changing camera solves it. I never dropped my iphone or something comparable and it just started to distort one month ago. I even tried resetting but it doesnt help. 😟

I understand how zooming in lowers the appearance of lens distortion since it increases towards the edges of the aspect. However, assuming you understand digital zoom, would it not make more sense to just crop the photos? I know this is essentially the same thing, but at least you would have a smaller file size and a photo that would not be pixelated at 100%. Zooming with the iPhone decreases the quality of the image as all this does is take a selected portion of the sensor's resolution and stretches it to the native resolution.

I understand the use of different lenses in photography including the benefits of a wide angle. However I believe considering the typical scenes captured with an iPhone and the photographic skill level of the general iPhone user, Apples choice of angle width is a tad overkill.

There have been times when I was thankful my iPhone was able to pull in more of the scene, for example when I took pictures of a room I was renting out. However taking a picture of my entire family at the dinner table during thanksgiving left the heads of people sitting near the edges of the photo warped and almost alien like.

The solution was to move back further and retake so all the people were closer to the center of the camera's view which meant I had to crop the photo. This strategy worked for less distortion sake but resulted in less detail as I was further away and cropping out precious resolution. With a less wide angle lens, I still would have had to move back further to include everyone in the shot, but at least then they would be safe near the edges of the photo therefore I could utilize the entire resolution of the sensor resulting in a higher definition photo with less distortion.

My take on the whole thing is that Apple should have waited until they are using higher resolution sensors to select a lens of this width. This would help preserve object detail loss due to the distance effect of the wide angle lens.

Wow. After seeing this, I am starting to think this problem varies per device. My 5s has this issue but isn't nearly as bad as this. They were obviously experimenting with different lenses. I am going to order a replacement camera on ebay and see if it has a less wide angle lens.

I got a silver iphone 5s from ebay for the camera. All is good with the camera EXCEPT the elongation of my head when I take a selfie with the back high resolution camera at one hand distance - it simply doesn't match what I see in the mirror and on pics with my other phone LG G2, which has a narrower angle lens. There is no head elongation when I take a selfie with the front low resolution camera. I am running the latest iOS 8.3 (12F70).

I guess "Apple always works" has nothing to do with reality ...

It's 2016 and I am having the same problem with distorted photos especially if I take photos of people. The center is fine but the edges are all distorted making the other people in the photos look strange. I think this will be my last iPhone. I paid a lot of money for distorted looking photos!