IPad Air 2 camera grainy

NNo. The iPad 2 had the very first camera that Apple built into an iPad. Many people talked about grainy photos when they used the iPad 2 camera for the first time. The key to getting good photos with the device is to make sure that you have very good lighting, Experiment with different light conditions and you should see what I am talking about.

I believe the OP is talking about the iPad Air 2 camera and not the iPad 2 camera.

To the OP: you have to take into consideration that NO iPad with a camera has a built-in flash so you have to rely on the ambient lighting or create your own. Make sure you have enough lighting to properly light the scene. Nightime/dark scene shots are prone to be grainy regardless.

Yes, I just bought the latest iPad Air2 128G and the camera preview is a bit pixelated, especially diagonal lines. The images also look grainy/noisy on the screen. Is this just an app problem? My photos look fine though.

Duh!!! I Believe that you are correct! good catch. My apologies. My tired, old eyes and brain saw iPad 2 and I never saw the word Air. However, my advice is still the same. Make sure that the lighting is good. That makes all the difference in the world.

I just took a couple of low-light shots with my Air 2 (I normally don't use it as a camera) and yes, the preview is very grainy. The actual photo comes out looking better than the preview though, but it's still grainy. Part of this has to do with the pixel "swimming" effect when the iPad is moving while taking a shot. Although the camera is MUCH better than any previous iPad cameras, low-light shots will still come out grainy. It's the nature of low-light shots on an iPad (or even the iPhone)...the iPad is definitely not a DSLR camera and doesn't claim to be. As Demo and I both suggested, light the scene properly to help prevent this.

Is the "stairstep" effect just caused by the lack of anti-aliasing? Are there any apps that have anti-aliasing and the option to hide all the icons? It is such a nice big screen for taking photos with, but I love just being able to see just what I take a photo of, without the distraction of icons. Maybe a sideswipe to hide the icons would be nice 🙂

I'm no photographer by any means. That being said, I would assume that AA is never used in photography unless it were provided in some type of filter/effect. I would think that the actual photo taken would be as close to "what you see is what you get" as possible. I know AA is used for gaming but really don't think it's used as a default option in digital photography...but I could be very wrong as well. 😁

There are many apps in the App Store meant to assist & enhance or even replace the built-in Camera app on iDevices. Search the App Store for "camera" and you'll find TONS of them. I can't really recommend one since I'm fine using the built-in Camera app.

Anti-aliasing is used in almost all cameras to stop the Moiré pattern that occurs when a shot contains repetitive details. Camera makers usually only remove the filter on high end cameras to get slightly clearer images but at the cost of the images that may contain the Moiré effect.