iPhone 7 Plus Camera - Pictures are bad

If the letters are all the same distance away then it could be a faulty lens. If some are a bit further away from your camera (even just a little bit, like if you're taking the picture at a slight angle) then that's standard lens behaviour for a camera — there's a 'sweet spot' of sharpness and anything closer or further away will get blurrier.

Better quality lenses that gather more light tend to be less compromising in this respect. On the one hand it allows for nice blurry backgrounds (see my attached iPhone 7 Plus photo), on the other hand you have to watch your aim.

I'm having what I think is the same pixelated issue sometimes when I zoom in. I know the photos isn't in perfect focus, which is a different problem I've noticed... But this concern relates this original topic. Note the avocado in the squirrel's paws. And his paws look like painted rather than photographed. This doesn't always happen. So I'm wondering if it's light, or if the camera is having trouble staying focused. I'm tempted to get rid of the camera because this is the only reason I bought it. and it was $$$$ ! I have latest version. Apple support hasn't a clue.

@Apple Support Staff:

Is the post above me a technical and professional one? It is not, why is it not deleted like my last posts which were very technical (at least most of them). I have posted cmparison photos of the stock camera app av. MS Pix which gave much better images. That clearly proved that the camera department in the phone itself is not bad. It is your software! Perhaps it is just some kind of bug which makes edges of things in photos look edgy and faces like they were painted with watercolor. If that is the case, please forward my post to your camera software team.

Again, to bring it on a technical level: What is the explaination for those effects in pictures?

Stock app:

MS Pix:

I know! I recently got an SE with a good camera as advertised but the photos taken on this phone render worse than my iPhone 4s with 8MP camera! It ***** to see a "12MP" phone camera rendering images that look like painting. *** Apple! I really wish this is a software bug and not lens related!

Even with good lighting, photos are not sharp enough. Even the videos taken in 1080p render worse than photos with completely blurry frames.

I have found fotos from Reviews of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 7 with more or less the exact same lighting and angle:

iPhone 4S

iPhone 7

I mean, look at the details of the grass, look at the structure of the tarmac. How the **** could that happen? The iPhone 4S is lightyears ahead in terms of details.

This exactly confirms what one quite professional german camera review magazine found out. The noise of the newer sensors is extremely heavy and far worse than Android competition. Apple seems to mask the bad sensors with this kind of anti-noise measures which ruin details a lot!

Just took samples iP7+ on the left vs iP5s on the right side.

See how jpeg compression affect vertical blades gradient.

Can you imaging how it will affect skin tones on faces? Oh my...

I've thought Apple will kill most of 4/3 market with 7/7plus models, actually they are going in opposite direction.

Good luck.

Hello guys, I took this photo using my iPhone 7. I noticed that the file size is only 1.61MB, despite the iPhone 7 having a 12MP camera. Is it normal for images taken using the iPhone 7 to be of such a small file size?

Thank you!

Great news everyone!

Just as I guessed, my prediction was correct. Take a look at those photos below.

I took photos with iPhone 7 plus(iOS11) and iPhone SE(iOS10),

then I imported the photos into Photoshop and zoomed x25.

As the info shows iPhone 7 Plus has more details than iPhone SE.

(4.4MB vs 3.7MB, compression rates could be different)

What I can tell you guys is that Apple doesn't want to bother fixing a soon becoming old iOS10 jpeg bug issue, but in the upcoming iOS11 will fix the jpeg compression issue!

In my opinion, we should keep iPhone 7 Plus!! It's still the best camera(with iOS11)!!

iPhone 7 plus (ISO20, 3.99mm, f1.8, SS1/3195, x25 crop, Originally HEIF > JPEG 4.4MB)

iPhone SE (ISO25, 4.15mm, f2.2, SS1/2564, x25 crop, Originally JPEG 3.7MB )

Sorry I could not rotate the photo here - this was taken with an iPhone 6s, but it shows the watercoloring effect that I believe others are seeing with their iPhone 7. You may have to download the photo first, rotate and zoom in a bit.

I realize this was taken behind the chainlink fence and it may mess with the camera, but I can find some other shots without the fence that clearly shows the watercolor effect.

https://plus.google.com/photos/photo/115397020389997734277/6473711403291907394?i cm=false&iso=true

I took more test pictures, here is side by side iP7+ RAW and JPG cropped pictures (from 4032x3024 12.2MP and the cropped area is 924x441 0.4MP), you can see that iPhone own software make's this blurry watercolour FX to the pictures, and that's not good to look at bigger screen like 4K monitor.

You can clearly see that RAW (dng) picture is far more superior what comes to details and sharpness.

So it's not a hardware problem for me, it's heavy compressed pictures whats bothers me.

Good data you have there.

I still like to point out that RAW pictures are better in my eyes than Apple compressed pictures.

I wonder why we can’t get option to take Pictures without heavy compression.

And yes less light is more waterC FX, zoom camera is also bad in my mind.

My RAW picture included. I took photo about one meter away. The I two finger zoom and screen cap.

Wow. and more about taking pictures. Direct from Apple.

https://www.apple.com/iphone/photography-how-to/

I just don't get it. They have to be doing something. The depth effect one. you can see its pretty low light in the first place the nits on "photo" mode, then switched to portrait and if got brighter. uhhhh no, if its that dark, you get a notice "not enough light" I am really becoming annoyed at this.

mariusmuntean wrote:

Apple does read these forums. Once I complained about my iphone 7 kept getting No Sim error and I was called back by an Apple Tech Support engineer, so yeah, when the situation is getting worse they do read the complaints here.

Sorry, but you are misinformed. Apple may, occasionally, look at issues based on threads in this forum, but this is not a place to address Apple or ask for responses from Apple. It is a user to user technical support forum.

Apple also does not directly respond to Feedback sent to: Apple - Feedback

mariusmuntean wrote:

I did not want to wait for the iph8...since this watercolor problem is present ever since IOS 10 was released, I do not trust them in doing anything to fix it...went all GS8 and the results are miles better, not even comparable. I do miss the stereo sound and the fact that IOS for me is faster, but I am greatly impressed by the GS8. Decent battery, stunning camera and very good performance so far.

It is present for you and the others posting in this thread. Personally, I have not had the issue being reported here, and in relation to the millions of people using iPhone 7's, although the problem is clearly something that needs to be addressed and resolved, it does not constitute a massively widespread problem.

Glad you are enjoying your GS8.

GB

I've been testing a couple of third party camera apps to see which works best for my needs. Here's what I found:

Microsoft Pix Camera on the App Store: no discernible difference between this and the stock camera app. JPEG files are SMALLER than from the stock camera.

CameraPixels - manual camera + RAW on the App Store: Can set JPEG quality in increments of 10% and the files produced are larger than the stock camera. GREAT manual controls. I noticed however that noise reduction is more aggressive than the stock app which reduces the amount of detail.

ACDSee Camera Pro on the App Store: Shoots RAW, RAW+JPEG, TIFF, PNG, JPEG. Quality can be set to Low, Standard, or High. Standard = same as stock as far as I can tell. Good manual controls. What makes this app particularly useful is that you can adjust settings such as brightness, contrast, and saturation BEFORE taking the photo. When CLARITY and CONTRAST are set to +20, the app takes great photos.

Hope you find this useful. FWIW, I obtained CameraPixel and ACDSee Camera Pro during promotions when they were available free of charge (from http://www.iosnoops.com/iphone-ipad-apps-gone-free/).

You can mention iOS 11 and discuss anything that Apple made public at the WWDC: