iPhone 7 Plus Camera - Pictures are bad

This is NOT a hardware issue, it's all software.

Let's not confuse everyone here, if you are shooing RAW and pictures come out excellent without any heavy noise reduction what does that tell you?

Two things.

1. The issue is seen on both iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Like I said earlier, I have few photos taken on my friend's iPhone 7 in broad day light at the Great Falls, VA. Those pictures turned out poorly with watercolor effect as well. I also took few photos in the sunlight at noon. When I zoom in, the photo looks bad. I've shared a set of photos taken on 6s and 7 plus. I shared these here in the same thread. The photos taken on 6s doesn't exhibit this issue.

2. The issue is not seen on *every* iPhone 7 Plus. Some user confirmed that the photos taken in an Apple Store display device didn't exhibit the issue.

Well iOS 10.2 Beta 2 was released today, I'm installing it now and will report back shortly here.

Same results in iOS 10.2 Beta 2.....

Keep up with the bug reports folks, if we can get enough of them in maybe they'll implement it in on of these iOS 10.2 builds for us to test out.

Apple rep didn't rule out hardware, however I don't believe the issue is hardware either, however my point was that something within the software of the phone that effects any app shooting photos it seems. Note, I've been shooting raw all along.

I have the very same issue with my 7+ , the pictures are bad quality, I had better with my 6S+.

Everyone I take are not clean. I tried iOS 10.2 beta 1 to see if it was correcting this, but still the same. As I read above, the 10.2 beta 2 will not make any difference.

Ok folks, so this might be a cold shower for all of us. Have alook at this thread. I think this has been an issue for a long time like 2 years 😉

iPhone 6 poor picture quality

If it has not been addressed for all those 24 months then I do not see it as a bug but a "feature" to please 99.9% of users who do not care about "watercolor" effect 😉

I disagree. I have no complaints on the photo quality on iPhone 6 and 6s. The whole point is that the photo quality on 7 Plus is worse than 6s.

I would imagine if someone created an app to take a raw picture + jpeg + live photo they would cash in on our frustration with the "watercolor" effect. For many our hesitation to just shoot raw is loosing out on the live photo.

I actually moved from 6s to 7 to get rid of the photo quality problem 😉 And ended up exactly in the same place but with less cash in my wallet. I do not think it was handset related but software related. My photo were equally bad on 6s as on 7 version.

I tested lightroom JPG quality that is saved to camera roll from DNG without any modifications. This is what i got. The camera app photo is less than 1MB and the lightroom is almost 2.5MB. It is easy to spot the difference with the depth of field fragments and the edges. But the best comparison is the photo of my kid's lips where you can clearly see the difference.

http://i.imgur.com/f5yqpRo.jpg

upper photo iPhone / lower photo Nexus 5x

http://i.imgur.com/WDSuUur.jpg

The amount of heavy noise reduction along with how much the pictures get compressed by Apple is just ridiculous..... 800 people working on the iPhone camera and this is what they come up with? Garbage, just garbage!!

I love apple, really, big fan, but I never have been so disappointed. I took the 7+ to have better quality picture and this is just horrible. I like to take pictures on the go rather than moving with a canon or nikon big stuff.

All the pictures I took since I got mine end of september are just crap. I just installed the iOS 10.2 beta 2 now, and still no quality increase.

What about creating a parallel advertisement campaign on twitter with #shotoniphone where we can publish our amazing pictures!!! maybe someone at apple will finally react 😠

I took my phone to one of the stores here in Hungary. I did took pictures with the store's phone and mine and showed them and they agreed that mine looks worse.

However I just realized I think there are two separate issues are going on with my phone.

Once there's this noize reduction, watercolor effect etc. I can see this on the store's phone too.

But my phone also tooks faded, colorless pictures which the store's does not.

I include pictures for you to see:

Sorry about these not so pretty pictures but i think you can see my point. And same settings were applied to both phones. The service guy came to the same conclusion when he took shots.

They're going to replace the camera in the phone for a new one and we'll see how that goes.

but the watercolor effect still saddens me

any thoughts?

I am not sure if these photos shown in this article are truely taken with iPhone 7

http://petapixel.com/2016/09/21/apples-iphone-7-sample-photos-airdropped-apple-s tore/

But if these images "were" really airdroppped from iPhone then what we see here...

https://imgur.com/gallery/6RT8C

...are photos which look amazing but when downloaded and zoomed to 100% they exibit exactly what we are talking about. One example? Look at the face, eyes and lips. It looks like the photo was painted not taken 😉

https://i.imgur.com/Oho3NJX.jpg

I had this issue with iPhone 6s and 7 and i bet it has been there for a while. It is that I switched to iPhone too recently to go back and check previous photos and track down if this problem has existed since forever or they are something that appeared recently...

BTW. I am done playing a detective for now