iPhone 7 Plus Camera - Pictures are bad

Noticing this on my iPhone 7 plus. Seems like excessive noise reduction. I notice it mostly on images shot indoors where the light isn't as strong. Especially on skin. Some area are reduced to flat color.

However, I notice this doesn't seem to happen when using the new Portrait (depth effect) mode. I took three shots of person -one with wide , one with telephoto , another with Portrait. The wide and telephoto shots had heavy noise reduction applied to skin. But the Portrait shot had no visible noise reduction -- you can clearly see the grain (noise) when magnified and detail is intact. So there seems to be a heavy handed noise reduction rule being applied unless in Portrait mode. Can anyone else confirm?

Frustrating amount of investigation we are having to do. What a way for a company to treat a customer spending £1000, eh...

You describe the problem very well, though I also found it apparent in portrait mode. It shows up mostly on skin. Portrait mode was handy for identifying that the problem exists on both rear facing cameras. Using 2x doesn't necessarily use the telephoto lens - often it simply applies a digital zoom to the wide lens. Portrait mode however forces the phone into telephoto lens - confirming that the overenthusiastic noise reduction and sharpening is indeed on both. Has anyone tried the selfie camera?

Portrait mode for me is much, much worse. I've seen some stunning pictures taken with it, and all of mine are noisy messes.

I just got my new IPhone 7 plus and tested it strait out of the box and image quality is so bad that I can't use it for anything. Picture looks like the bit rate is very low and shot with a 4 mp camera. hope apple comes up with a solution ASAP or I will claim my money back.

Yes, I have found the same. I had also posted it here a while ago. Skin in portrait mode seems clean, similar to the photos I take in Lightroom with DNG enabled (and some processing activated).

I have taken pictures outside with lots of light, hard sun light and overcast Daylight with the normal photo app and it's the skin tones where the image processing really *****.

People look like they have extreme pigment disorder when photographed with the apple camera app on iPhone 7plus. This is outdoors. Indoors it's even worse.

Same issue here. If I zoom pic looks like crap

I have the same issue on the regular iPhone 7 (not plus). Using 3rd party apps and processing the DNG files seems to improve the results; somewhat.

Throughout Christmas I used HDR for all my pictures. Came with a mixed bag of distorted/ghosted images. I can't seem to win with this camera. If there is no feedback by the end of the week i'm getting a Pixel.

Hello user. If disable in the iOS stock camera app the Live Photos function and using iOS 10.2. Then better?

I am not sure. But Live Photos feature makes the photos worse again. More Gaussian blur!

Gaussian blur is even worse for the animal and people face and for dark environments. Therefore first photo here or other photos here, so details missing.

But disable this Live Photos feature. not fixed general camera problem.

I was active here a few weeks ago and I will chip in again. This is not a new problem for iphone 7 or 6s. Look at this topic from almost a year ago.

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-takes-bad-quality-muddy-paint-like-ef fect-photos.1954983/

This issue has been for a long time but few people notice that since they look at the screen and never look at the images on their laptops/desktops. If apple is aware of that then they do not fix that for reason. This is how they decided to make that ;(.

I myself did all settings reset over a month ago and my photos turn out better. At least in good conditions. Before that even with the best light I was getting painings instead of photos. The best tests I did were with lips and they texture. I compare before and after and this is much better now...

Here are 3 photos taken recently which are quite ok in terms of detail and the depth of field which used to be patchy before. Maybe the quality is the same but I stopped seeing that? Not sure any more

http://imgur.com/a/HMDsg

Have tried factory reset with iPhone 7 (without restore iCloud/iTunes) and it did not help a bit. Images with iPhone 6s are stil so far better than iPhone 7! Even iPhone 5 has more sharpness:(

I was not talking about factory reset just the settings reset. I did factory reset before many times just because of other reasons. "All setting reset" for the purpose of Apple online diagnostics did the trick (I think). I was asked to do that and it somehow made my photos better (I think).

I had iphone 6s (moved from nexus 5x) for two weeks and then switched to iphone 7 because i was fed up with bad quality. Both handsets produced equally bad photos. Bad is just bad. I bet iphone 6 has had the same problem for a long time but noone noticed that or reported that.

For the love of god.... for the last time, a reset will NOT magically make your pictures better.

Please stop spreading around this "fix", it is NOT a fix and it's just an unessecary suggestion that'll wipe out everyone's settings for zero benefits.

This issue is iOS related and how it applies over sharpening and heavy noise reduction. So again, please stop with the whole reset your settings suggestion.

I Contacted Apple well before Christmas. They called me at home, helped me fix it and since then, I am happy with my images.

Do I zoom in for a shot in low light? No.

otherwise, everything else is great.

now, if I could stop getting all these emails, life would be grand.

Good that you removed the post with the word "stupid". I wanted to prove that I am not 😉 and now I do not have to. I never said that it was a fix. Fix would do the trick for every one and this reset did not which means that I somehow got lucky. I do not have photos to show before and after but trust me. My images are way better now.

Before my phone would take photo like that. What I get now it beautiful skin texture with details.

I also am aware that it might be just imprssion I am getting and not actualy better quality. Too much time spent obsessing about that 😉