iPhone 7 Plus Camera - Pictures are bad

Me 2. I went tona icentre today and they say its bad indeed. They will sent it back to apple for repair or new one.

Does the issue occur with all camera modes? Photo, Square, and Pano? Do you notice any difference when toggling HRD on and off? Does the issue occur in low light, normal lighting, or both?

I hope the senior advisor can help out! I'm curious to know if the issue occurs with 3rd party camera apps. Have you tried using any 3rd party camera apps from the App Store?

DP Review agrees that the images aren't the best. There's a good selection of samples at the end of the review:

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/iphone-7-plus-camera/10

Forbes says that this new update "resolves an issue that could cause some photos to appear blurry". I wonder if this is the problem they're referring to. I'm downloading the new update now.

Why don't you just go to Settings>Camera>Preserve Settings>and turn on the Live Photo option to prevent Live Photo from turning on unless you tap it to do so.

Cheers,

GB

I am having this exact same issue. it doesn't matter whether it is outside on a sunny day or not. good light doesn't help. If I use the adobe lightroom app and shoot in dng then it fixes the problem. but who wants to do that for every picture taken. I don't know if it's a compression issue or the OIS.

I came from the iPhone 6. Currently using iPhone 7. I too think the photos quality have been worse on the iPhone 7. I had contacted Apple Support via chat and phone support and the people over at Apple Support also said that there had been no reports of any problems regarding the camera. Even on my other post talking about the auto white balance issue of the camera on the iPhone 7, another user had also contacted Apple Support and they also said they had not received any reports of camera problems on the iPhone 7.

I am at a loss here. At this point in time, I do not know how Apple is going to even know about the camera issues if none of our reports are even reaching them. I can only urge you guys to do the same as me, submit a bug report via the Apple Bug Reporter. Hopefully, someone actually sees the issues we are having with the camera.

I have not clicked on your link. However, iOS 7.1 introduces the depth-of-field feature for the iPhone 7+ camera. You should update your iOS immediately. Settings > General > Software Update.

My wife does not know anything about photography, but she was the one to discover it, without any prior research or looking to jump on the complain train with others. At first, I thought this could not be the case...after all the i7 was so super in photos. Boy was I wrong, I did some simple testing, and it is simple: just take a pic using an older iphone (I used a 6 - but 5c seems to be better also) and then take one on the 7. double-tap and then bam - waterpainting effect in all its glory. I looked into 6 weeks of photos, all the same crap.

If you or other do not have this problem, can you please post a few pics for us? it would help us in our case to get a working phone with good pictures. so far I have not seen any pictures anywhere to suggest otherwise. so if you think you are blessed with a phone that does not have this issues, then show us 🙂

I think there are multiple things going on and people need to be more precise in how they're using their camera.

For example, to respond to P_D_R's post (right before mine), I don't use iCloud Photo Library, so the "Optimize iPhone Storage" isn't even available for me. If I turn iCloud Photo Library on, "Download and Keep originals" is the only option checked. I instantly turned off iCloud Photo Library when I first got the phone, and I've had terrible pictures the whole time. My kids faces look like make-up barbie doll artificial faces.

There are other factors as well. I have HDR turned off all the time as well. I have flash turned off all the time.

My theory is this: Every time Apple bumps up the megapixels on their cameras, they increase the JPG compression/noise reduction in order to keep the image size down. I have noticed no .jpg file size increase in the photos taken on my 6 plus vs. my 7 plus...and there SHOULD be! I've gone from an 8mp camera to a 12mp camera...the file sizes should be bigger. But I think Apple doesn't want people complaining that pictures are eating up all the storage on their phone.

I'm keeping my 6 plus on iOS 9 (I read elsewhere that someone is experiencing this with any Apple device which has a 12mp camera and iOS 10), but I really really hope Apple addresses this.

Hi chevysales,

You are correct about Camera+ taking only TIFF and not RAW. My mistake. I will post a comparison with Lightroom DNG vs Camera.app JPEG. I am not happy with the RAW photos as well.

I tried digging down the EXIF data using Exify app. I noticed that iPhone 7 Plus photos have much lower ISO value when compared to 6s photo under same lighting and on the same subject. However, 6s photos look greater when compared to my 7 Plus.

Also, not all third party camera apps support Wide Color. For example, VSCOCam takes photos in sRGB, while Camera.app, Lightroom, MuseCAM support Display P3 profile. Irrespective of the profile, the photos appear smudged when zoomed in.

I've used EarPods and such before yes, as far as tripods and other equipments no. Why? Because I shouldn't have to carry these equipments with me to take great shots. See the pictures taken with the Google Pixel/Pixel XL, they all come out looking excellent with no water paint effect - why? Because unlike Apple they don't need to apply heavy noise reduction to their pictures. A little noise is fine as long as it retains the fine details, when you lose the fine details the picture just looks like crap.

I'd also have to disagree that your mentioned method as the ONLY accepted way. If I had a Pixel I'd go out, take numerous shots from both my 7+ and the Pixel to prove that you don't need any sort of tripod/equipment to make the comparison.

Trust me, I get what you're saying. It doesn't change the fact that Apple needs to tone down their heavy noise reduction on the 7/7+.

I am on regular iPhone 7 (non plus) and experience the same problem.

Have anyone tried it on latest iOS beta?

I found a comment under this article about this problem stating that on latest beta is it okay again.

I see they at least gave Apple Insider credit for the article but added an insider with knowledge of how said camera works... 😉 points to OIS ???

Doubt it but every one who posted here and is visually experiencing it must fill out a bug report otherwise it doesn't get addressed as 1004 complaints with only 8 attributed to the actual camera is not going to get Apple to look at it.

Yet 9 pages of bug reports just may get the engineers data to look at and come up with a fix.

Good Luck