Why is it so impossible for me to take consistently good photos with my 6?

Thanks for all the thoughtful posts.
This really is a shame because there is high expectation for the 6. I think it will get sorted out. I'll post to Apple feedback Web page. Others should do that as well.
Of course one could carry a much better, more expensive camera around but that misses the point.
The great thing about out little miracle devices is that they are so versatile. It's everything from a music player to a radio to an alarm clock, one heck of a Web browser, and infinitely more. A phone too I hear!

And one thing it always did very well was pictures. Affording the user a very good quality, always-at-hand camera. Wonderful.
Thus the disappointment with shots like that dog I showed. And btw, no zoom on the shot.
Anyway, keep posting your experience with the camera and I'm sure Apple will make it better.
Oh, and to be absolutely fair and candid some shots look fine…although not as crisp as my 5 in most cases.

paulking said:

Thanks for all the thoughtful posts.
This really is a shame because there is high expectation for the 6. I think it will get sorted out. I'll post to Apple feedback Web page. Others should do that as well.
Of course one could carry a much better, more expensive camera around but that misses the point.
The great thing about out little miracle devices is that they are so versatile. It's everything from a music player to a radio to an alarm clock, one heck of a Web browser, and infinitely more. A phone too I hear!

And one thing it always did very well was pictures. Affording the user a very good quality, always-at-hand camera. Wonderful.
Thus the disappointment with shots like that dog I showed. And btw, no zoom on the shot.
Anyway, keep posting your experience with the camera and I'm sure Apple will make it better.
Oh, and to be absolutely fair and candid some shots look fine…although not as crisp as my 5 in most cases.

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If all your pictures from the iPhone look as distorted as the picture of your dog, I think your camera is defective and you should get it replaced.
I notice the effect of excessive noise reduction in some lower light shots but only pixel peeping on a large monitor. Nothing nearly as bad as what you posted.

MrXiro said:

I did snap some good pics of my very fast moving bird though.

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Ugh

I guess it's too early too determine whether this is hardware or software problem by end user!

munkydust said:

Unless it is in very bright light, everything always looks smudgy. I took about 5 photos of this praying mantis and none of them came out very well. I can never get them to look that sharp.

The background looks like a bad Monet painting.

Image

This is with Auto HDR and Auto flash (which it didn't flash but it did apply HDR). I've tried HDR vs. non-HDR and haven't seen much difference.

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There are not bad instruments. There are just bad players...

Give the 645 Pro camera app a try!

Max(IT) said:

There are not bad instruments. There are just bad players...

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Yes, as is often the case, but in the iPhone 6's case it is most definitely caused by poor processing and heavy jpeg compression that, if using the stock camera app, the players have no controls over. Have a look of the attached samples. It should be clear which one is taken by the stock camera app, but 1.jpeg was from 645 Pro and 2.jpeg is from the stock camera app. Huge improvement with the shot taken by the 645 Pro app, set to max quality jpeg. Notice the huge increase in file size. Note also that the stock camera app defaults to spot metering. 645 Pro lets you choose matrix metering.

Thanks for the 645 Pro rec guys, I'll be checking it out once my 6+ arrives.

I sent feedback to Apple on the contrast and noise reduction issue. Maybe Apple will fix it before iOS 9 if we make enough noise.

HDR is having problem as well...

poppy10 said:

Ugh

Image

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Not sure what you are ugh-ing about. The bird was moving fast here. She just finished scratching and was puffed up. It's not like she stood there posing for me with her mouth open. It's a miracle a mobile phone camera can even catch this photo.

I first had the 6+ and it was hard to notice all the smudginess (low light pic), returned it because it was a pain to have on me and got the 6 (chair picture) and immediately noticed how grainy and smudgy my photos are now -- even in the brightest of daylight. The camera now blows. Now I'm wondering if I have to go back to the 6+ just to have less, non-sucky photos...

I finally had a chance to use my iPhone 6 this weekend at my Granddaughter's birthday party and noticed the same problems many are seeing here. I was reviewing the shots and noticed a LOT of them look very "processed" or the "Monet" effect as some of you are calling it.

I'm a part time hobby photographer who normally shoots Nikon DSLR's but I've always been able to rely on my various iPhones over the years for grab shots when I didn't feel like lugging my equipment around. Not any more until Apple fixes this.

The images are bad enough that I started to look online for anyone having similar issues and voila, tripped across this thread. This is definitely a processing issue with the camera from what I can see and hopefully Apple is able to dial it back a bit to strike a better balance. As is, most of the shots from the party are practically useless even moderately blown up. First time EVER I've had to complain about an iPhone camera. Just my two cents worth. Cheers!

Is there an official e-mail or form we can fill out to submit formal complaints and hope Apple fixes it. It would be great if we can get MR members to do to the same.

paulking said:

Have posted numerous times about the "smudge" or "painted" photo look with my 6.
Not sure if you can search my user name for these posts. Maybe.
Here's the first time it happened.
The second day I had the 6.
This is what shocked me.
Never took a shot like this with my previous 4 iPhones

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Wow, that is bad. How did you pull that off the phone? It's less than 700Kb.

azukre said:

HDR is having problem as well...

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HDR takes two pictures quickly. That person moved slightly between the captures.

Try downloading your photos with iphoto or other software to see if the photos quality is better.

In other thread a user posted that his photos are from 1.1MB and all my photos go from 1.6MB to 3.8MB.

I don't see any issues with the quality of the photos of the iphone 6, they look great as my other iphones.

poppy10 said:

Ugh

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That bird picture looks fine, it's what I would expect when you crop an area and zoom in. Even though there is noise reduction going on, I wouldn't put that pic in the same category as the trees from the OP or the dog a page or two back. Those look far worse.

deviant said:

What we expect is iphone 6 should be better than iPhone 5.Just like 5D mark 3 should be better than the previous version. Is this explanation SIMPLE ENOUGH?

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Let me make it simpler for you to understand: all iPhones take crappy pictures which is pure physics (the sensor is too small thus you'll end up with heavily smeared jpgs). It doesn't matter if the one is less crappy or more crappy than the other the end result is crappy.

You either are pregnant or you're not. You can't be "a little bit pregnant" or "very pregnant". The problem is that you are claiming you can be which is defying all odds, logic, physics and mother nature.

Now look at the topic title. What do you not understand about that question? To answer the topic title: you can't take consistently good pictures because it is not possible due to the physics at play here. Not with the 6+, the 6, the 5s or any other iPhone. Small differences aside, the end result will always be heavy smeared jpgs.

When I read most replies here I seriously doubt those people have any knowledge about photography, the hardware and the settings. Does that matter? Hell no! It's all about knowing what to expect: iPhones, like any other small sensor camera, will take jpg pictures with heavy smearing. Bad lighting conditions will make things much worse (again, the sensor is too small). That's why most people don't see a difference and why the pictures in good lighting conditions look much better. Like someone else here said: it might just be a more aggressive noise reduction but even if Apple fixes it the end result will be heavy smeared jpgs. There are some other camera apps that allow for more control but that might be a bit too much for some.

dyn said:

Let me make it simpler for you to understand: all iPhones take crappy pictures which is pure physics (the sensor is too small thus you'll end up with heavily smeared jpgs). It doesn't matter if the one is less crappy or more crappy than the other the end result is crappy.

You either are pregnant or you're not. You can't be "a little bit pregnant" or "very pregnant". The problem is that you are claiming you can be which is defying all odds, logic, physics and mother nature.

Now look at the topic title. What do you not understand about that question? To answer the topic title: you can't take consistently good pictures because it is not possible due to the physics at play here. Not with the 6+, the 6, the 5s or any other iPhone. Small differences aside, the end result will always be heavy smeared jpgs.

When I read most replies here I seriously doubt those people have any knowledge about photography, the hardware and the settings. Does that matter? Hell no! It's all about knowing what to expect: iPhones, like any other small sensor camera, will take jpg pictures with heavy smearing. Bad lighting conditions will make things much worse (again, the sensor is too small). That's why most people don't see a difference and why the pictures in good lighting conditions look much better. Like someone else here said: it might just be a more aggressive noise reduction but even if Apple fixes it the end result will be heavy smeared jpgs. There are some other camera apps that allow for more control but that might be a bit too much for some.

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Must be cool living in a "black&white" world huh? it's either this or that, nothing in between. Cool story bro. The only problem is... you are wrong. People discovered that it's the camera app itself that uses a new jpeg compression algorithm and if you use another camera app, where you can actually choose quality etc. the photos are much better. Better than this, better than the 5S and any other phone for that matter. But yeah, they are still crappy by your standards. Why even make new cameras, try to improve them? By your logic, they are all crappy anyways, let's just keep the 4S camera till 2020.
Iphones don't make crappy pictures. They are worse than DSLR, of course, but saying all crappy is just plain stupid. Because some of us are not damn elitists and don't need super quality photos. We need decent photos that look good, even when printed on a 4x6. But whatever, go and fap to your cool Canon. You're a photographer, after all.

The camera in the 6 is no different in terms of quality than in previous versions (I can't tell the difference between my 4, 5c and 6 nor the pictures posted in this thread). For smartphones it is a good camera. However, the argument of heavy smeared jpgs does not change: these type of cameras will always do it. That's what YOU will have to accept (and in this case some others like the OP as well). I'm fine with it since I use it for quite a lot of pics and I get some really nice results from it (proper lighting is the key). Funny thing is that the picture quality does increase tremendously when switching to black & white Again, for a smartphone the camera in the 6 is no different than previous models, it works fine so be happy with it.

Changing the noise reduction will change the quality a bit but not to the extend you are claiming/thinking. You will be very disappointed. And yes, you are worrying way too much.

have to say that i'm shocked at some of the responses in this thread
the **reality** is that the iphone 6 produces terrible images at the cost of noise reduction. i would rather have noise than a cheap homage to impressionist painting.

any kind of response demanding that i accept that my new iphone takes worse pictures than my iphone 5 is ludicrous. i would take the purple lens flare of the iphone 5 over this.

the main reason i have stuck with apple is their focus on artists/photographers and our need for image-making. hopefully this will be resolved soon.

dyn said:

The camera in the 6 is no different in terms of quality than in previous versions (I can't tell the difference between my 4, 5c and 6 nor the pictures posted in this thread). For smartphones it is a good camera. However, the argument of heavy smeared jpgs does not change: these type of cameras will always do it. That's what YOU will have to accept (and in this case some others like the OP as well). I'm fine with it since I use it for quite a lot of pics and I get some really nice results from it (proper lighting is the key). Funny thing is that the picture quality does increase tremendously when switching to black & white Again, for a smartphone the camera in the 6 is no different than previous models, it works fine so be happy with it.

Changing the noise reduction will change the quality a bit but not to the extend you are claiming/thinking. You will be very disappointed. And yes, you are worrying way too much.

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If you can't tell the difference in image quality between an iPhone 4 and a 5S, here's an awesome article with some creative image comparisons. And here is another look into iPhone 6/6+ camera image quality from the perspective of (bad) contrast. It seems the new iPhones are rendering ultra-low contrast jpegs in an effort to boost low light performance with disastrous results in many other conditions.

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I'd also like to nag everyone to send Apple feedback on the iPhone 6/6+'s (and iOS 8's) excessive NR and contrast problems. It's apparently a software problem so Apple can fix it if motivated. Let's motivate them!

patrickhan said:

have to say that i'm shocked at some of the responses in this thread
the **reality** is that the iphone 6 produces terrible images at the cost of noise reduction. i would rather have noise than a cheap homage to impressionist painting.

any kind of response demanding that i accept that my new iphone takes worse pictures than my iphone 5 is ludicrous. i would take the purple lens flare of the iphone 5 over this.

the main reason i have stuck with apple is their focus on artists/photographers and our need for image-making. hopefully this will be resolved soon.

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I completely agree. Some of my 4s photos are better than some posted here. When I receive my 6 plus if photos aren't better than my 4s it's going back to Apple I will not settle.

I'm the person who took the weird dog picture shown earlier in this discussion.
I had the 6 in my possession for less than 24 hours at the time. And I got the phone on the first day 9/19/14.

Again, my fifth iPhone. Started with the 3g.

I like to shoot without any zoom and then I sometimes enlarge that shot and take a screen shot of the enlargement. Been doing that since July of 2008 with all my iPhones. So, I knew something was very wrong.
And I'm not really interested in talking myself out of trusting my eyes and denying my six years of experience with iPhones.

Again, I duplicated the Monet effect (great, descriptive name btw) with every type of iPhone in the store while I waited for my genius appt. The 6, 6+ and 5s. Just shot people in the store. Focused on one face each time and looked at that person and others around that person in the shot - each shot I enlarged to get that effect. Faces looked like a Gumby claymation to me. Or impressionist painting.

Nice to know others see it too.
Hoping we can effect some change with Apple.
And, as I said in earlier post, some shots are much better than others. The Cortex app shoots better, finer detail shots than the stock camera. Shot some license plates with writing around them on the plate frame (bright daylight, from 30 feet away) and Cortex beat the stock app.
Now using my layman's deduction, it'd the same hardware camera yet one app takes better shots. So, definitely a software tweak is needed for the stock app… agreed?

I'll upload the pics. No Monet effect showing - lighting conditions are the reason I assume.
First is stock camera app
Second is Cortex.
Look at writing around the license plate on the white Prius and the treads on the tire of the gray car. Hoping it uploads OK. (and the stock app isn't that bad in these really)

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Upload not working. Sorry. I'll try again tomorrow.
Any advice on getting images to upload is appreciated.
Half the time it doesn't work!

i'm experiencing the same issues. I'll try and get a picture later today.

like i said when first camera photos from ip6 came out - they look good on little screens and forums, but once you expand them they look like crap due to that "oil painting" effect.