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iPhone 16 Pro Max Camera problems: Blue smudges, lines, etc. [MERGED]
- Thread starter JasonHB
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My 15PM has the issue.. Here's a pic in a really dark backyard 30sec exposure, ISO8000. I was holding it so the pic is blurry but you can see the blue haze along the left side of photo..
I got my phone back after Apple service team did absolutely nothing. I will share the hilarious service tomorrow.
Short story - Of course my problem still persists.
Edit
So my buddies and I thought the procedure is shaking it 3 times to the left and 3 times to the right. But it feels too hard to do for the elfs in there.
So I now surmise the simplest procedure is what the Hobbits do all the time - Lunch!
Short story - Of course my problem still persists.
Edit
So my buddies and I thought the procedure is shaking it 3 times to the left and 3 times to the right. But it feels too hard to do for the elfs in there.
So I now surmise the simplest procedure is what the Hobbits do all the time - Lunch!
Last edited:
I can report : very much corrected.
Pure black with tape covering the lens, 30s raw vs lightroom save:
"Raw" PNG
Lightroom saved
A very dark room but not completely dark, has a big LCD panel lit up somewhere (I can make it completely dark but I think it defeats the purpose a bit)
RAW from camera
Lightroom saved.
I mean it becomes usable, I suppose.
On another note. While getting my phone from the dealer, i messed with about 5 Pro / Pro maxes.
Out of these 5 only 1 was affected with Blue haze.
Out of my personal total number of maybe a 10-11 units tested, only 3 units came with blue.
In my country / nearby stores, we don't have 14 days return policy. Only on the spot before we leave.
I have half a mind to plonk the amount for another phone and just to dig through the inventory and let Apple have a pile of newly opened phones for "display".
Last week I was angry at this guy but I am suddenly feeling like he is a genius. Same as lightroom dude 2 posts up.
To take this further, when you go into the editing mode, if you tweak black point +6 (for my case) almost all of the blue is gone....
This is by no means a solution or workaround.
The only thing that happens when you open a RAW file, edit it and then save is that all the exposure values will change to the default values in the RAW file. You would get a much darker image so the blue lines are no longer visible. If you would edit the affected photo to match the JPEG in exposure and shadows, the blue lines will re-appear.
If you look at @lee82gx photo with the speaker you can see exactly this - the RAW image has been edited with less shadow enhancement and that is why there is less blue, but you can still see the blue issue in the final RAW image.
There is really no software solution to this problem. When comparing an affected unit with an unaffected unit, the night performance is like comparing a Skoda with a Porsche. I am speaking with experience because I had a 16 Pro with the blue lines issue and it performed like an iPhone 11 in really low light photography. The editing needed to get rid of the blue tint also removed all detail. I am a night owl and I love shooting RAW in super low light with my iPhone so I noticed this immediately.
I mean, I'm fine. I have it, but the room/place needs to be completely dark (pitch black) to see it. With even a little bit of light, I can barely see or can't see the blue effect at all. I don't shoot photos in such conditions, so I guess I'm fine. I'm more happy that my screen is perfect, which is more important because that's literally your "window" through the phone. Seeing how bad is the panel lottery this year, I'm feeling lucky. 
I mean, I'm fine. I have it, but the room/place needs to be completely dark (pitch black) to see it. With even a little bit of light, I can barely see or can't see the blue effect at all. I don't shoot photos in such conditions, so I guess I'm fine. I'm more happy that my screen is perfect, which is more important because that's literally your "window" through the phone. Seeing how bad is the panel lottery this year, I'm feeling lucky.
If you are out of the 14 day return window and you don't see the issue in your daily photography then I would not struggle anymore with this. I think it will be almost impossible to get a replacement outside the 14 day window now. Apple claims this is normal.
I went through 3 phones to get one with perfect screen and camera sensor. Now I just need to take really good care of it so I don't have to replace it again. Horror.
I got my 16 Pro day 1, so yeah I'm out of the return window, but I don't want exchanging it anyway. I can't see issues in night photos. I did a lot. It's just the 30s in pitch dark room. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's bad. I tried this app (Reeheld) which was suggested in one of the YT comments and there is no blue haze there.
I don’t wanna sound like a party p**per here but probably I will🤷♂️
The issues you are all having here are 95% software-related. I have “ancient” iPhone 11 Pro and have same blue lines, sometimes if I am lucky - purple/reddish pink lines and dots. This is very high frequency color noise basically.
First of all, I am quite surprised ProRAW is able to capture it because the algorithm that Apple is using is thought to suppress 100% of color noise, but looks like they have lessened the processing to maintain more detail. ProRAW is actually not RAW but a “faux RAW” since it uses noise reduction too and some sort of HDR processing.
While people seem to dislike noise, it actually equals detail to some degree, especially in tiny sensor cameras like an iPhone. Therefore, a good shot is a proper balance of signal to noise.
Secondly, you all know that 30 seconds exposure in main camera is not real, right? Apple again using computations to blend multiple shots into single picture. Seems like other smartphone manufacturers do the same. I wish iPhone had real 30 second exposure and shame it still doesn’t, even my GoPro from 2016 can take real non-simulated 30 second exposures.
Therefore, to achieve bright night sky Apple is using very high ISO values and multiple 1/3 or 1 second exposures, depending on how standstill your phone is. This results in lots of noise. Combine it with the new type of sensor and you get even more noise. A solution? Excessive noise reduction. But your photos will look awful after that.
Also I saw few examples here where noise is visible in preview but as soon as you edit that it disappears. The thing is that Apple uses P3 color profile, and since it is a high frequency color noise it is driven far out of range, and probably Apple’s built-in editor doesn’t edit in 10 bits and/or it is some bug. I had seen some strange banding with my RAW pictures too but when I zoom in and out, and it was invisible in screenshots (which are still sRGB in iOS17, you cannot replicate it anymore on 18 because screenshots are now in P3 profile).
As of now there are no solutions to the problem but you all can ask Apple to add “shoot in sRGB” setting right to advanced camera settings tab in Settings>Camera.
You can also shoot in apps like ProCamera on tripod, but you will need to manually edit those raw shots, hopefully you can edit the color noise threshold here to remove blue lines. Another issue is that the resolution will be just 12MP, but I guess stock camera shoots in that resolution as well in night mode so you are not loosing anything really.
Sample of edited RAW. Had lots of color noise that I removed. Shot with ProCamera:
The issues you are all having here are 95% software-related. I have “ancient” iPhone 11 Pro and have same blue lines, sometimes if I am lucky - purple/reddish pink lines and dots. This is very high frequency color noise basically.
First of all, I am quite surprised ProRAW is able to capture it because the algorithm that Apple is using is thought to suppress 100% of color noise, but looks like they have lessened the processing to maintain more detail. ProRAW is actually not RAW but a “faux RAW” since it uses noise reduction too and some sort of HDR processing.
While people seem to dislike noise, it actually equals detail to some degree, especially in tiny sensor cameras like an iPhone. Therefore, a good shot is a proper balance of signal to noise.
Secondly, you all know that 30 seconds exposure in main camera is not real, right? Apple again using computations to blend multiple shots into single picture. Seems like other smartphone manufacturers do the same. I wish iPhone had real 30 second exposure and shame it still doesn’t, even my GoPro from 2016 can take real non-simulated 30 second exposures.
Therefore, to achieve bright night sky Apple is using very high ISO values and multiple 1/3 or 1 second exposures, depending on how standstill your phone is. This results in lots of noise. Combine it with the new type of sensor and you get even more noise. A solution? Excessive noise reduction. But your photos will look awful after that.
Also I saw few examples here where noise is visible in preview but as soon as you edit that it disappears. The thing is that Apple uses P3 color profile, and since it is a high frequency color noise it is driven far out of range, and probably Apple’s built-in editor doesn’t edit in 10 bits and/or it is some bug. I had seen some strange banding with my RAW pictures too but when I zoom in and out, and it was invisible in screenshots (which are still sRGB in iOS17, you cannot replicate it anymore on 18 because screenshots are now in P3 profile).
As of now there are no solutions to the problem but you all can ask Apple to add “shoot in sRGB” setting right to advanced camera settings tab in Settings>Camera.
You can also shoot in apps like ProCamera on tripod, but you will need to manually edit those raw shots, hopefully you can edit the color noise threshold here to remove blue lines. Another issue is that the resolution will be just 12MP, but I guess stock camera shoots in that resolution as well in night mode so you are not loosing anything really.
Sample of edited RAW. Had lots of color noise that I removed. Shot with ProCamera:
"Even Longer" can do 30 seconds night mode. It can do regular raw so you can handle all the processing yourself in lightroom or similar app.
For "ready baked" images with automatic processing I think stock is still superior.
I respectfully disagree. It is a hardware issue.
I have owned 3 different iPhone 16 Pro units (two Max and one regular) and they all performed differently in the sensor with the same software. I examined them by taking unprocessed regular RAW photos with a third party app at high ISO and 1s shutter speed in complete darkness and the differences were huge.
The worst performing unit had the terrible blue night shots using the stock Apple camera software. The issue was very visible in all low light shots while the two other units had great looking night shots with pure blacks instead of blue blacks.
Also the level of detail at high ISO was horrible with the defective unit.
Unfortunately it is actually the opposite. Since the release of 15 Pro last year, ProRAW has been a smudgy denoised mess. 14 Pro Max was the last phone to take detailed 48MP ProRAW photos.
Interesting!
In a month I will have a perfect opportunity to test the 16 Pro camera possibilities. It would be a real life test in all different scenarios, I am really interested in night shots. I will report my findings here. Really curious in how can this happen.
Maybe it is all related to Neural Engine pipeline? All things AI are very non-linear and maybe every single time shot is taken the camera actually “learns” (or “degrades”?🤣). So for example one time it decides “oh well, here I will not use noise reduction at all!” and the other it “well I am in a mood to make an oil painting, letsgetit!”.
Thinking about hardware issues possibilities. Well, might be that there are some dead pixels or maybe the quad bayer tech is somewhat half-baked. Unfortunately since there is not much coverage on the issue it is hard to make Apple actually do anything🤷♂️ And I mean it was always like that, when I had defective battery in 6s fellow redditors adviced me to “use phone less” and “turn off cellular”🤣
If there were "dead pixels", you'd see them in regular shots, regardless of the conditions.
It seems like something's up with the processing, because I've tried different low-light scenarios, and sometimes it looks good, other times it doesn't.
Having used DSLRs since 2006 I know this problem very well. Some sensors just react this way to high current (ISO). I had the issue on one of my Nikons and the camera house was replaced immediately for a flawless one.
My suspicion is that Apple has started to buy image sensors with a lower quality control classification that are outside of the strict specifications. That is why there are more phones with bad sensors this year.
Well I do haha. And I see them in night sky shots annoyed with how it looks like stars that are weirdly blue.
Decided to live with the issue since I’m otherwise happy with my devices.
I still think the bigger issues with big blue areas has to do with blue hot pixels being processed somehow.
Most probably a combination of hardware and software resulting in the issues.