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iPhone X HUGE Defect with the camera... extreme lens flare

This is super common with proper lenses, especially when using filtration of any kind. You can spot this phenomena in a lot of films, particularly the Wally Pfister lensed Chris Nolan films like The Dark Knight. Not a big deal at all.
 
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DNichter said:
I'm not seeing this on my X. I would return yours.
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Yours must be one in one billion as I checked all iPhone X demo units at two Apple Stores and they all exhibited the flare I have. Also, two of my friends X’s are the same.

I am concluding this as a normal behaviour.
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960design said:
I was just out on the boat taking pictures of the setting sun and did not notice a 'lens flare'. Came home and saw this post and reviewed all my pictures. After reading this, I also took several indoor shots of HiIntensity LEDs ( 1700 lumens ) and outdoor 5000k CFLs ( 1600 lumens ).

I do not see any lens flares in any of my iPhoneX shots.
Could it just be an oily fingerprint on the outside or worse inside of your lens?

PS. I did get lens flare if I really tried with the Pentax K5 II. My goal was the get lens flare with the Pentax, but didn't think about it for the iPhoneX
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Yours must be another one in a billion (or the 2nd one) out there. Tested all units at 2 Apple Stores and 2 friends’ and they all exhibited the lens flares.
 
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I took a photo directly to the lamp on my ceiling with my IPhone X and Samsung s8 active I have.
Both have the same issues with flares. So my guess is even best smartphones cameras can’t fix the effect with their lens.
I think we should deal with that. So many much more interesting scenarios to shoot pics than our home lamps I guess 🙂
 
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entraik said:
It’s impacting all iPhone X cameras. Prove me wrong. And I didn’t post that on reddit. Came across the post. Replacing the phone won’t make a difference.
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Prove it’s on every X. Your sample size of 1 means nothing until you prove it.
 
About five minutes ago I tried to take a photo of a lit-up building in the dark. I instantly noticed a small blue dot travelling around the screen. You can see this zoom around if you move the phone a bit.

Panicking that my iPhone was faulty, I went and used my partners iPhone X. Her phone does exactly the same too.

Came here to see if anyone else had noticed it. This is rather annoying.
 
i shoot photos and videos for a living. Lens flare is absolutely normal and unavoidable. Huge DSLR lenses will show the flare a certain way. Cine lenses and anamorphic lenses will stretch the lens flare out across the image in an often desirable way (especially if your initials are JJ). The iPhone has a small lens, so it produces a relatively small lens flare. You need to learn to work with your tool to either block the light and avoid the flare, or embrace it and use it creatively. Only one post in this thread embraced the flare, and he was using a real camera. This is not an issue with the iPhone...it’s an issue with the shooters.
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mcdj said:
This was taken with a $3500 Leica lens...

Making-Flare.jpg
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Nice shot!
 
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I’m a photographer for a living and often leave my $15K Pro gear at home when going out for walks with my dog, relying instead on my iPhone to get photos of the city. I’ve been doing this since iPhone cameras reached a reasonable level of quality, probably around the iPhone 5.

I’ve never had an issue with lens flare like I have with the iPhone X. It’s just unacceptable for such an expensive phone. An no, this is not normal. This is not typical lens flare. It’s something else entirely. It’s a reflection and is a design flaw that is completely preventable.

It has to do with the camera housing. There’s a flat plate of sapphire over both camera lenses. It’s not the lens itself creating the flare, it’s a reflection of the lights on the flat glass in front of the lens.

This is a serious flaw that’ll affect almost any photo with lights, even though it might be somewhat masked in brighter photos. Any lights, regardless of how small and insignificant will be reflected on to different parts of the picture.

There’s no immediate solution to this other than to recall all phones and remove the glass housing, leaving the lenses exposed. Of course this isn’t going to happen. I imagine we’ll be hearing about this sometime in the near future. In the meantime, I’m stuck with a nearly $2,000 phone whose camera is useless to me. I love the iPhone X but this is a major disappointment to me as a photographer.
 
mcdj said:
Ugh. More FUD garbage. Pure drivel.

If you point even a Leica lens at any strong point source, in the OP's case a ceiling light, you will get flare.

The cheapest Leica lens is $2000. No camera. Just the lens.

This was taken with a $3500 Leica lens...

Making-Flare.jpg


So for half the price of the cheapest Leica lens, you're getting a phone that connects to the internet, plays games, has TWO lenses, and a camera too.

You simply don't get to complain about lens flare on a telephone, sorry.

Are we done now?
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Stop it. You're making too much sense. Much easier to blow it out of proportion and demand a recall of every unit. How dare a camera behave like a camera.
 
ipedro said:
I’m a photographer for a living and often leave my $15K Pro gear at home when going out for walks with my dog, relying instead on my iPhone to get photos of the city. I’ve been doing this since iPhone cameras reached a reasonable level of quality, probably around the iPhone 5.

I’ve never had an issue with lens flare like I have with the iPhone X. It’s just unacceptable for such an expensive phone. An no, this is not normal. This is not typical lens flare. It’s something else entirely. It’s a reflection and is a design flaw that is completely preventable.

It has to do with the camera housing. There’s a flat plate of sapphire over both camera lenses. It’s not the lens itself creating the flare, it’s a reflection of the lights on the flat glass in front of the lens.

This is a serious flaw that’ll affect almost any photo with lights, even though it might be somewhat masked in brighter photos. Any lights, regardless of how small and insignificant will be reflected on to different parts of the picture.

There’s no immediate solution to this other than to recall all phones and remove the glass housing, leaving the lenses exposed. Of course this isn’t going to happen. I imagine we’ll be hearing about this sometime in the near future. In the meantime, I’m stuck with a nearly $2,000 phone whose camera is useless to me. I love the iPhone X but this is a major disappointment to me as a photographer.
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Easy fix. Sell your phone and get something that doesn’t disappoint you so much.
 
ipedro said:
I’m a photographer for a living and often leave my $15K Pro gear at home when going out for walks with my dog, relying instead on my iPhone to get photos of the city. I’ve been doing this since iPhone cameras reached a reasonable level of quality, probably around the iPhone 5.

I’ve never had an issue with lens flare like I have with the iPhone X. It’s just unacceptable for such an expensive phone. An no, this is not normal. This is not typical lens flare. It’s something else entirely. It’s a reflection and is a design flaw that is completely preventable.

It has to do with the camera housing. There’s a flat plate of sapphire over both camera lenses. It’s not the lens itself creating the flare, it’s a reflection of the lights on the flat glass in front of the lens.

This is a serious flaw that’ll affect almost any photo with lights, even though it might be somewhat masked in brighter photos. Any lights, regardless of how small and insignificant will be reflected on to different parts of the picture.

There’s no immediate solution to this other than to recall all phones and remove the glass housing, leaving the lenses exposed. Of course this isn’t going to happen. I imagine we’ll be hearing about this sometime in the near future. In the meantime, I’m stuck with a nearly $2,000 phone whose camera is useless to me. I love the iPhone X but this is a major disappointment to me as a photographer.
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How about a tiny lens hood... seriously! I’m sure someone makes a clip on hood. Although it would have to be pretty shallow for the wide angle. Maybe a longer flip down hood for the tele? Or you could try one of the many add on lenses that have their own built in hoods. The Moment lenses look pretty nice.

There have been lens flare complaints about other iPhone and smartphones in the past. I’ve seen it in a small percentage of photos I’ve taken with the X, but haven’t noticed it being that much worse. I’m really not sure there is a way to avoid it altogether without some kind of hood. Perhaps the extra glass over the dual lenses is making it worse. Perhaps it’s not playing as much of a role as you think. Given the engineering they put into the camera features I am sure they considered and tested their design options for lens flare quite exhaustively. You and I both probably own individual lenses that cost more than the iPhone X that flare just as badly without a hood in place. Overall I’m quite impressed with the quality of the iPhone X cameras, but it’s still not going to be without some flaws. Perhaps consider a Fuji X100f, Sony rx100, or an Olympus PEN F if you want a small walkabout camera that produces consistently excellent results.
 
ipedro said:
I’m a photographer for a living and often leave my $15K Pro gear at home when going out for walks with my dog, relying instead on my iPhone to get photos of the city. I’ve been doing this since iPhone cameras reached a reasonable level of quality, probably around the iPhone 5.

I’ve never had an issue with lens flare like I have with the iPhone X. It’s just unacceptable for such an expensive phone. An no, this is not normal. This is not typical lens flare. It’s something else entirely. It’s a reflection and is a design flaw that is completely preventable.

It has to do with the camera housing. There’s a flat plate of sapphire over both camera lenses. It’s not the lens itself creating the flare, it’s a reflection of the lights on the flat glass in front of the lens.

This is a serious flaw that’ll affect almost any photo with lights, even though it might be somewhat masked in brighter photos. Any lights, regardless of how small and insignificant will be reflected on to different parts of the picture.

There’s no immediate solution to this other than to recall all phones and remove the glass housing, leaving the lenses exposed. Of course this isn’t going to happen. I imagine we’ll be hearing about this sometime in the near future. In the meantime, I’m stuck with a nearly $2,000 phone whose camera is useless to me. I love the iPhone X but this is a major disappointment to me as a photographer.
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It is internal reflection and it’s not unique to the X. I may post pics later showing the exact same thing (some calling it the blue ball) from pics taken with my X, my 7 Plus, my 6s, a friends 5c, a friends Samsung S8 and my Huawei Mate 9. And I mean the EXACT same reflections, the round blue dots or balls as some are calling them.
 
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donster28 said:
Here to add more speculation that it’s affecting all iPhone X’s. Been to 2 Apple Stores and tried out all demos with the same lens flare results!
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Did you try any other model iPhone? Or any other make of phone at all?

Saying it affects all X’s but leaving out the fact that it affects ALL phone cameras is a bit misleading.
 
Recognition said:
Did you try any other model iPhone? Or any other make of phone at all?

Saying it affects all X’s but leaving out the fact that it affects ALL phone cameras is a bit misleading.
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Don't do that! It won't allow people to bash the X and only the X! Next week it will be something different to bash.
 
I had ridiculous lens flare on my X before I sold it. I couldn't take pictures of Christmas decorations because it was so bad.
 
Recognition said:
Did you try any other model iPhone? Or any other make of phone at all?

Saying it affects all X’s but leaving out the fact that it affects ALL phone cameras is a bit misleading.
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Sorry but your response to my comment is confussing. I am talking about my iPhone X compared to the same iPhone X demo units in the Apple Store. I have not tried any other phone makers’ cameras.

My simple experiment is limited to iPhone X so I’m not misleading anyone.
 
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179202 said:
Can we stop saying lens flare? This isn't that and it just confuses the issue. This is an actual issue.
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What would you call it then? Lens flare can take many forms... it just means any aberration that is caused by unwanted reflections that happen when light reflects off one or more lens elements or imperfections in the glass. If you can make the reflection come and go by tilting the camera in different directions relative to the light source causing the reflection, then it's good ol' lens flare in my book. Are we talking about the same thing?
 
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Here are screenshots of some short videos that I took a few nights ago. All sitting in the same place on my sofa.
These are iPhone X, 7 Plus, 6S and 5C.
I also took using my Huawei Mate 9 and a friends Samsung S8 but I deleted those already. I’ll retake tonight and post up.
This simply shows that all cameras do this to some extent deoending on the lens etc.
It’s not unique to the X at all.
I might also show a shot from my Sony A6 and maybe I can take a photo of the viewfinder of my Bronica SQL-B (I’m out of film at the moment) showing the same thing.
Lens flare and reflections are present on all cameras, even crazy expensive cinamatic lenses. Simply watch almost any movie.
 
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