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iPhone 11 Pro iPhone 11 Produces Unflattering Selfies Compared to iPhone XS......."UglyGate"

I

iphonei11

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 22, 2019
3
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Alright guys so I'm new here and I registered hoping to have a discussion with fellow apple fans on what i am dubbing as "uglygate". (cue the "its just your face" jokes . but seriously the iphone xs did not produce distorted jaundice looking selfies) Couldn't find anything else about this online so I'm wondering if i got a dud of some sort.

My iphone 11 camera undoubtedly has two major issues causing selfies to be less flattering. For background reference i have the iphone 11 pro max in space grey.

The two issues are-

1.) facial distortion! even with the "wide angle" feature in the new frontal camera turned off, there is still a bit of distortion compared to previous iphones. this makes faces look longer and more horizontally squashed compared to the iphone xs.

2.) skin tone looks obviously colder/dull/desaturated/ less vibrant on the iphone 11 frontal cam. It's very odd. there's almost a pale yellowing of skin compared to the iphone xs max frontal cam skin tones were warmer and colors were more vibrant. (note: when the iphone xs was first released it had the awful beauty filter applied to selfies but subsequent updates made the frontal camera very flattering in terms of skin tone and color )

Have any of you iphone 11 users experienced the above? feel free to take a selfie standing in front of a window with natural day light with the iphone 11 then compare it with your iphone xs and the differences are very obvious.
 
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Yep. If a selfie is ugly, always blame the camera!
mathews_cry_laughing.gif


Okay, I honestly have no clue. I don’t selfie. How do the front facing pictures look?
 
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Supermallet said:
People complained about the Xs selfie cam last year too. There’s no winning.
Click to expand...

The issue with last year's xs selfie cam was that it applied a blurring filter. Apple fixed this with subsequent updates.

The iphone 11 doesn't have the blurring filter but in an attempt to give people the wide angle selfie option, there is still a bit of "wide angle" distortion even with the wide angle option turned off. Additionally, skin tones are not accurate . Instead skin tones in selfies appear yellow/colder/dull/flat/desaturated
 
This guy’s like Medusa to phones, don’t let him look. mf looked at my sink and it shattered
 
A lot of the comments are pretty sad.

Fact is OP is on the right track. Any photographer worth a dime knows that portraits are best in over 50mm full-frame equivalent focal range. The new portrait camera on iPhone 11 is wider than the old ones were making faces appear fatter.
 
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calstanford said:
A lot of the comments are pretty sad.

Fact is OP is on the right track. Any photographer worth a dime knows that portraits are best in over 50mm full-frame equivalent focal range. The new portrait camera on iPhone 11 is wider than the old ones were making faces appear fatter.
Click to expand...

What do you expect from a $30 part in a phone? My god, everyone is expecting a professional camera. It's not.
 
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calstanford said:
A lot of the comments are pretty sad.

Fact is OP is on the right track. Any photographer worth a dime knows that portraits are best in over 50mm full-frame equivalent focal range. The new portrait camera on iPhone 11 is wider than the old ones were making faces appear fatter.
Click to expand...

the wider angle on the new iphone 11 actually squishes faces horizontally, this is an extreme example , but the image on the left is what happens with a wider angle. the iphone xs did not do this

https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2011/11/focallength_mini.jpg


i understand the iphone 11 has the wider angle option, but the problem is- its not correcting the focal length correctly when the option is switched off.

furthermore, skin tones are very off on the new iphone 11 frontal cam
 
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OP, Absolutely yes, the front camera produces very very different pics when taking a selfie. I noticed this immediately when playing around with it. My XS took a superb shot with even color, good white balance, and contrast. On my iPhone 11 pro the picture is awful. In fact the picture made me look dead! The color was not natural at all and it increased the shadows making my eyes look sunk in and my lips pale. There was also like you said, a weird distortion. I compared both cameras taking the same photo under the same condition. It was really bad. I’m shocked actually.
 
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calstanford said:
A lot of the comments are pretty sad.

Fact is OP is on the right track. Any photographer worth a dime knows that portraits are best in over 50mm full-frame equivalent focal range. The new portrait camera on iPhone 11 is wider than the old ones were making faces appear fatter.
Click to expand...

Seriously? Someone makes a post about ugly selfies and you think it’s awful that people are responding quite predictably?
mathews_doh.gif


FWIW, I’m guessing that they OP knew exactly where this was going. But at this point, who has a legitimate diagnosis/solution for the demise?

You are talking about “any photographer worth a dime...”. Well, obviously we’re not talking about a professional or hobbyist photographer who is thinking about focal range, aperture, lens type, shutter speed, etc.
 
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Lol at the comments. Op set it on a platter. I think the selfies look ok. Better than the aggressive smoothing I’ve seen on some.
 
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indychris said:
Seriously? Someone makes a post about ugly selfies and you think it’s awful that people are responding quite predictably?
mathews_doh.gif
Click to expand...

Not really, I agree with the above member. The replies are disappointing. The OP clearly said the selfies in his iPhone xs weren't bad. So suddenly after buying the new phone the OP became ugly?
 
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rafark said:
Not really, I agree with the above member. The replies are disappointing. The OP clearly said the selfies in his iPhone xs weren't bad. So suddenly after buying the new phone the OP became ugly?
Click to expand...

Oh my gosh! It’s called joking! It’s what used to happen with these people called comedians. They’d say outlandish things at someone’s expense and others would
mathews_laughing.gif


The question was totally teed up for a long drive. People are only having fun!
mathews_confused.gif
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Maclver
Oh boy. Another ridiculous “-gate” to add to a much too quickly metastasizing list.

I know you’re new here so here’s some advice from someone who’s been here a while: don’t call every little problem a “-gate” and people will take you a little more seriously.
 
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