iPhone 14 Pro iPhone 14P - Im disappointed with the camera

[Gator5000e]

I've really tried to like the 14P camera but something seems off to me. I thought the pictures from the 13P looked better than the 14P. The 14 photos don't seem as sharp and clear, seem to be too warm by default, show a lot of noise when viewing on a larger screen and just over all don't look as good.....to me.

I have seen some gorgeous pics in the photos by 14 thread. But in taking some Christmas decoration pictures and comparing them to similar shots taken with the 13 they don't hold up as well.

I'm not sure what to do about this. I know it's mostly subjective but when I do expand the shots in photos (ie. Make them larger) they really aren't very good. Maybe I have a bad camera but I doubt Apple would agree.

If you all think I'm nuts that's fine but I typically upgrade for the camera improvements. Looks like apple took a step back, at least to me.

So any thoughts appreciated on anything I can do or try.

Thanks. a

 

[MegaBlue]

Nothing we can really suggest or tell you to do when we don’t have any examples of photos.

 

[ChoiMinji]

I've really tried to like the 14P camera but something seems off to me. I thought the pictures from the 13P looked better than the 14P. The 14 photos don't seem as sharp and clear, seem to be too warm by default, show a lot of noise when viewing on a larger screen and just over all don't look as good.....to me.

I have seen some gorgeous pics in the photos by 14 thread. But in taking some Christmas decoration pictures and comparing them to similar shots taken with the 13 they don't hold up as well.

I'm not sure what to do about this. I know it's mostly subjective but when I do expand the shots in photos (ie. Make them larger) they really aren't very good. Maybe I have a bad camera but I doubt Apple would agree.

If you all think I'm nuts that's fine but I typically upgrade for the camera improvements. Looks like apple took a step back, at least to me.

So any thoughts appreciated on anything I can do or try.

Thanks. a

Personally I think auto mode isn’t as good as it is in the 12. A lot of dark under exposed in some areas with the 14. Been fixing it with Lightroom editing which is doing a better job than the built in camera app editing…with my experience

 

[siri_3005]

How good is the iPhone 14 Pro's camera compared to the XR's camera from your test with it?

 

[RRC]

If you aren't happy, return it. Or at least compare it in-store with their demo unit.

As a photographer by trade, the 14 Pro is the best camera I've ever had on a mobile device. You have to use the right settings though (picture profiles, raw if you want room to edit) and remember that the 48MP is only available using ProRaw on the main (x1) camera only.

I would urge you to stick with the camera for some more testing, the sensor is much larger which in turn actually produces less noise than before and you should get a sharper, cleaner image as a result. Obviously lighting and colour temperature can play a big part in the end result, and all images (if important) should be edited, even jpegs.

 

[RRC]

How good is the iPhone 14 Pro's camera compared to the XR's camera from your test with it?

Major difference, improved in every way.

 

[bruinsrme]

There are a couple threads on rumors. I too am disappointed with the 14p camera.
The camera has been replaced and same lack luster performance.
Zooming is horrible.
Night photos are bad as well.
I can’t help but hope 16.2 will offer some software improvements to address the issues.

 

[G5isAlive]

I've really tried to like the 14P camera but something seems off to me. I thought the pictures from the 13P looked better than the 14P. The 14 photos don't seem as sharp and clear, seem to be too warm by default, show a lot of noise when viewing on a larger screen and just over all don't look as good.....to me.

I have seen some gorgeous pics in the photos by 14 thread. But in taking some Christmas decoration pictures and comparing them to similar shots taken with the 13 they don't hold up as well.

I'm not sure what to do about this. I know it's mostly subjective but when I do expand the shots in photos (ie. Make them larger) they really aren't very good. Maybe I have a bad camera but I doubt Apple would agree.

If you all think I'm nuts that's fine but I typically upgrade for the camera improvements. Looks like apple took a step back, at least to me.

So any thoughts appreciated on anything I can do or try.

Thanks. a

well you aren't crazy, personal preference is a real thing. And the reality is unless the lighting really is the same, its hard to compare pics a year apart, so if you aren't satisfied, keep trying. BUT I have had a camera literally degrade so that pictures weren't that great. Is that possible here? showed Apple genius, and got it replaced.

I ask because I have the 14 p max and the 13 p max before it and even the 12 pro max I just haven't noticed the problems you list. There are incremental improvements for the most part, and once can expect in specific situations one to be better than the other, but only marginally so. Not enough to make me look back.

Anyway for your perusing pleasure, three pictures from the three phones taken roughly the same time of year (summer) but 1 year apart. When I pixel peep, all three hold up.

 

[Shirasaki]

I tried to take a photo of my figure at a nearby Apple Store with almost every iPhone on sale, and I am both disappointed and not surprised for the performance on iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Apple's camera really hasn't been improved much if at all since 12 Pro Max at least, and even on decent lighting, the result is underwhelming. Noise just as much compared to 12. RAW doesn't seem to offer any benefit in clarity or more detail. Maybe I am taking photo from close range but still.
I'd like to see how the periscope lense would carry in terms of photography, knowing very well even iPhone camera is cheap compared to dedicated DSLR.

 

[Gator5000e]

Here are a couple of pics. Not sure how well they will show on here. The first one is from last December with the 13. The second two were just taken. While they look OK on the phone screen, if you zoom in on them using your fingers, they get very noisy and distortion is easily seen.

 

[MegaBlue]

While they look OK on the phone screen, if you zoom in on them using your fingers, they get very noisy and distortion is easily seen.

All 3 look exactly like what I would expect a modern smartphone to do in low light. It’s hard to compare them because they’re 3 radically different pictures with different subject placement and lighting conditions. Each photo looks exactly like what I would expect them to be. It’s a 12MP photo from a smartphone sized sensor. It’s not going to crop well. Even a 48MP photo from the 14 is going to have a limit before distortion and noise occurs (beyond the 2x zoom range).

It should also be known a lot of the “amazing” photos you see from iPhones and other smartphone cameras are not pictures just quickly taken in a fire-and-forget manner. They’re staged, often are using tripods or some other kind of physical stabilization, with everything positioned perfectly, and are often the best out of several photos.

With the right tools and setup I can get better photos out of an iPhone X than some people get with their 14 Pros. Part of good photography is being a good photographer. Your camera can only do so much.

 

[Gator5000e]

Great answer, Mega. And, of course you are correct. I guess my feeling is just a gut feeling. I will try some more in the daytime with natural light. And also, thanks for taking the time to respond.

 

[now i see it]

I think anyone who cares about the quality of their photographs shouldn’t be using an iPhone. iPhone is a point & shoot snapshot camera.
Want great looking photos (at least from a hardware perspective)? — get a better camera that’s not a phone.

 

[Danfango]

Yeah and no. I do a lot of photography on an iPhone and a Nikon Z50 (check my media in my profile). They have their strengths and weaknesses.

I did play with an iPhone 14 Pro in an Apple Store and did some side by side shots with my 13 Pro and I agree that the 13 Pro is better. The 14 Pro colour temperature was right off and I couldn't really see any quality difference.

 

[MegaBlue]

I think anyone who cares about the quality of their photographs shouldn’t be using an iPhone. iPhone is a point & shoot snapshot camera.
Want great looking photos (at least from a hardware perspective)? — get a better camera that’s not a phone.

You can get some incredible, high quality photos out of not just an iPhone, but any smartphone camera.

There are situations where you can get a better shot with your phone than you might be able to get with traditional cameras, even mirrorless.

I use a combination of Moment lenses with my iPhone as well as a personal DSLR and I do find myself preferring the shot I got with my phone. Sometimes it just took a photo of a specific subject better than my DSLR did (such as very compact/small areas where my big camera and its flash and all just wouldn’t fit or get a good enough shot), and sometimes the fact that its coming from a phone is what gives it the extra level of creativity and fits the goal of the photo better than what the DSLR would took.

We need to evolve past “better hardware means better x”. Photography is more about your skill as a photographer than what camera you’re actually using. Even quality wise. Your 50MP DSLR photo is going to be pretty bad quality wise if all your settings are wrong and don’t match your environment and subject. You’d be surprised. Professional NatGeo grade photographers have used phones as old as the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 that rival a lot of what amateur and intermediate photographers can do with their big setups now.

In short, anyone who is serious about the quality of their photos is going to use what camera is going to be best for the kind of shot they want. Sometimes, the iPhone (or other smartphone) will genuinely be the best option.

 

[returnZero]

Not sure how much improvements we'd call it enough enough : ) I bought my parents iPhone 14 pro max this year. With this opportunity, I was able to test it out. I have to say there is improvement there and so many little things can be overlooked or easily dismissed. That 48 meg lens produces salvageable image in comparison to 13, its image can also be pleasurably used in the wallpapers in 5k resolution without showing any noticeable eye-soaring degradation of pixels(only if there are enough light in the frame). I mean they are there but not as much as the pixel peeping Tom and Jane are concerned about. Also yet another remarkable improvement is that the images are taken with 30 sec long exposure while the phone is securely resting on the tripod. If you ask me, I'd like to politely say this has been a great improvement

 

[mectojic]

There is definitely personal preference involved, for sure. I actually love the photos my iPhone 4 takes. While much lower in pixel resolution, the lighting and tone feels a lot more real to me. All this lighting/HDR/night mode trickery doesn't seem to capture... you know, reality. Just my opinion.
(PS I did shoot photos on iPhone 14 pro, 13, 11, X and many others, so I'm not just making this up.)

edit: added iPhone 4 photo.

 

[v0lume4]

You're not taking RAW photos are you? These are the straight out of camera JPEGs?

 

[kenni417]

generally the picture quality of the 14 pro is great of course, but i don't know what up with the auto-focus this year. it's not as good as previous iPhones and that is my biggest issue.

 

[v0lume4]

Anyway for your perusing pleasure, three pictures from the three phones taken roughly the same time of year (summer) but 1 year apart. When I pixel peep, all three hold up.

Beautiful! Puget Sound?

 

[Mik@]

I've really tried to like the 14P camera but something seems off to me. I thought the pictures from the 13P looked better than the 14P. The 14 photos don't seem as sharp and clear, seem to be too warm by default, show a lot of noise when viewing on a larger screen and just over all don't look as good.....to me.

I have seen some gorgeous pics in the photos by 14 thread. But in taking some Christmas decoration pictures and comparing them to similar shots taken with the 13 they don't hold up as well.

I'm not sure what to do about this. I know it's mostly subjective but when I do expand the shots in photos (ie. Make them larger) they really aren't very good. Maybe I have a bad camera but I doubt Apple would agree.

If you all think I'm nuts that's fine but I typically upgrade for the camera improvements. Looks like apple took a step back, at least to me.

So any thoughts appreciated on anything I can do or try.

Thanks. a

This is mostly my experience with the 14p also. Fortunately this is almost completely a software issue. Apple uses way too aggressive compression to keep file size down.

I recommend downloading ProCamera. With the right settings the results are practically noiseless, pin sharp images. Set jpeg quality setting to 98% (or according to your liking and space available), shoot in manual (M) mode, keep your iso down to max 100 and use the anti shake shutter button if it is hard to hold the camera steady or if shutter speed is slow.The jpegs in these settings are larger in size (average 15-20mb), but the results are amazing. You get the benefits of the full 48mp sensor without shooting raw.

i have tried ProCamera, Halide and Camera+, and while any of them is good I think ProCamera is the most user friendly and intuitive. Have not yet tried ProCam 8.

For some reason with 3x tele lense there is no such a big difference in image quality. Of course it doesn’t use the 48mp sensor. But because the quality with the main lense is so good, you have a lot of room for cropping.

This is not meant to be a ProCamera ad, but just my experience after hundreds of images taken.

 

[appleino]

Coming from a 12 Pro Max, I‘m absolutely blown away how much better the wide angle images look on my 14 Pro Max. That new sensor is the biggest leap ever in an iPhone and if you shoot RAW and develop the images in Lightroom or Capture One, it‘s a whole new level of detail, resolution and dynamic range. It can‘t compare with a Nikon Z7, of course, but if the light is good, it‘s amazing what you can squeeze out of the RAW images. People leaving negative comments here will probably mainly shoot JPGs in the stock camera app, resulting in the same 12 megapixel shots as on their previous phones. This is a usage case where the improvements are only small and in my particular case not the reason why I upgraded. I can‘t wait to see similar upgrades to the whole camera array, shooting higher res telephoto images is the upgrade I‘m looking for most.

 

[The Game 161]

Certainly a very good camera system but at times apple processing does mess things up

 

[Choco Taco]

The camera is great. Apple's processing sometimes makes it not great. I'm not sure what it is.

 

[Gator5000e]

This is mostly my experience with the 14p also. Fortunately this is almost completely a software issue. Apple uses way too aggressive compression to keep file size down.

I recommend downloading ProCamera. With the right settings the results are practically noiseless, pin sharp images. Set jpeg quality setting to 98% (or according to your liking and space available), shoot in manual (M) mode, keep your iso down to max 100 and use the anti shake shutter button if it is hard to hold the camera steady or if shutter speed is slow.The jpegs in these settings are larger in size (average 15-20mb), but the results are amazing. You get the benefits of the full 48mp sensor without shooting raw.

i have tried ProCamera, Halide and Camera+, and while any of them is good I think ProCamera is the most user friendly and intuitive. Have not yet tried ProCam 8.

For some reason with 3x tele lense there is no such a big difference in image quality. Of course it doesn’t use the 48mp sensor. But because the quality with the main lense is so good, you have a lot of room for cropping.

This is not meant to be a ProCamera ad, but just my experience after hundreds of images taken.

I actually have ProCamera but find it pretty confusing to use. For instance, I looked for the JPEG quality setting and didn't see one anywhere. I have resolution choices of 12MP or 48MP. To get the full manual you apparently need to be a user of Instagram (no idea why) and I have no desire to join Instagram. So I have no idea what half the abbreviations on the screen mean or what they should be set on. But I will try using ISO at 100 and JPEG at 48MP and see how it comes out. Thanks for the detailed reply.

PS - if anyone knows where I can get a ProCam manual from without joining Instagram, please post a link. Thanks.