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iPhone 6 Noise Reduction too Strong?

S

SCMedic

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 8, 2008
193
41
Seems my wife noticed her pictures look "smeared or like watercolor" out of her iPhone 6 plus. She mentioned it to me tonight and I had just read a similar post here.

I, personally, am see tack sharp images without the smearing. Possible it's a sensor issue and not software? If it's software, hopefully Apple tunes it up. Most reviews on the camera from major tech blogs rant and rave about how sharp and beautiful it is. Is this a few isolated cases?
 
I noticed my camera is a little off as well... It seems grainy at times. It could be the lighting but I don't know what to do :(
 
lienhart said:
I noticed my camera is a little off as well... It seems grainy at times. It could be the lighting but I don't know what to do :(
Click to expand...

I'm guessing since it's how the software is processing the image, Apple can "turn it down" a bit, and make the images sharper. I think it's how they're getting less noise in the low light stuff, but it looks crappy.
 
ISO 125 at 1/8th second shutter speed via my 6+

Regular and then 100% crop. See how bad the details are smudged. I think my 5s had more noise in low light but was overall sharper. Anecdotal of course, as I didn't compare the two side by side. Anyone else have any thoughts?
 

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The outdoor pictures have looked good to me but the indoor ones are not what I thought they would be. The reviews had me thinking they were going to look much better than what I am experiencing.
 
SCMedic said:
ISO 125 at 1/8th second shutter speed via my 6+

Regular and then 100% crop. See how bad the details are smudged. I think my 5s had more noise in low light but was overall sharper. Anecdotal of course, as I didn't compare the two side by side. Anyone else have any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting that. That is similar to what I am seeing indoors.
 
munkydust said:
Thanks for posting that. That is similar to what I am seeing indoors.
Click to expand...

Bright light this thing is amazing. No question.

It looks like they tried to reduce the low light noise so much that they're losing detail. I'll take a little noise over this.
 
SCMedic said:
Bright light this thing is amazing. No question.

It looks like they tried to reduce the low light noise so much that they're losing detail. I'll take a little noise over this.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was thinking maybe something was wrong with my phone or I was doing something wrong (like a setting needed changed) based on the reviews that have highlighted the great indoors performance.

Still don't understand why there is such a gulf between our results and those of the reviewers?
 
I don't think they're reviewing w/ close enough scrutiny honestly... hopefully this is an issue they can address in future software updates.

munkydust said:
Yeah, I was thinking maybe something was wrong with my phone or I was doing something wrong (like a setting needed changed) based on the reviews that have highlighted the great indoors performance.

Still don't understand why there is such a gulf between our results and those of the reviewers?
Click to expand...
 
munkydust said:
Yeah, I was thinking maybe something was wrong with my phone or I was doing something wrong (like a setting needed changed) based on the reviews that have highlighted the great indoors performance.

Still don't understand why there is such a gulf between our results and those of the reviewers?
Click to expand...

I have been asking the same question. Why the difference in reviews? It makes me feel like there might be a bug with the processing or auto focus because it seems to effect some more than others.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1790221/
 
Apple's not reading these forums, so I think all of us need to definitely provide feedback to them that NR/Sharpening is way too strong on:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

I'm going to feedback at least once a week asking them for an update. ;)

pjstrrns said:
I have been asking the same question. Why the difference in reviews? It makes me feel like there might be a bug with the processing or auto focus because it seems to effect some more than others.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1790221/
Click to expand...
 
I noticed the very heavy smearing after taking the very first picture with my iPhone 6. After reviewing my past photos from iPhone 4 on, it looks like the smearing is the heaviest on the iPhone 6. Now I know pixel-peeping is unhealthy, but this smearing can be seen at about 50% magnification. The heavy jpeg compression is not helping either. Most photos are less than 2MB each.
 
Noticing the same here. I wonder how this is going to impact people who want to print large photos?
 
Ah!

I've seen this in very low light situations. Last friday I took a picture of our party at an outdoor restaurant near dusk before they turned the lights on and it's almost like someone used a watercolor effect on the image. Very strange.

Some have reported better results using Cortex Camera - your mileage may vary.
 
SCMedic said:
ISO 125 at 1/8th second shutter speed via my 6+

Regular and then 100% crop. See how bad the details are smudged. I think my 5s had more noise in low light but was overall sharper. Anecdotal of course, as I didn't compare the two side by side. Anyone else have any thoughts?
Click to expand...

That looks terrible, look around the kids right hand how noisy and blurry that is!

YUCK:mad:
 
SCMedic said:
Bright light this thing is amazing. No question.

It looks like they tried to reduce the low light noise so much that they're losing detail. I'll take a little noise over this.
Click to expand...

I'm getting smudgy results in even the brightest conditions (iPhone 6).
 
It's not just the noise reduction, the jpg compression is very aggressive. The same picture taken with an iPhone 5, 8.02 IOS is roughly 50% larger in file size and looks better.

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VSMacOne said:
Noticing the same here. I wonder how this is going to impact people who want to print large photos?
Click to expand...

Horribly. You won't be able to print anything other than a 5x7 without looking horrible.

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aliensporebomb said:
I've seen this in very low light situations. Last friday I took a picture of our party at an outdoor restaurant near dusk before they turned the lights on and it's almost like someone used a watercolor effect on the image. Very strange.

Some have reported better results using Cortex Camera - your mileage may vary.
Click to expand...

Cortex cam app is much better, but not a perfect alternative to the stock app. It uses longer exposure times so anything other than a still subject won't look good at all.
 
Similar problem for me even in bright light. Zoom in on this it is awful! There's got to be something seriously wrong.
 

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Yes. The reason is because Apple is raising the shadow levels (otherwise they'd be black) as to create better dynamic range. That causes noise thus more noise reduction.
 
I've noticed similar problems, particularly with the crop and zoom. Used to be I could fire off pictures indoors, then crop and zoom and get relatively sharp, somewhat noisy pics.

Now, I get really soft focus, less noisy pics - that look noticeably worse.

It's a really disappointing change.
 
There is an app called camera + and it now has an option to shoot uncompressed tiff images and each exposure is 11 MB thereabouts each. Get it here: Camera+ by tap tap tap
https://appsto.re/us/X-LPt.i

Maybe there's some apps out there that will run noise reduction to make it look better using a higher megabyte file or uncompressed tiff image...I have had very good luck with cortex camera but the object that you're shooting has to be sitting still and it is not to be used on moving objects. That's the only negative side about it. Another cool app for keeping your phone stable is average camera pro. With average camera pro, you can tell your camera to shoot 8 to 128 photos that are stacked on top of each other to get rid of noise. I have come away with digital SLR quality images using this app. Again, you have to set your phone down and don't touch it while it's taking the photos so they will be properly aligned.
Average Camera Pro by Dominik Seibold
https://appsto.re/us/rCtXy.i
 
I also see what appears to be over aggressive noise reduction for indoor shots. The jpg compression may also account for the loss of detail.
 
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