Strange iPhone 6 camera issue

[Akuratyde]

Hello all,
I'm wondering if someone can give me some insight into a strange issue I noticed with my iPhone 6's camera.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were enjoying a nice lunch out and I texted a photo to a friend of mine to let him know the restaurant we were at had his favorite beer on tap. When I took the photo of the beer glass I noticed something quite odd though. You'll notice from the attached photo the glass seems unusually narrow toward the bottom. In reality the width of the glass varied little from top-to-bottom, but it appeared this way in photos no matter which way I positioned the phone.

What could be causing this? I've taken photos of beer glasses before on my previous iPhone models and never noticed this issue. My concern is that the iPhone 6 is somehow skewing or distorting the photos.

 

[LongDuck]

Hard to tell from that pic. Does it happen with other pics?

 

[Akuratyde]

Yes. Earlier today a friend of mine posted a photo on Instagram from her trip to Ireland and I noticed the same issue. Look how comically narrow the glass is toward the bottom.

 

[DynaFXD]

Interesting aberration. But that's all it is. I'll play along. Here are three, top down, lens center, bottom up. The bottom up is the inverse of the top down. Kinda cool. I imagine some camera lens/optics freak could fill the in the gaps. The glass is empty now, gotta go take care of that...
(yeah, sorry about the portrait rotation issue)

 

[AliMacs]

Interesting aberration. But that's all it is. I'll play along. Here are three, top down, lens center, bottom up. The bottom up is the inverse of the top down. Kinda cool. I imagine some camera lens/optics freak could fill the in the gaps. The glass is empty now, gotta go take care of that...
(yeah, sorry about the portrait rotation issue)

The only time I've seen this sort of distortion is on a 14-24mm nikkor. But that is UWA lens. iPhone 6 isn't.

 

[ToddH]

Hello all,
I'm wondering if someone can give me some insight into a strange issue I noticed with my iPhone 6's camera.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were enjoying a nice lunch out and I texted a photo to a friend of mine to let him know the restaurant we were at had his favorite beer on tap. When I took the photo of the beer glass I noticed something quite odd though. You'll notice from the attached photo the glass seems unusually narrow toward the bottom. In reality the width of the glass varied little from top-to-bottom, but it appeared this way in photos no matter which way I positioned the phone.

What could be causing this? I've taken photos of beer glasses before on my previous iPhone models and never noticed this issue. My concern is that the iPhone 6 is somehow skewing or distorting the photos.

It's called wide angle perspective and it is caused by the lens in the camera. It is not a defect but it's the view wide angle lenses give. The top of the glass is closer to the camera and it gets exaggerated or distorted and the more distant object tend to taper away. I'm a photographer and my DSLR camera will do this with a wide angle lens is attached. The iPhone camera is close to a 28~35mm focal length in DSLR comparison. They call it the dog nose effect. If the iPhone camera lens was equivalent to an 85mm, then the glass would look normal. But then you would have to stand much further away from the glass as well. Hope this helps.

 

[Akuratyde]

Thank for you the excellent reply. I figured it wasn't a defect, I just wanted to know what was causing it.

The effect seems to be a bit worse with the iPhone 6 for whatever reason. I've attached a photo taken from a similar angle on my iPhone 5 and while the top of the glass does appear wider it's not nearly as exaggerated as the photo taken with my iPhone 6.