iPhone 13 Pro Telephoto switching to main camera in low light (13 Pro)

[climber2020]

One of the advertised features of the iPhone 13 Pro was night mode on the telephoto lens.

However when I try to take a picture in the dark using the telephoto, the device automatically switches back to the main camera (the wide angle 26 mm) and crops the photo just like it did in the previous years' phones. The result is a grainy, borderline unusable photo.

Is anyone else having this same problem?

 

[The.Glorious.Son]

FWIW, I just took a photo with 3x zoom and night mode kicked in for me. It didn’t switch back to wide.

 

[climber2020]

FWIW, I just took a photo with 3x zoom and night mode kicked in for me. It didn’t switch back to wide.

It goes back and forth depending on the lighting. Sometimes it shoots properly, other times it switches to the wide and crops. There really should be a way to force the lens to stick.

 

[climber2020]

Here’s an example. Low indoor light but not quite enough for night mode to kick in. I had it set to 3x and the exif data shows the proper focal length as 77mm, but the lens info indicates that the wide angle was used.

 

[doboy]

The result is a grainy, borderline unusable photo.

Is anyone else having this same problem?

Imagine how much worse it would’ve been if it was the 77mm camera with f2.8

 

[mavere]

It goes back and forth depending on the lighting. Sometimes it shoots properly, other times it switches to the wide and crops. There really should be a way to force the lens to stick.

I think it's a combination of lighting and focus distance based on my test. Or maybe it's entirely due to focus distance in the end because the autofocus will inherently be worse in low light. I did notice the phone jumping between telephoto and main camera and back even when holding the phone still, which makes me think the telephoto was figuring out its autofocus in those fractions of a second.

I think this is basically just an extension of the macro auto-switching "feature" that has upset some camera people. If the phone thinks something is too close for the camera to focus on, the phone will try to switch to the next lens and attempt a crop for framing purposes.

 

[climber2020]

Imagine how much worse it would’ve been if it was the 77mm camera with f2.8

I thought that was the purpose of having night mode on the telephoto module. Instead of automatically using that incredibly useful feature, the default action seems to be to crop a wide angle.

I took some more shots and it looks like if you manually activate night mode and dial it up to the max setting then it will stick with the telephoto lens.

 

[doboy]

I thought that was the purpose of having night mode on the telephoto module. Instead of automatically using that incredibly useful feature, the default action seems to be to crop a wide angle.

I took some more shots and it looks like if you manually activate night mode and dial it up to the max setting then it will stick with the telephoto lens.

Check the post above you.

 

[ionasdf]

Imagine how much worse it would’ve been if it was the 77mm camera with f2.8

Here are two pictures quickly taken in my dim room. Both unedited, just cropped in photoshop to see them 1:1 scale details.


3x which is actually 1x with crop.

3x Portrait with depth of field turned off.

 

[Pandyone]

I’m noticing a lot of pictures I take being in low quality since the camera decides to use the main camera and crop in to 77mm when 3x is enabled. This is not in every situations, but it can be good light and it still happens. I hope this can be fixed by in upcoming update.