Why is it so impossible for me to take consistently good photos with my 6?

[munkydust]

Unless it is in very bright light, everything always looks smudgy. I took about 5 photos of this praying mantis and none of them came out very well. I can never get them to look that sharp.

The background looks like a bad Monet painting.

This is with Auto HDR and Auto flash (which it didn't flash but it did apply HDR). I've tried HDR vs. non-HDR and haven't seen much difference.

 

[aPple nErd]

maybe try to manually focus. i find this makes photos look a lot better. it does seem really blurry though. do you have another phone with similar camera specs to test it with? like a 5s? or 5 even?

 

[munkydust]

maybe try to manually focus. i find this makes photos look a lot better. it does seem really blurry though. do you have another phone with similar camera specs to test it with? like a 5s? or 5 even?

Yeah, I've got a 4s still that I can use to compare. I know the photos didn't look like this. Better photos is one of the top reasons I upgraded. All the reviews make the camera seem like the best ever. I don't know why I don't see the same results.

EDIT: Plus, I thought this phone had pretty much the best autofocus to date?

 

[xxray]

Something's wrong here. None of my pictures, although on a 6+, look anything like that.

 

[munkydust]

Ok, looking back through my photos, some of them do look good. but any sort of low light ones look smudgy (not that the one with the praying mantis is THAT low-light).

Of the 6 praying mantis ones I took, half have HDR and half don't... they look pretty much the same so that's not it. I just couldn't get any of them to focus that well on the praying mantis.

 

[Plutonius]

Take it to an Apple store and get it replaced.

 

[aPple nErd]

Ok, looking back through my photos, some of them do look good. but any sort of low light ones look smudgy (not that the one with the praying mantis is THAT low-light).

strange. could be a hardware defect. my iPhone 6 takes really great photos even when the lighting isn't very good.

 

[julesgold]

I would get it replaced.

 

[munkydust]

Well, I have seen others on here report smudgy pictures. But, I hadn't seen any of them post full size pics like I did. Not sure if any of them exchanged theirs and did see a difference. Like I said, some look really good, but just couldn't get any of those 6 to look good.

 

[Bahroo]

Yeah, I've got a 4s still that I can use to compare. I know the photos didn't look like this. Better photos is one of the top reasons I upgraded. All the reviews make the camera seem like the best ever. I don't know why I don't see the same results.

EDIT: Plus, I thought this phone had pretty much the best autofocus to date?

It does have the fastest auto focus to date, "Focus Pixels" or phase auto detection isnt nessacerily new(its also found in the S5) but the new 6 and 6 Plus auto focus is even faster then the S5's auto focus

Something may be wrong with your device im not sure, photos come out incredibly great on my 6

 

[munkydust]

Here's another one I took and it looks fine. I think there are just certain lighting situations that the phone fails miserably at. Not sure what I can do to take better pictures in those situations (I have other "lower light" photos where things get smudgy as well). I'm not convinced it is anything to do with my phone in particular.

By the way, you can drag either of these photos to your address bar to see original size.

 

[antiprotest]

It's broken for sure. Mine takes brilliant photos.

 

[munkydust]

It's broken for sure. Mine takes brilliant photos.

In all situations?

 

[Gaary]

Are you AE/AF locking (pressing and holding on the screen until the focus square stays in place) and then moving your phone? Doing that will create a macro effect. If that's what you are doing try just tapping to focus normally.


See here: http://austinmann.com/trek/iphone-6-plus-camera-review-iceland scroll down to the dew drop photo. You can see the foliage in the background has this same fuzziness.

 

[Pochi Hanaki]

Hey

 

[zhenya]

I agree. I noticed the same thing with my 6 taking some pictures outdoors the other day. Trees and foliage seem to get hit really bad. I think it's the processing they are using. Taking similar photos with my 5s revealed other issues with that camera under similar conditions, but this particular flaw is just really noticeable under the right conditions. I too am surprised that it hasn't come up in any of the reviews.

 

[munkydust]

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

And I have said the same as zhenya before, I'm surprised this has not come up in reviews previously. I'm pretty certain this is not an issue specific to a defect in my phone. This is a problem that arises under certain conditions in all iPhone 6s. Hopefully this is something that can be resolved with a software update.

 

[sergiocapitano]

Investigating hazy photos issue

Hi. I'm a tech journalist covering photography, and I've been following some image-quality problems with the iPhone 6/6 Plus and iOS 8. We've gotten a few hazy or smudged photos in our reviewing, as well. Feel free to contact me. scaptain@tomsguide.com Thanks, Sean

 

[Small White Car]

Search the app store for "EXIF" and find any of the free apps that tell you what the camera settings were for the photos you've taken.

Examine the 'smudgy' ones. Do those have higher ISO numbers than the good ones?

It looks to me like your camera is interpreting bright scenes as dark scenes and is applying it's low-light tricks to daylight scenes. (Specifically, its noise reduction filters.)

If you determine that the bad daylight shots have high ISO while good ones don't, that at least tells us what's happening.

WHY, I don't know. I guess I'd go to the genius bar with that information.

 

[wakadango]

I have the same issues on my 6 as well.

Here's a related thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1787542/

 

[iPhone7ate9]

About blurry backgrounds- they're supposed to be blurry.

 

[Applenoob34]

Why is it so impossible for me to take consistently good photos with my 6?

Ok, looking back through my photos, some of them do look good. but any sort of low light ones look smudgy (not that the one with the praying mantis is THAT low-light).

Of the 6 praying mantis ones I took, half have HDR and half don't... they look pretty much the same so that's not it. I just couldn't get any of them to focus that well on the praying mantis.

that's funny. I took a few pics of a praying mantis today also. My background is just as bad.

 

[kilcher]

Check and make sure you don't have a filter on. On my 5 all of a sudden all of my photos started looking like they were from the 70's. Ended up finding a filter that was being applied to all new photos.

 

[julesgold]

About blurry backgrounds- they're supposed to be blurry.

Yes they are supposed to be blurry, but not Monet-paintings-kinda-blurry.

 

[sergiocapitano]

About blurry backgrounds- they're supposed to be blurry.

If we are talking shallow depth of field, that's correct. I was curious about the smudge issue, because we've seen something a bit different - the subject in the foreground looking hazy and faded.