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

Hopefully a fix is coming.

No this isn't about depth of field, it's overly aggressive image processing, particularly noise reduction.

Images I have taken appear very soft and smudgy in anything but perfect lighting. Very disappointing.

Pictures taken on the iPhone 5S look much nicer.
 
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Why is it so impossible for me to take consistently good photos with my 6?

jabingla2810 said:
True, but this excessive noise reduction is out of the users control unfortunately.
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Lighting and composition has nothing to do with noise reduction, though good lighting and composition may help with a phone's auto-noise reduction feature, as it would be easier for auto-focus to grab on to the subject.

It is not magic. A poorly composed picture with bad lighting in the first place will by nature look horrible and can look even worse with an auto-noise reduction filter applied.
 
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aajeevlin said:
I too notice the inconsistency. The first time Ive noticed this was during a group photo at my house party. We had planty of lighting. The photo came out great, however when I zoomed in everybody looks like they were painted. Very weird.

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I don't know. Somehow these image just don't look sharp enough? Maybe?
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I've had that "Monet effect" happen to me with my 5s. It doesn't happen all the time but it happened with birthday party photos and ruined the bulk of them and that was pretty upsetting. I wanted to take it to a Genius appointment but my husband and I could not get it to consistently replicate.
 
bova80 said:
OP, are you zoomed in at all. that's what it looks like to me.
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Yes, I was zoomed in a little bit because I didn't want that thing to jump on my face. :p

So, it could have something to do with that. Will have to experiment zoom vs non-zoom.
 
Winona Northdakota said:
Surely, you are not blaming Apple for a user's poor photography skills?
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Frankly your comments here have nothing to do with the issue being discussed. This isn't about composition or photography skills. It's about how the new phones process the snapshots that will be taken by the billions with these devices.
 
It looks Apple is PURPOSEFULLY trying to add a fake Bokeh to me. Thats clearly postprocessed after the photo, and it kinda looks like very purposeful fake smudging to me.
 
munkydust said:
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.

Image

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.
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Don't use the digital zoom.
 
munkydust said:
Yes, I was zoomed in a little bit because I didn't want that thing to jump on my face. :p

So, it could have something to do with that. Will have to experiment zoom vs non-zoom.
Click to expand...

I got the monet effect happening in the birthday photos I mentioned earlier without zooming. Given that this was happening on my 5s and not my husband's 5s, I think there was and is something wonky in the camera of that phone. I've not yet tried the camera in my new 6 plus. I'll test that later when my work is done.
 
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munkydust said:
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.

Image

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.
Click to expand...

Did you crop this photo? It appears as if you attempted to do a zoom-crop which can distort photos sometimes.
 
I never noticed this issue with my iPhone 5, so there is definitely something wonky with the camera or processing. :-/
 
GrumpyMom said:
I've had that "Monet effect" happen to me with my 5s. It doesn't happen all the time but it happened with birthday party photos and ruined the bulk of them and that was pretty upsetting. I wanted to take it to a Genius appointment but my husband and I could not get it to consistently replicate.
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Yea, for now I'm just going to leave it be. Going to let the whole iPhone 6 heat die down, then I'll see what to do with it.
 
zhenya said:
These are very nice photos but appear to be the wrong type to illustrate the issue. Try taking a picture of trees or bushes with the focal point on something in the foreground.
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How about just a row.
The further you look to the right, the more apparent the noise reduction is.

Click for full size:



The focus is on the 2nd / 3rd bush from the left, and it's pretty dramatic how the noise reduction just starts smoothly taking over as you look down the row.
 
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You also need to be careful using automatic HDR.

The way this normally works is it automatically takes several exposures (usually 3) and combines them into one picture.

In very bright light, the exposure will be fast so handholding is possible. There will be barely, if any, difference between each frame.

In lower light, the long exposures will mean any slight movement you make during the process, the slightest body sway, finger tremble or movement in the subject, will result in slightly offset frames being combined. The resulting picture cannot then be sharp.
 
Why is it so impossible for me to take consistently good photos with my 6?

Zoomed in on my pup and look how he almost looks painted in the picture. ImageUploadedByTapatalk1411752105.047890.jpgthis is with HDR off.
 
PTLove said:
It looks Apple is PURPOSEFULLY trying to add a fake Bokeh to me. Thats clearly postprocessed after the photo, and it kinda looks like very purposeful fake smudging to me.
Click to expand...

It's purposeful, but the purpose is not to create fake bokeh, it's to eliminate grain. And it does, you will notice iPhone 6 images are much less grainy than iPhone 4/5 photos. The problem is they just went way too far with it. These are classic overaggressive noise reduction artifacts, the kind that cheap cameras with tiny sensors have been using for years to fight sensor noise.

The good news is there's nothing wrong with the camera hardware, and this can easily be fixed in software. The problem is, will Apple do it? What I worry about is they've decided everyone wants small images because all they want are selfies, Instagram, Facebook type photos, that will be viewed on phones. And this bad noise reduction actually is effective when viewing photos at a small size, such as on a phone screen because the smudging artifacts get scaled down to not be noticeable. But it looks absolutely terrible if you view it larger.

At the very least, I hope they add some kind of option or setting to allow the user to reduce or eliminate the noise reduction (which can be done later with filters). It sucks because it appears that developers don't even have control over this (it gets applied before the application gets the camera data), because I'm seeing the same thing with photos taken in VSCOCam.
 
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