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

[TommyA6]

I don't know which app that is, but ~1/16000s shutter speed is bogus. I posted a sample of the Sony perfectly focused and froze kids jumping into the pool. I have not been able to lock focus so quickly with the iPhone 6. Perhaps I'm just resistant to the focus pixel magic dust Apple sprinkled onto the world.

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Cameras on other phones, including the iPhone 5s, do not show heavy details smearing as the iPhone 6 does, which is why this thread exists. That is not an opinion.

I'll gladly post a normal picture then, just give me a few minutes.

 

[iosuser]

I'll gladly post a normal picture then, just give me a few minutes.

You mean pictures taken at 1/16000s shutter speed? It's not real. Only a top spec'd pro DSLR can achieve that kind of shutter speed.

http://improvephotography.com/30019/iphone-6-camera-depth-review/

Jump to the section where it talks about freezing motion.

Honestly, I was expecting to be blown away by the iPhone 6 camera, but I'm not. Actually very disappointed by the heavy details smearing.

 

[TommyA6]

You mean pictures taken at 1/16000s shutter speed? It's not real. Only a top spec'd pro DSLR can achieve that kind of shutter speed.

http://improvephotography.com/30019/iphone-6-camera-depth-review/

Jump to the section where it talks about freezing motion.

Honestly, I was expecting to be blown away by the iPhone 6 camera, but I'm not. Actually very disappointed by the heavy details smearing.

I can easily take a picture of people jumping, cars driving by etc. I don't know what this guy is talking about.

Here's a picture of a car driving by taken with my iPhone 5. It is heavily cropped so the quality isn't amazing (The car was 20-30 meters away). I'll post some people jumping around pictures as soon as I can.

 

[3lite]

Yeah the iPhone 6 camera sucks... idk if I'm shaking or what but the pics come out blurry...

 

[MrXiro]

I did notice the weird effect in the background of many reviewers photos.

I'm still damn impressed by the speed of focus though of the camera, but yeah I agree with the earlier post that theorizes that it might be over compensation by the noise reduction.

I did snap some good pics of my very fast moving bird though.

 

[iosuser]

I did notice the weird effect in the background of many reviewers photos.

I'm still damn impressed by the speed of focus though of the camera, but yeah I agree with the earlier post that theorizes that it might be over compensation by the noise reduction.

I did snap some good pics of my very fast moving bird though.

That's a beautiful bird, but please don't take this the wrong way, I'm strictly talking about the horrible smearing of details from the iPhone 6 camera. Your first photo perfectly illustrates that. It reminded me of a painting of a parrot my son did in an art class.

 

[Jazper]

Are you zooming in a lot or something?

The zoom has never looked great on any iPhones, well any phones for that matter.

If you're not then definitely get this replaced, mine takes great photos.

I added a photo I've taken with it - I don't take photos all that often, but was taken in 'fairly' low light conditions and the quality looks pretty great in my opinion (click on the photo for the full quality).

 

[MrXiro]

That's a beautiful bird, but please don't take this the wrong way, I'm strictly talking about the horrible smearing of details from the iPhone 6 camera. Your first photo perfectly illustrates that. It reminded me of a painting of a parrot my son did in an art class.

This is from the iPhone 6 camera. Yeah, if you zoom in on the first picture, my bird's feathers has the same effect. It's over compensation of the noise reduction IMO. I did mention that I saw that effect on a lot of reviewer's photos.

Hopefully they'll fix it.

I posted my pic as merely an example about how impressed I am by how fast the focus is. Were this picture taken on my 5 she'd just be one giant blue motion blur.


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Are you zooming in a lot or something?

The zoom has never looked great on any iPhones, well any phones for that matter.

If you're not then definitely get this replaced, mine takes great photos.

I added a photo I've taken with it - I don't take photos all that often, but was taken in 'fairly' low light conditions and the quality looks pretty great in my opinion (click on the photo for the full quality).

If you blow up your image to full size and look at the dark corners of the ceiling you can still see the effect. Even on the old iPhones the compensation wasn't this strong.

It's fine when we don't look at the photos at 100% crop (ie a Instagram/Facebook upload) but I agree with the OP that it does look odd.

 

[hasanahmad]

This is mine I think you guys need your phone checked

 

[MrXiro]

This is mine I think you guys need your phone checked

Your pics have it too... look at it at 100% crop. Drag your last picture to a different browser window and then zoom in to 100%. Look at the trees in the background. It's the same effect.

The trees in the background are smudgy.

Here I did it in photoshop for you; just click on the pic and you'll see.

I don't think it's a big deal for the basic photography. It's probably better than any old point and shoot I ever owned.
Essentially it would be like printing out your iPhone picture at 45 X 32 inches to see it.

 

[hasanahmad]

Your pics have it too... look at it at 100% crop. Drag your last picture to a different browser window and then zoom in to 100%. Look at the trees in the background. It's the same effect.

The trees in the background are smudgy.

Here I did it in photoshop for you; just click on the pic and you'll see.

I don't think it's a big deal for the basic photography. It's probably better than any old point and shoot I ever owned.
Essentially it would be like printing out your iPhone picture at 45 X 32 inches to see it.

That's because phone photos especially In lower light are not meant to be blown up to 2600x3000 resolution. They take photos with that resolution but how many iphone photos are blown up to that resolution especially low light. If someone really wants to take pictures which are meant to take blown up pictures as prints then get a compact slr or dslr with minimum of 22 mpixel

When you are cropping it up to that point you are assuming the result is what you expect In a 22 megapixel dedicated camera

The cropped portion is also something which is very far away and likely to be smudged. The issue is when there is smudge on objects nearby or not in low light

 

[tgi]

Yep, it is likely software. It is in processing the raw image data off the camera sensor, a noise reduction algorithm is applied which "smears" (essentially averages) small local pixel groups to average out grain (bright and dark specks) into more uniform values. This is something all cameras do (unless you have a RAW file straight off the sensor), it's just Apple has cranked this up to a high level in the iPhone 6 and in my opinion, they missed an acceptable balance.

Fine details get lost, particularly in areas of nearly-same values, such as foliage, cement, sky, etc. It's noticeable because, for example, on an expanse of cement, it's only the micro detail that is very similar to grain that gives it its character. If you remove that detail, you have what looks like a big sheet of beige rubber or plastic instead. And similar for fine details in leaves, for example the veins, or bark texture on branches. It also tends to show itself poorly in out of focus areas.

What we don't know if how deep this software is buried. I suppose it is possible it's actually backed into "firmware" on the camera chip, and is there even before the operating system get it. But more likely it is in the iOS software and could theoretically be adjusted. But, the fact that other apps like VSCOCam are getting the already-baked-in processing, it seems it is pretty fundamental and Apple doesn't want to give app developers access to pre-processed data. Just have to hope they see they went to far and back it off a bit in an update, or give us an option in Camera Settings (personally I would prefer more grain and less noise reduction).

I looked at your photos, and yes, that is the same effect I'm seeing in all iPhone 6 photos. Some iPhone 6 shots look excellent, some look terrible, but that over-aggressive noise processing is present to some extent in all of them. It's definitely more noticeable and more annoying in some shots than others, it really just depends on the shot: what kinds of textures are in the scene, the lighting, the focus, what ISO the camera chose for the shot, etc. And how large you view the image. Most of them look good on a small (phone) screen, but you notice the processing more on a larger screen (desktop, tv, print, etc.). Plus, some people are just a lot more sensitive to noticing (me) than others. I'm sure many people don't notice and don't care.

Thanks for taking the time to check out my photos. Your feedback is appreciated and very well written, you should be a writer

Everyone is providing feedback to Apple to ask for NR/sharpening decrease in future updates right?

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

They don't pay attention to these forums.

I think we should start a MR petition to get members to do this. We can get this fixed!

Randy, would you email me a copy of this so I can check the EXIF metadata? It's been stripped out, so I can't see what settings such as ISO are. Thanks. scaptain@tomsguide.com

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Hi, would you email me a full-res copy of the original so I can check the EXIF metadata? It's been stripped out here, so I can't see what settings such as ISO are. Thanks. scaptain@tomsguide.com

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sergiocapitano, I also e-mailed you a couple days ago, no response or feedback though.

 

[Bacong]

these threads are always awkward because people are like "your camera is broken, here's my pics, they look great" and they're never great.

 

[hasanahmad]

these threads are always awkward because people are like "your camera is broken, here's my pics, they look great" and they're never great.

Which one

 

[pjstrrns]

The smudge effect really destroys the look of outdoor scenery like tree. It muddles the details and textures of plants. Looking back over all my old photos take with an iPhone 4, I realized how much "noise" or "grain" there is in them. I think the noise reduction is picking up anything that comes across as noise. This is good in some situations however we should be able to control it. Because it is a huge hand off between clarity and noise reduction.

I have found in my testing that if you dont focus on something closer it applies the smudge over everything. So I think the auto focus might be jumping to something else making your wanted focus very smudgy.

Before people jump on locking in your focus, which cant always be done with kids, this did not effect older iphones. Mainly cause it didnt try to clean up all grain/noise from the picture.

So we have traded the noise/grain for and over all smudge. We should be able to control this because smudge definitely takes away from clarity.

 

[hasanahmad]

What is odd is that any smudge affect in low light is removed if I take a picture from a 3rd party photo app which supports ios 8 like camera+

 

[pjstrrns]

Are you zooming in a lot or something?

The zoom has never looked great on any iPhones, well any phones for that matter.

If you're not then definitely get this replaced, mine takes great photos.

I added a photo I've taken with it - I don't take photos all that often, but was taken in 'fairly' low light conditions and the quality looks pretty great in my opinion (click on the photo for the full quality).

This is what bugs me. How can look so much better than others. That photo is what I would expect out of the camera not the smudge seen on the bird photo. So is it a specific device issue? Is it a setting issue? Or did you just get lucky or have time to fully compose your shot.

I have seen the smudge on two phones. So just switching it out for a new doesn't seem to be a great answer.

 

[T-Will]

This is mine I think you guys need your phone checked

The smudging is very noticeable in the green patch of grass right in front of the white fence.

 

[soundxplorer]

What is odd is that any smudge affect in low light is removed if I take a picture from a 3rd party photo app which supports ios 8 like camera+

It's because the effect is caused by software processing. The Apple camera app isn't giving you the original un-processed image. I hope they give that option in a software update.

 

[hasanahmad]

The smudging is very noticeable in the green patch of grass right in front of the white fence.

When cropped

 

[T-Will]

When cropped

Yes, when viewed at 100%, and this is what we are talking about. The 5 and 5s don't appear like this.

 

[HiRez]

Everyone is providing feedback to Apple to ask for NR/sharpening decrease in future updates right?

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

I submitted mine with the following text (unfortunately there is a fairly short character limit, and no attachments are allowed):

In iPhone 6/ 6 Plus photos, the camera noise reduction processing applied is very high, much higher than any previous iPhone. While it does reduce sensor noise ("grain"), it also leads to classic over-aggressive noise reduction artifacts that make photos look like a Monet painting, where local pixel groups are smeared (averaged), leading to same-color "blobs" and a loss of fine detail, such as in cement texture and foliage, and blotchy skin tones.

Please back off the iPhone 6/ 6 Plus camera noise reduction to a more "normal" level, or better yet give users a Camera Settings option (5-step slider?) to adjust the amount, preferably including a "none" setting (NR can always be done in post-processing).

iPhone camera enthusiasts around the world, including myself, will thank you!

 

[Macshroomer]

these threads are always awkward because people are like "your camera is broken, here's my pics, they look great" and they're never great.

Yeah, pretty funny. I mean look at this average happy-snap I took this morning while my 4x5 was setup with infrared and Velvia film just *killing* it. Ironically enough, this will be the last photo I take with my iPhone 5, the 6 is on the truck out for delivery....

 

[MrXiro]

That's because phone photos especially In lower light are not meant to be blown up to 2600x3000 resolution. They take photos with that resolution but how many iphone photos are blown up to that resolution especially low light. If someone really wants to take pictures which are meant to take blown up pictures as prints then get a compact slr or dslr with minimum of 22 mpixel

When you are cropping it up to that point you are assuming the result is what you expect In a 22 megapixel dedicated camera

The cropped portion is also something which is very far away and likely to be smudged. The issue is when there is smudge on objects nearby or not in low light

As I said this is fine but that doesn't negate the matter that the OPs statement is true. There is bad smudging that isn't proper Bokeh. These aren't meant to be printed but the smudging was not this bad previously in my memory.

FYI the bird pictures I took above was with Camera+.

 

[hasanahmad]

Yes, when viewed at 100%, and this is what we are talking about. The 5 and 5s don't appear like this.

Actually they do.

5s

6

5S

6