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iPhone 15 Pro Max iPhone 15 pro max photos are not great
- Thread starter dylanlewis2000
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Which tip solved the problem for you (in case you had issues some people described in this thread)?
This is very important and I would like @ToddH to weigh in as well. I am just now getting to where I can dive into the videos Todd shared and I need to re-read both replies as they hold a lot of information. I have zero doubts that what Todd shared will make me a better photographer. The problem is, less than 10% of my photos are staged. Not sure if that is the right word, but basically 90% of my shots are unplanned, whip out my phone, quickly wipe the lenses, get the camera app open, tap to focus/exposure, steady hands, snap. I do those steps every single time and as quickly as possible. This is different from, say, when I am videotaping a performance where I have time to dial in settings, make adjustments, and even think ahead. So, most of the time I am trying to do a true point-and-shoot capture and the results I am getting are subpar when not in perfect lighting (sometimes even perfect lighting I get photos where the focus is questionable). Todd, this is where I am seeing the problems I listed out above, if that helps at all.
I’ve had a 15 Pro Max for nearly a month now and the camera system is fantastic imo. No complaints from me and have captured some amazing shots. Found myself using the new 5x lens much more than I thought I would compared to the previous 3x, especially for portraits and some nice landscape perspectives.
Sounds pretty much the same what I'm experiencing with mine. Most of photos I take are unplanned where I just quickly pull out my phone to capture a moment and mostly indoors with not so good lighting. This was much much less issue with my previous iPhones like 12 Pro.
Yeah that helps… however quickly pulling out your iPhone and quickly getting a photo without composing first and making adjustments to the exposure etc will indeed give you lame results sometimes. The same applies to a DSLR. Quickly take it out without making any adjustments and you’ll most likely end up with an over exposed and out of focus shot depending on the speed of your capture, that is. I’d get the same results if I quickly grabbed a shot without any composure. I’d delete it LOL. I don’t think any of us will get that many keepers by quickly pressing the shutter and hoping for the best. Shooting in ProRAW will improve my chances of photo recovery. You’ll probably see motion blur, grainy images, and blown highlights. This is why photography requires patience. Of course once everyone gets completely comfortable with their iPhone camera and masters the settings without thinking about them (comes second nature), then your photos will improve dramatically.
Whenever I evaluate a scene before I take a photo, I look to see how much light is exposed on the subject, if I need to drop my exposure down (EV) or raise it up before taking the shot. When shooting indoors, the scene may have a lot of dark colors (brown, back, dark neutrals), the cameras exposure meter is going to brighten that scene up probably by 1 stop or more. I’ll counter that by setting a -1 EV so my dark colors look rich & not over exposed. This quick evolution just comes natural to me because I’ve learned to think like my camera. Yes I realize many of you aren’t seasoned photographers, some of you are just learning, I get that. Learning how a camera works can be overwhelming at times, frustration sets in and unfortunately at this point, the camera gets blamed. The camera is just a tool. Leaning it takes time just like any other skill. I’d suck at fishing, then I’ll blame the rod & reel! Won’t catch fish.. must be a bad rod / reel. My advice is practice.
If I’m not using a third party app for photography, I have my action button set to open the camera for quick access. Then I’ll quickly, or take my time, and tap to focus and adjust EV. Taping to focus on the iPhone engages the cameras spot meter mode which measures only what’s in the focus box. Spot metering accounts for approximately 5% of the image area. Letting the iPhone focus on its own without tap to focus uses matrix metering. Matrix metering evaluates the entire scene and takes an average EV for the photo. This results in a better exposed image. Letting the camera focus automatically will focus on the closest subject to you because the camera uses continuous AF (auto focus). Taping the screen to force the camera to focus where you want & briefly locks the focus and exposure. Further adjustments are made from here to get the photo that you want. It’s a live image on the screen, what you see is what you get. We aren’t blindly shooting like some of us did when using film cameras back in the day..
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The challenge I face is that majority of my photos are of a 2 year old and 2 dogs. The cute moments can last mere seconds and the chance of movement is high. My gripe is that in my experience with the 11 and this 15PM, the photos resulting from the point and shoot scenario I described are very similar with the 11 at times edging out the 15PM. Main gripe being the smoothing.
See if you notice in this as I’m not sure if it’ll translate via this upload. I tapped the middle of the bowl to focus and took the photo. If you look closely, as it gets near the upper rim of the bowl, it gets blurry.
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Yes that is very normal. Getting a good clean shot of children and pets with any camera is a challenge because you’ll need a lot of light and a very high shutter speed to stop the action, freeze the subject so everything is in sharp focus. Using the iPhone default camera, you have no control of any of that, basically does everything for you. And someways it does things that you don’t want it to do because you can’t control. This is where third-party apps come in handy at times.
As for the bowl, That is called a shallow depth of field. Since the iPhone camera has an f/1.8 aperture, close objects like the food in your bowl is in focus & the rim of the bowl in the background is not. The iPhone camera does not have an iris to control the depth of field like a DSLR lens has. If you wanted to get everything in focus of that same bowl with a DSLR camera, you’d have to stop the lens down to probably F/11 or f/16 to get everything sharp and a tripod is most likely going to be required because stopping down a camera lens like that let’s in a lot less light. It’s the equivalent of using a f/1.8 DSLR lens wide open and focusing on the food in the center of your bowl from the same distance. You would get the exact same effect because of that shallow depth of field. If you notice the front edge of the bowl is in more focus than the backside of the bowl because the backside of the bowl is further away from your camera lens. This photo was taken from a slight angle instead of directly overhead. When you’re that close to a subject, parts of that subject that are closest to the camera will be in sharp focus while the rest of it naturally falls off out of focus beyond that point. Nothing you can do about it because the iPhone camera is always shot or used wide open. If the iPhone camera had a adjustable iris, this is what you would expect to get if you could adjust it.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the camera at all, that’s just the nature of shooting a camera lens wide open all the time. The closer you are to your subject, objects in the distance behind what you focus on will naturally be out of focus. Perfectly normal. Go online and look up photography depth of field, and it will explain a lot for you.
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I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to be so thorough and informative. It really does mean a lot.
Not a problem at all. Photography is my passion and I enjoy helping others get better photos. I’m glad that I could help if you need anything else, just ask.
I just finished the first video and 🤯
It’s almost embarrassing the number of things I learned and a number of them are legit game changes. I’m excited to start using the things I learned, it’s going to be kinda fun. Thanks again!!
If you come across any other videos that you find valuable by all means please share. I’ve watched more than a few but combined they didn’t teach me what this one did.
I’ll look for more videos. If you like astronomy, then check out Shayne’s YouTube. He has a lot of mobile photography night and day videos. Watch this one
I took these on the way home this evening. Pulled over on the side of the road.
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Pretty much the same situation here, except I'm mostly taking photos of my 2 cats. These moments to get a photo I want is very short and must be taken freehand, no time to use tripod. I've tried these typical hit the object on the iPhone screen I want to be focused and sometimes it works but very rarely. Focus often seems to pick up point that is not what I wanted to in focus and also I think processing causes that it blurs faces even when it actually used the focus point I wanted but that can be avoided using RAW.This issue was much rarer in 12 Pro, it was rather easy to get photos with correct focus point.
Best results I have gotten so far are using 5x lens but it needs long distance to object and lots of light. I mean typical situation with all room lights on but no natural light 5x lens needs something like ISO 1000 or even higher and that already makes images blurred.
Slight angle causes this already but obviously also 1x lens in 15PM is mostly sharp only in the middle. I've taken some test photos making sure straight angle and then pixel peeping image focus and it blurred in many other parts than middle. For example 12 Pro gives fully focused image corner to corner.
Obviously there are differences in this between units but our both 15 PM are more or less the same.
Then using 2x lens (which is just cropping middle of the 1x lens) then optical sharpness is mainly there but sensor sharpness IMHO is nowhere near the same as in previous model like my 12 Pro with 2x lens and real 12M sensor but I guess that is from 48M sensor in 15PM only has 12M pixels for each color (each pixel is divided in 4 but all 4 are the same color).
Please let me know if you find something in those videos with guide how to use iPhone camera a way to get well focused images with 15PM in those brief cute moments of your pets. I still haven't found anything that would work in these cases.
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The 15 pro series 1x camera has a large sensor compared to the 11 pro and 12 pro. In the 12 pro max, the sensor in this unit is where the size of the 1x camera sensor started to get larger in size. The 15 pro max has a sensor that is 1/2” diagonally. Pretty large for the iPhone. Not sure if the iPhone will ever get a 1” sensor, but it could get close. A larger sensor will pick up more flaws in the optics due to the higher 48mp resolution. The higher the resolution, the more careful you have to be when taking a photo because it’s less forgiving. I noticed this when my Nikon D850 was using a 47mp sensor. If I wasn’t holding the camera steady enough, I saw motion blur often. Never saw this with a 12mp camera.
I’m guessing that the 15 pro series camera at 48mp and 1/2” sensor, needs slightly larger optics with less coma at the edges so the covering power of the lens will produce a sharper image. At f/1.8 the optics are pretty fast and the coma (edge blur) is present as a result. This is visible when shooting subjects up close. The 1x minimum focus distance is 200mm or 8 inches. At f/1.8, the camera has a fairly shallow depth of field. F/2.8 is sharper at the edges, f/4 is sharper still and so on. Take in mind that the camera optics are always wide open without an aperture iris to stop it down to control sharpness and depth of field. Distant shots look great, lots of sharpness and detail at 48mp. The closer you get to a subject, the area closest to the camera will be in focus and beyond that focus point, the focus falls off rapidly and gets blurry. That’s called a shallow depth of field. If you look at a portrait of a person taken with the Canon 85mm f/1.2 from a few feet away and focus is on the eyes, the persons nose, ears, some hair is heavily blurred. Take the same photo at f/1.2 from 10 feet away or more, those blurred areas are now sharp because the shallow depth of field has been greatly reduced. So think about this when you’re taking photos, the camera doesn’t really have an issue, it’s more about using the right technique to get the best results.
I’m guessing that the 15 pro series camera at 48mp and 1/2” sensor, needs slightly larger optics with less coma at the edges so the covering power of the lens will produce a sharper image. At f/1.8 the optics are pretty fast and the coma (edge blur) is present as a result. This is visible when shooting subjects up close. The 1x minimum focus distance is 200mm or 8 inches. At f/1.8, the camera has a fairly shallow depth of field. F/2.8 is sharper at the edges, f/4 is sharper still and so on. Take in mind that the camera optics are always wide open without an aperture iris to stop it down to control sharpness and depth of field. Distant shots look great, lots of sharpness and detail at 48mp. The closer you get to a subject, the area closest to the camera will be in focus and beyond that focus point, the focus falls off rapidly and gets blurry. That’s called a shallow depth of field. If you look at a portrait of a person taken with the Canon 85mm f/1.2 from a few feet away and focus is on the eyes, the persons nose, ears, some hair is heavily blurred. Take the same photo at f/1.2 from 10 feet away or more, those blurred areas are now sharp because the shallow depth of field has been greatly reduced. So think about this when you’re taking photos, the camera doesn’t really have an issue, it’s more about using the right technique to get the best results.
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Is this happening in all situations or only close up? I ask because I decided to disable macro and last night I took a few pics of food I made. It was blurry in the middle but sharp elsewhere. Come to find out, I was within the area where macro would have kicked in. But it didn’t event indicate it was in range. If you’re seeing it with further distances photos or while using macro mode then it wouldn’t be related to my experience.
Hot take but I think that when you want to make a phone more tailored towards professionals you have to sacrifice usuabilty for the more casuals.
That's probably why only the pro models have things like log recording, RAW pictures and ProRES, as a more casual user wouldn't need or even want to have feature that misused could let to poorer video quality.
When Apple decided to increase the sensor size specifically for the pro models it was probably made so people that will make use and know the advantage and disadvantage of bigger sensor and wider aperture will make good use of it.
Maybe nowadays the distinction between the pro and the regular models will be even more obvious as the sensor size continue to get bigger.
EDIT: not saying that only pro can use this features but I we can assume that the regular iPhone user knows close to absolutely nothing about videography and photography
That's probably why only the pro models have things like log recording, RAW pictures and ProRES, as a more casual user wouldn't need or even want to have feature that misused could let to poorer video quality.
When Apple decided to increase the sensor size specifically for the pro models it was probably made so people that will make use and know the advantage and disadvantage of bigger sensor and wider aperture will make good use of it.
Maybe nowadays the distinction between the pro and the regular models will be even more obvious as the sensor size continue to get bigger.
EDIT: not saying that only pro can use this features but I we can assume that the regular iPhone user knows close to absolutely nothing about videography and photography
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If you were using the 1x camera closer than 8 inches then this is why it was blurry. The 1x Camera has a minimum focus distance of 8 inches. Try using the 28mm or 35mm crops from the 1x to get you a little closer if needed.
Jesus Christ these are nuts! I have an iPhone 11 and I feel like I have done all I can with this camera, although a lot of times I take really good pictures, mostly because I just know how to frame a good shot also. When I upgrade I'm sure it will be a noticeable difference in several instances, but if you are just doing everyday shots, probably not so much.
I think this is it. I see this lens issue especially if taking a photo of some detailed flat area and pixel peep different parts of the photo (like taking a photo of carpet or something with detailed pattern that allows you to check optical sharpness well).
I made this mistake in the beginning but I soon learned to avoid going too close to make sure 1x lens was actually used instead macro/0.5x lens and distance was long enough to allow 1x lens it to focus.
Yes, going further away from the object helps but then only small part of sensor is covered by object, very much like using 2x lens (=crop) so it is lacking detail I'm expecting to see (IMHO 15PM 2x lens (crop) photos are not equivalent to photos taken with 12 Pro 2x lens). Please keep in mind I mostly take photos of furry friends (cats) so this is evident in hair detail if using above method to go further away from object.
Also another thing what I see happening is some kind of blurring effect it does to face detail often, just like some kind of filter is post processing face, or focus point is wrong. I guess partly from that focus select square is so large on display you can't really pin point easily because focusing square is practically covering the whole face area of object but you don't know if it is using tip of the nose or ear for actual focus point then.
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All valid points.
To overcome some of these issues, I took a chance and purchased the G-Series lenses from Reeflex. The 2x telephoto is Fantastic!! The 110° wide angle is also very nice. The 2x turns my 1x 24mm into a 48mm with 48mp resolution! External lenses like this really make a big difference in image quality. 24mm at 1x is fairly useless for portrait or product photography. With the lens attached I can still use the 28mm, 35mm crops from the 1x and get closer still.
Link: https://reeflexstore.com/products/g-series-lenses-photo-bundle-telephoto-60mm-wide-angle-18mm
Sandmarc and Moment also make iPhone lenses. So far the Reeflex lenses are the best I’ve used. This is a great review.