I’m embarrassed to even show other people the results of my phone camera, and the brighter the light the picture is taken in - the more egregious the result will be.

Why is this an always-on, non optional feature? It looks TERRIBLE, and to add even more insult to injury it usually flashes the original unaltered photo at you briefly before auto applying those ridiculous effects. When you flip through Live Photos, the photo looks normal for a moment (when it’s playing the quick live animation) and then suddenly turns into a hyper exposed mess. I took a video of this in action: https://imgur.com/gallery/lPFnr9X

People look washed out and colors look like someone turned the saturation on my display waaaaay past what it should be. My picture mode is on standard and every other setting is on default. This should not be this difficult, and I shouldn’t have to go pay for some third party phone camera to get rid of the stupid effect.

I found a post of someone else having the same issue:

https://reddit.com/r/shittyHDR/comments/vcg7nh/auto_hdr_on_iphone/

I always came back home to iPhone for the ease of taking and sharing great pictures, but now I’m honestly reconsidering switching for my next phone. Especially since people have been complaining about this for a year and Apple just doesn’t give a shit that it’s flagship product is totally gimped with shitty picture quality.

———-

Update: I turned off the “Apply HDR” feature under Settings -> Photos and took some test shots and it doesn’t seem to be doing it for new shots. Can’t take it off of old photos though, which is obnoxious. I hope this prevents it for future photos tho, and such a dumb feature should be off by default. I will also try turning off Live Photos.

..sucksss but mostly with selfies and mirror pics. I’ve had this phone for the past year and every time I take a picture or selfie, it makes me look washed out or like a watercolor painting with the auto editing. Has anyone been able to fix this?? I’m really debating on getting a newer phone (even thought about downgrading) but I feel like the issue will still be present. Helppp

Edit: I must say, nature pics and other types of photography/ videography on this phone are great, just struggling with the auto-enhance that takes place on human subjects….

Edit: If you can’t relate or help then why are you here? Everyone saying “it’s just you” is hilarious..but not helpful at all…

it’s mostly due to the tele-lens

I always loved the 52mm equivalent on my 8+, XS Max and 11 Pro Max cause, it gives me a similar f.o.v. than the lensesd i use the most often on my different cameras. But now it’s a 77mm and it’s just too long to take almost every type of photos. Too long to shoot people, too long for animals, too long for landscape and architecture. the only time were i’ve been happy with this longer lens is the few times where i actually wished it was way longer like for filming the weird drone that was going around my building the other day.

But when i subjectively hate this 77mm, it’s also objectively bad, like, it’s very poor in low light and apple are not confident in it, so with most apps, like the default one, if you try zoomig 3x there’s like 75% chances it won’t actually use the tele lens, but instead digitally zoom on the main lens reducing it’s resolution to barely better than 1 megapixel (720p pictures and videos basically)

I’ve spoken with apple about it on the phone, spent hours trying to diagnose my iPhone of not behaving like it should but, the sad truth is that, my iPhone does totally behave as planned by apple. And i’m mad.

My partner still has his 11 Pro Max, and now everytime we go out together and i see a picture than could be taken i borrow his iPhone then airdrop myself the picture.

Also ! The main lens, has a much much bigger sensor, but the lens is actually much worse. In most situations i do take better photos with the main lens with the 13 Pro Max than the 11 Pro Max, but there are some situations, especially closer to the subject and in good light conditions, where the 11 Pro Max takes much sharper pictures.

And globally i also find the 13 Pro Max to use too much noise reduction and especially way too much Sharpening but that can be fixed by shooting RAW.

Anyway, anybody noticed apple not going the right decision with this iPhone ? I get that most of you will disagree with me. It’s okay.

I don’t think the 13 pro max is actually bad, i think for some (maybe even most) people it’s the best iPhone. But it’s not for me, and i really want to get back on the 11 Pro Max and seriously hope apple Brings back the "52mm or so" lens with the next iPhone.

Have a nice day everyone !

hi guys! i currently have a samsung a53 5g and was thinking about switching to an iphone 13. have never tried apple products in my life. a phone with a good camera is very important to me, and i really hate how my samsung oversharpens videos as well as the stabilization setting sometimes making things look wonky. when i turn off stabilization, i hate how wobbly it is so there's no winning. i've been surfing reddit and saw people mentioning how bad the iphone 13 camera is... should i stay away from the 13 if i'm picky about photo/video quality?

edit: thank u so much for all the replies! got my iphone 13 and im really enjoying it. so glad i made the switch

The front camera (even the back one) of my iphone takes very poor quality photos, especially at night. I already made sure to deactivate the night mode but the photos are edited automatically and it adds brightness, contrast and grain, and it looks super blured. I have seen a lot of comments from people who think the same as me, but I have not seen any solution. It also happens in apps like WhatsApp or Instagram.

How do I stop the photos from editing automatically?

Even the photos looked better on my old XR, i’m considering returning it back :S

I got this phone in September 2023, specifically for the camera and it worked well then 😭 But I swear it just kept declining and it’s so bad recently. It randomly decides when it wants to be blurred or not. Concerts I get cause of the light, but then that doesn’t affect my friends phones. I think it keeps switching lenses, but idk how to stop that. The first two photos are how my videos always start of and if I do enough zooming in and out it can switch to the right camera and look good - 3rd pic. But I want it to look like that all the time and it used to 😭 and now the zooming in and out doesn’t even help always anymore. The last pic is in regular lighting not a concert. It affects all my photos of the light isn’t perfect. I hate it, and it wasn’t always like this. Is there anything I can do to fix it or does anyone know any causes of it?

First of all, let me clarify this is not a troll or bait post, I am genuinely concerned about the photos I've seen/my own sanity at this point.

I've been thinking of switching to the iPhone 13 ever since it was announced. I am currently using a three year old Samsung Galaxy S9 pretty much on its last leg, and I've always been an Android user, but now I'd like to try out iOS since I can finally afford an iPhone (I'm not in the US, so there were no real trade-in deals here). I also love the size, since the 13 Pro has the same height as my current phone, and that's pretty much the maximum I can comfortably balance/hold with one hand (yep, I have tiny hands).

My phone is my main (well, only) camera device, and I'm mostly taking pictures of:

• My two cats (so indoor photos with preferable short shutter time)

• Nature photos of forests and mountains from my hikes

• Photos from sightseeing walks (so lots of buildings with small details)

However, based on the real life photos from various iPhone 13 Pro users, the camera is... well, not that convincing. A lot of the photos posted on r/iPhoneography and other forums are blurry or out of focus, as if the photographer didn't wait for the camera app to fully finish capturing the image, or were moving while taking the photo, or something like that.

Is the camera app really this bad at identifying the main focus, or are the users lacking the skills? Or does it take that long to capture and process the image that a point-and-shoot approach will lead to blurry/out of focus pictures? Or have I just subconsciously fallen into the mistake of pixel peeping?

Please help me convince myself that the camera is not that bad, and the change would be worth it (the other option would be to wait for the S22 that's rumored to come out around February and will have almost the exact same size as the 13 Pro, but I'm not sure I can deal with my current phone's problems for another 2-3 months).

Edit: Thanks for all the answers, apologies for not answering to all of them. I am going to do some more research, but I might actually give it a try and sell it if I'm not satisfied with the results.

I just switched from a google pixel 6 to iPhone 13. I absolutely hate the camera on this phone. It over sharpens skin while flattening it aswell. I’ve already turned off the hdr setting. I think if I can’t figure out the camera I’m going to return it and get another pixel.

I have had the iphone 13 pro for a couple of months now, coming from galaxy s20 and it amazes me how bad the camera quality is on the iphone compared with the s20.

Showing an image taking with the iphone on a normal monitor just hurt my eyes and god forbid zooming in on the image.

Before switching I read/saw a lot of reviews where images from the iphone and s20 was compared and the results from all of these reviews was that the different was not noticeable.

So question, is it just me doing something wrong or is the quality just so bad on the iphone i'm beyond disappointed?