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Apple Acknowledges iPhone 5 Camera Flaw
An anonymous reader writes "Many iPhone 5 users are complaining that its camera is adding a purple flare to their photos. Speculation is that it's caused by the new sapphire lens cover that Apple touted as 'thinner and more durable than standard glass with the ability to provide crystal clear images.' Apple's response to those who've complained? 'The purple flare in the image provided is considered normal behavior for iPhone 5's camera.'"
Your colour perception is incorrectly calibrated!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Somebody is finally channeling their inner Steve Jobs. "You're taking the pictures wrong!"
They are holding it wrong.
Apple's back, baby! I was worried for a moment with that "our map app sucks use someone else's till ours is better." But here is the perfect Apple response. Oh, don't like the purple flare in your pictures? Hey, bitch, that's what real life looks like. You should thank us for providing you with a way to see the world as it actually is. The only reason you don't see the purple flare normally is because you're a terrible person. Here at Apple we are very concerned with our customer. Noblesse oblige and all that.
You're holding it wrong, you want to get lost, these pictures should be that colour, wifi connections should use your wireless bandwidth, battery life is supposed to be that poor if you use it (especially for facebook), those scratches are normal out of the case, this new connector is far better than the old one and adapters are the best you can get. best iPhone ever.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
The camera is capturing octarine glow! If you don't like it buy an inferior camera uncapable of this magnificent feat!
that returning a defective phone is also considered normal behaviour.
I've been an Apple fan of its peripheral devices for a few years now. I got in on the original Iphone and ever since then have bought quite a few of the products that Apple puts out. The problem in almost all of their launches is that they have initial problems, clean them up, and then things work out great for those who like their products. The only real part of the problem is that people want the next thing right now rather than waiting a month or so and figuring out if the device is everything they hoped it would be. Because of that, I don't really have a lot of sympathy for buyers until after the warming period has ended. I'll probably buy an Iphone 5 myself, but I'll buy it AFTER they've worked out the kinks, making it the phone I want rather than the phone that I MUST HAVE.
Sarbonn's blog: http://www.sarbonn.com/blog
Wow,
We never did see this coming, They build a cheap phone(y) (what was it again, 180 dollar to build?), sell it for triple the price and as usual everyone camps out at the iChurch to buy it. Sorry but you deserve to be cheated! Only drawback is that apple gets so much money.
Now buy a paper map to point you at the iSun, the big purple customer experience in the sky, so high you think it is Steve looking out over you, his sheep. /rant mode off, sorry, bad hair day ^^
Message from god, Please logoff, rebooting the Universe
Antennagate: Such a non-issue that they had to give every single person a case.
The iPhone4 didn't do this. It took great photos, as good as most consumer-level cameras.
Apple told everybody the camera in the iPhone5 was better. Turns out they messed up and it isn't. They're being held responsible for their claims, why does that surprise you?
No sig today...
The purple flare in the image provided is considered normal behavior for our flawed iPhone 5 camera design.
Say what you want about poor quality of hardware, software, and customer service, there can be no doubt that Apple's marketing department is the best on the planet. Apple marketing people have truly identified their market and successfully targeted them like no one else in history.
The GOP should have hired a bunch of Apple marketing people to run the Romney campaign- they've proven they can sell flawed products over and over.
Exactly this. I bought my wife an iPhone 4s to replace...her camera. Cell Phone Cameras are getting firmly in the range of "Good Enough", and DSLRs are big and heavy.
But people on't buy a phone to take high end pictures, just a simple point and shoot to 'capture the moment' (was that someones slogan?)
I wonder if this is common across all iPhone 5 cameras or just a particular batch
Watch those corners
Camera review site (known for not being slanted in their reviews) to the iPhone 5 for an initial review (longer one comparing to other phones will come later) and dedicated a whole page analyzing the flare issue. http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6867454450/quick-review-apple-iphone-5-camera Here's their analysis of the flare issue: "Really, our advice is not to worry. Just do what you should do anyway, and avoid putting bright lights near the edge of the frame when shooting." Their final conclusion on the 5's camera: "The iPhone 5 is a fine mobile device, with an excellent camera. In qualititative terms it's not the best camera out there, and nor is it the best camera on a smartphone (the Nokia 808 has that honor, for now) but it offers satisfying image quality, some neat functions like auto panorama and HDR mode, and - crucially - it is supremely easy to use. It isn't much better than the iPhone 4S, as far as its photographic performance is concerned, but it isn't any worse (notwithstanding a somewhat more noticeable propensity towards lens flare). When manufacturers employ pixel-binning to achieve higher ISO settings we don't normally celebrate the fact, but in the case of the iPhone 5, it gives you greater flexibility in poor light (i.e., you might actually get a picture now, where you just wouldn't with the iPhone 4S) and the drop in quality is unnoticeable when the images are used for sharing/web display."
Everyone knows that phones really suck at being cameras.
The iPhone5 is obviously best, because it sucks the most at taking photos.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
And your computer is made to crunch numbers, stop getting on Slashdot with it.
When you buy a multi-function device, you expect all of its advertised functions to work as close to expected as possible. And the camera is one of the iPhone's big advertised functions. If you want a phone to be a phone, get the $20 Tracfone special. If you want a multifunction device that includes a phone, then you get a smartphone.
http://www.itproportal.com/2012/10/01/purple-flare-test-iphone-5-vs-samsung-galaxy-s-iii-vs-htc-one-s/
Bottom line: The latest and greatest iPhone 5 was clearly the worst offender of the bunch.
and instagram will make a filter that adds a purple flar to your images so the hipsters who are too poor for an iphone 5 can get in on the action.
I don't think he expected that, but also he probably didn't assume that he would be prevented from taking perfectly normal pictures with the iPhone 5, pictures that was quite easy to take with the iPhone 4. It's not like its impossible to take decent photos with the iPhone. Well, the 4s at least.
Looking forward to the new Nokia
In 1986, James Doohan demonstrated a slight purple flare when transporting live sea creatures into/out of transparent aluminum (sapphire) aquariums.
Or with software color correction, like they already have in Aperture and iPhoto.
I see a software update coming that will detect the lens flare, and correct it out.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The only conclusion logically possible is that he's only had one smartphone in the past 8 years, and it was one of those flawed iPhones.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Every optical element shows some sort of dispersion. "Simply" to control when you have the space (like in objectives of real cameras, microscopes or binoculars) but not so easy when your optical element is a simple plate with parallel faces (like a protective glass cover) or a tiny lens. Combine a tiny lens with a tiny CCD and you're out of luck when you hit a difficult to control lighting situation. 8 MP on smartphone "cameras" with tiny optics and tiny CCD-chips is a waste of storage space anyway. You can't get the required optical resolution. Simple physics.
Camera review site (known for not being slanted in their reviews) to the iPhone 5 for an initial review (longer one comparing to other phones will come later) and dedicated a whole page analyzing the flare issue.
http://www.dpreview.com/articles/6867454450/quick-review-apple-iphone-5-camera
Here's their analysis of the flare issue:
"Really, our advice is not to worry. Just do what you should do anyway, and avoid putting bright lights near the edge of the frame when shooting."
Their final conclusion on the 5's camera:
"The iPhone 5 is a fine mobile device, with an excellent camera. In qualititative terms it's not the best camera out there, and nor is it the best camera on a smartphone (the Nokia 808 has that honor, for now) but it offers satisfying image quality, some neat functions like auto panorama and HDR mode, and - crucially - it is supremely easy to use. It isn't much better than the iPhone 4S, as far as its photographic performance is concerned, but it isn't any worse (notwithstanding a somewhat more noticeable propensity towards lens flare). When manufacturers employ pixel-binning to achieve higher ISO settings we don't normally celebrate the fact, but in the case of the iPhone 5, it gives you greater flexibility in poor light (i.e., you might actually get a picture now, where you just wouldn't with the iPhone 4S) and the drop in quality is unnoticeable when the images are used for sharing/web display."
Thanks for posting this link. The DPreview camera review is what should have been posted than the usual Gizmodo anti-apple trolling to generate page views...
The iPhone 5 is the Walmart greeter of smartphones. It doesn't see very well and gives terrible directions.
It is not a flaw with the iPhone camera but rather a limitation of the optics of the camera lens that causes chromatic aberration. This is a well-known phenomenon that is is most prevalent in high contrast situations with any camera (unless you spend $$$ for a high-end lens). Taking a picture with the sun high overhead against a dark background is an excellent way to highlight chromatic aberration. The advice from Apple Support is correct in that the user of camera should recompose their picture rather than stir up controversy with blog posts. You'll also note that the pictures on the link are similar but not framed quite identically, which exacerbates to chromatic aberration. And I won't even get into the ridiculous comparison of the fixed focal length iPhone cameras with a professional level Nikon D300.
For a more detailed description and how to avoid it (or fix it - perhaps with iPhoto which is likely installed on your iPhone)
http://www.tutorial9.net/tutorials/photography-tutorials/correcting-and-preventing-chromatic-aberration/
I am a rich iPhone 5 geared up VIP, my photos have a noble purple sapphire haze you pitiful /. geek.
I remember that, as a VAX/VMS Systems Manager in the 1980s, this was a fairly pervasive meme.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
If we're channelling sir TP, let me remind you that only wizards can see octarine. Perhaps that's it! Apple didn't employ any wizard testers.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Every smartphone allowed you to short circuit two antenna tuned to work at different frequencies? Oh, you bought Steve Jobs' bad excuse, and is confounding antennagate, the problem caused Apple insistence on letting designers engineer the antenna, with the problem of the human body being a good absorber for cell phone radiation, which is experienced by every phone. Man, that really was a low point for Jobs, talking about a completely unrelated issue, and hoping that people didn't caught on. It seems to have worked in some cases.
The only reason I would buy an iPhone is if I could run a nuclear power plant with it. My compost heap already makes the biological weapons, they're called "flies".
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Ah, this made me think of this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/incredible_photos I do use my phone to snap pics when I am out and about, but I also have a Canon 5D with an array of L series lenses. I do not expect my phone to be my vacation picture taker.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
"The unintended acceleration in the car provided is considered normal behavior for Toyota's automobiles," a Toyota executive said.
They still screwed up the outdoor one. One photo is taken at least several minutes after the other.
It looks like Apple traded a bit of flare resistance in challenging photographic conditions for other benefits - a scratch proof lens being not the least of them. Personally, I'd much rather have a sapphire lens cover for my cell phone camera than the ability to take slightly less shitty pictures in shitty conditions.
To our customers,
At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new sapphire lens camera last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make the camera better.
We launched an integrated camera initially with the first version of the iPhone. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with an even better camera including features such as a built-in flash and a sapphire lens. In order to do this, we had to create a new camera from the ground up.
There are already more than 5 million iPhones with the new camera, and more joining us every day. In just over a week, iPhone users with the new camera have already taken half a billion photos. The more our customers use the camera the more they will become accustomed to the new color balance. We greatly appreciate all of the feedback we have received from you.
While we can't really fix this, you can try alternatives by purchasing an additional camera from your local electronics store, Best Buy, Sony, Canon, Fuji, or use the front camera which doesn't have these issues.
Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until Maps lives up to the same incredibly high standard.
Tim Cook
Apple’s CEO
The iPhone4 didn't do this.
The iPhone 4S did. Not sure about the iPhone 4.
http://5.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/iphone-5-haze-on-the-4s.jpg
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/26/the-iphone-5s-camera-suffering-purple-haze-flaw-not-fast/
And yet it went without comment before. Why? It's a damn good camera for a phone, but it's not a DSLR. It's impossible to have DSLR level photography from phone that's 7.6 mm thick.
Here are photo comparisons with the 4s that do show the 4s with purple fringing.
http://5.mshcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/iphone-5-haze-on-the-4s.jpg [mshcdn.com]
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/09/26/the-iphone-5s-camera-suffering-purple-haze-flaw-not-fast/ [thenextweb.com]
Note that camera angle to light source is critical, to get the effect to show up on either phone. In your example comparison, if the photographer tried a bit more he could probably have found the angle to make the purple flare show on the 4S too.
This is a lot of fuss about nothing. But we're used to that with iPhone stories. No other phone gets this level of close examination for flaws. Not enough people care about other phones.
look at the branch hanging down from the tree on the right. In the left picture, it is above the top of the "hill", on the left picture it is above the tree, just to the left of the top of the "hill". This shift is perspective means that the cameraman on the left is standing further to the left, and turning the camera more toward the right, that is toward the sun. While I own a GS3, and find it far superior in almost every way to my old iphone, I have to say that this comparison is not fair. I'm not saying that there is not a problem with the lens, that kind of flare is most definitely a problem but, but if we are going to bitch and complain, lets at least back it up with fair examples. There are more than enough of them
The DPreview camera review is what should have been posted than the usual Gizmodo anti-apple trolling to generate page views...
And yet the unbiased and very informative post by sasparillascott still got some down mods. The anti-Apple hysteria has closed the minds of many to rational discussion of facts.
Haven't Apple make any test, before putting the iP5 on the shelves?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
No, other cameras do not "manage it fine". I've got $3,000 lenses, and if you catch a bright source at the wrong angle, you get flare.
Apple Acknowledges iPhone 5 Camera Flaw
Mike: Joe beats his wife! OMG!
Carl: Joe, why did you beat your wife?
Joe: I did not beat my wife.
Mike: Joe acknowledges beating his wife!
Nah, this is now "rearrange nature." If the sun is in your way. move it. Want to take a picture of your child running in the sprinklers on a sunny day? well that's a moment that cannot be captured.
And the Apple fanboys say if you don't want a camera that adds purple flares (all cameras apparently do this) then get a professional level Nikon D300. Those are your only choices so quit complaining that you didn't get the professional level Nikon D300.
Now, my iPod Touch and Droid phone don't add purple flare. Obviously, these products are either 1) inferior garbage that can't capture the true color spectrum or 2) actually professional level Nikon D300's in disguise.
Compare the two pictures taken. With the 4 they had the sun edging right up next to the frame but not IN the frame. Then with the 5 they actually had a bit of the sun IN the frame. It's no wonder the 5 got a huge amount of lens flare. It's very difficult to include the sun in a picture and not get a nasty flare, especially on an edge like that. Compare the position of the grey sidewalk and the tree tops in the two pictures too... the shots were placed and zoomed differently. Complete loss of control on other variables in the comparison.
The important issue here has been the color of the flare - the 4's was more white and the 5's is more purple. But that "example" is completely misleading due to important other differences between the two shots. But I suppose that's just "sensational journalism" at work.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I'm not surprised that there will be lens flare when having a bright source like the sun near the frame. This is why we have lens hoods. I wonder if we would have the same flare if we angled the phone away from the sun by a very little and use our hand as a sun shade?
I don't care if its Apple or Samsung. When you have a tiny lens flush with the camera body and almost no blockage of off axis light sources you are bound to have lens flare. The customer support letter giving advice to angle the camera away from a bright light source is good advice for any phone camera.
Another Gizmodo troll article.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
It's a lens flare. Your photo was ruined by you pointing your camera at a very bright light source. Any other camera would've also ruined your picture with a lens flare, just not a purple one. Ruined with purple or ruined without purple, your photo is still ruined because you suck at photography.
-- My hovercraft is full of eels.
Hi can only imagine how this is going to influence the next round of Apple vs Samsung's lawyers round
...
SL: your Honor, pictures taken with our SG3 are way crappier than what a picture would like like with an iPhone, therefore we did not infringe
AL: wrong ! the SG3 pictures totally put the iPhone 5 ones into shame, which prove they didn't have time to copy the iPhone 5 flare and had to resort to copy the superior older iPhone 4 design
SL:I disagree, the purple flare makes the pic stand appart in a way we couldn't dream of with our crappy products (but we have been working on a green flare technology since well before the purple flare was demoed so don't miss the SG4)
AL: Puh ! I can't tell appart my dog from my wife when I shoot them together with my iPhone5 and when I ask Apple Map to guide me to somewhere to print it, it leads me to the wrong *continent* I wish I had an SG3
SL: what ? you can ask your phone things ? the multitouch is so screwed on the SG2 I totally gave up on getting any meaningful output from my gestures and am actually *scared* about using voice, God do I miss my iPhone...
Listen, people can get a smart phone anywhere, okay? They come to Apple for the style and the attitude. Okay? That's what the purple flair's about. It's about fun.
I guess the folks that defined dark as the new light (How many Microsoft engineers dues it take to change a light bulb? None: they just define dark as the new standard) are happy working at Apple now.
...we say hardware-enabled Instagram filter.
If you don't want flare, don't shoot into the sun.
This is a pretty basic principle for all lenses everywhere. It is not at all specific to the iPhone 5 lens.
...for using their trademark "It's not a bug, it's a feature" problem-solving method.
Yes it does
Yes, but is the flare purple?
Who cares if it's purple? You've completely blown out that portion of the picture anyway. If you think that you've got an award winning photo otherwise (because you've been off your antipsychotic meds for a week), you can just desaturate that color locally in GIMP / Photoshop / Paint.Net or whatever and pretend you did it all on purpose.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You should get your sarcasm meter calibrated a bit more often.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!