Low light grain

MrRJ

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I'm pretty impressed with the quality of the camera in well lit situations, but I'm pretty unimpressed with the quality and grain in low light. I'm also getting a lot of unfocused photos - seems the camera is having trouble focusing - even in good lighting.

Am I missing something? My 5s camera was consistently good...
 

Just_Me_D

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I don't know, but hopefully someone who has an iPhone 6S will reply soon.
 

Shanicenicolle

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I found that low light situations have always sucked on my iPhones (since the 4)

Edit: no issue with focus though. Do you tap to focus your subject?
 

Spencerdl

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Maybe it's me but when I'm in low light conditions I use the FLASH...I do believe thats why it's there. Just my .02 cents
Focus is pretty good on my 6s Plus.
 

koreankitty

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Yes, its you. The flash only serves a purpose in a percentage of low light situations. When taking scenic pics, distance, pics, etc in low light...a flash will be useless. The small size of the pixels in the new 12mp camera do not allow enough natural lighting to avoid the grainy pics in low light. Wasn't much better in previous cameras either. This is nothing new.
 

Spencerdl

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Yes, its you. The flash only serves a purpose in a percentage of low light situations. When taking scenic pics, distance, pics, etc in low light...a flash will be useless. The small size of the pixels in the new 12mp camera do not allow enough natural lighting to avoid the grainy pics in low light. Wasn't much better in previous cameras either. This is nothing new.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.
 

Furt

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i use Hyrda's low light mode for non-moving subjects and lightroom to remove grain from moving shots. not much else I can do with a smartphone camera. to get better low light photos, a better camera is the only real remedy.
 

Spencerdl

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Yes, its you. The flash only serves a purpose in a percentage of low light situations. When taking scenic pics, distance, pics, etc in low light...a flash will be useless. The small size of the pixels in the new 12mp camera do not allow enough natural lighting to avoid the grainy pics in low light. Wasn't much better in previous cameras either. This is nothing new.

Welcome to iMore...Enjoy the site
 

knotsure

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Actually I use the flash as well. And as far as low light pictures at a distance I can't remember ever having a smartphone , or any digital camera that gives great pictures, I don't own a dslr camera so I can't speak on that.
 

MrRJ

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I took some photos last night that weren't long distance and whilst it wasn't particularly well lit, there was light from 2 different sources, so the room wasn't really dark or low light. I got some awful shots...

I don't remember the 5s being as bad.
 

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MrRJ

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https://m.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2rx7s7/anyone_know_why_pictures_taken_on_my_iphone_6/

It is a known problem which wasn't present at older iOS versions/hw. I also noticed heavy grain/watercolor effect on mediocre light photos. Darker pictures comes out with less grain.

Interesting. I've just looked back through my photos - I have photos taken with the 5s in lower light conditions that look tons better than those with my 6s. Some of the photos I've taken are really pretty bad and certainly not what is call low light!

So this seems to be something in current versions of iOS?
 

Ledsteplin

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I haven't noticed any poor low light pics with my 6s Plus. But I use Cortex Cam for most low light pics. Works great. Hydra is also good.
 
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MrRJ

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If it's that bad, you might take it to the Genius Bar and let them check it out.

I've just had an appointment at an Apple Store and I've been told that it's normal. I commented that the photos my old 5s had taken were clearly sharper with less grain in anything but very well lit scenes but they said they'd not heard anything like it before and the results I have are comparable to what they'd expect.

So, I deduce from this that the camera is a step down in terms of low light photography. As mentioned before, I hope it's a software issue that can be fixed...
 

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