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iPhone 14 Pro Max New iPhone 14 Pro Max has a serious issue with autofocus.

GeoStructural

GeoStructural

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 8, 2016
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4,124
Colombia
The new iPhone 14 Pro Max has serious issues with autofocus.

  • It is only 5 days old, no physical damage of any kind.
  • Photos are so blurry they are unusable.
  • Sometimes it will take about 15 seconds for it to reach decent focus, but this is way too long and chances are what I want to capture is long gone by then.
  • Many times the camera is unable to focus AT ALL, even when manually selecting the target with the crosshair.
Here are some examples:

A1D5A91D-4724-43F4-9CFC-CCB56C306C31.jpeg9F680BD1-741F-4CB5-80DA-D0DCE20DAE9C.jpeg

I contacted Apple support and they said I must send it back for inspection, which is so annoying.
 
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This happens only with the rear camera, but it is pervasive in all modes (photo, video, slow-mo, etc.).

I took a photo of document and went my way only to realize later that I could not even read it, it was so blurry.

I have more examples but don’t want to post them for privacy reasons.

I noticed too that only one part of my photos are in focus and most of the edges are super blurry, I get this is nice for artistic reasons but in other contexts I need to capture the whole thing, this is not a portrait machine.
 
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Sorry for the troubles, but for your information what you show above there is not the 14 pro max, but the 14 Plus.
 

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3Rock said:
Sorry for the troubles, but for your information what you show above there is not the 14 pro max, but the 14 Plus.
Click to expand...

No. That is my 13 Pro Max that I was trading in. That was literally the first photo I took with my 14 Pro Max (clearly not in the picture since that is what I used to take the photo 🙄).

After noticing the issue I went back to my gallery and realized it was present in all of the captures to some extend.
 
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GeoStructural said:
The new iPhone 14 Pro Max has serious issues with autofocus.

  • It is only 5 days old, no physical damage of any kind.
  • Photos are so blurry they are unusable.
  • Sometimes it will take about 15 seconds for it to reach decent focus, but this is way too long and chances are what I want to capture is long gone by then.
  • Many times the camera is unable to focus AT ALL, even when manually selecting the target with the crosshair.
Here are some examples:

View attachment 2086239View attachment 2086241

I contacted Apple support and they said I must send it back for inspection, which is so annoying.
Click to expand...
I bought a third generation iPad several years ago that had an issue right out of the box and I had to go back and forth with AppleCare. On the other hand the person from the Apple Store recommended that I just send it back as a return since I was still in the 14 day window instead of dealing with AppleCare.
 
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My 14pm has the same issue . Trying to order and new phone and return my current one.
 
Mine focuses like a beast. The only different focus behavior I’ve seen coming from the 12 Pro Max is the longer minimum focus distance of the main camera and the auto switching to the ultra wide when you get under the minimum focus distance of the main camera. One thing I do find a bit odd and wish they would change is when the camera automatically switches to the ultra wide because you’re too close, it still says 1x and shows no indication that it switched lenses other than the slightly jarring perspective change. I did find that if you turn on Macro Control in settings, you can at least use that icon to know when it switches from main to ultra wide. Some people in this thread might want to try turning off auto macro and see if that fixes their focus weirdness.
 
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I have the same issue on my iPhone 14 Pro Max, its usually when there are objects in the way of the item I'm trying to focus on. But it also happens if I try to take pictures of things like the moon.

It happens in any camera mode, not just in portrait mode like in the screenshot. The 3 pictures I took and posted are not from portrait mode, they're from the normal photo mode. I was talking to apple support and they asked me to test each of the camera modes. It happens on the third party app ProCam8 too also.

I have an appointment with at an apple store on Tuesday , I'm hoping they'll exchange it for me but I got it September 16th. The person on the call said they would even though its past the 14 days, but I'll see.

The third picture of the moon thats mostly in focus is actually also wrong because thats the ultra wide lens, even though I had It zoomed in and as far as I know the moon is far away Lol. The 4th picture is when I got it working with the telephoto camera. So yeah I was zoomed in at 3x but it decided to use the ultra wide camera, when it wasn't blurry for no reason. In pro cam 8 I saw that when I try to focus on the moon it changes the focus point to as if the thing I'm trying to take a picture of is very close.

Edit: With my family member's iPhone 13 pro on the same iOS version (16.0.2 this doesn't happen at all, it focuses correctly and it doesn't go into macro mode when trying to take a picture of the sky)

Trying to focus on the clear sky is the only way I can get it to consistently happen, if anyone who doesn't have the issue can try to just focus on the sky with the camera app to see if it happens I'd appreciate it.
 

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Concur with OP, 14Pro Max having major issues focusing and managing depth of field, very easy to recreate by shooting in portrait mode, as the device lags trying to get a lock on subjects, in particular non human faces, like pets, documents, objects I can totally trip it up taking a shot of grass blades on the lawn, it doesn't know what its shooting. Portrait mode struggles to put a yellow box on objects most of the time. Currently dumping over 60% of shots as most image are not keepers. Not easy to see the poor focus on iPhone display but very noticeable on retina iMac screen. This combined with the bug in which you can't edit the depth of field in a portrait shot on anything but an iPhone is a pretty poor show. Hopefully they can catch it in an update.

Pro Res is really great but its feck all use when the device can't focus.
 
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GeoStructural said:
This happens only with the rear camera, but it is pervasive in all modes (photo, video, slow-mo, etc.).

I took a photo of document and went my way only to realize later that I could not even read it, it was so blurry.

I have more examples but don’t want to post them for privacy reasons.

I noticed too that only one part of my photos are in focus and most of the edges are super blurry, I get this is nice for artistic reasons but in other contexts I need to capture the whole thing, this is not a portrait machine.
Click to expand...
When you’re taking a photo of a document how far away from the document are you? The iPhone might be thinking you’re trying to take a macro picture but the macro camera focus distance is much further on the 14 Pro than 13 Pro. Maybe try enabling the toggle for manual macromode in camera settings.
 
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