Yep, seeing the same on my regular 17 - generally better performance in some scenarios. See here - face is slightly out of focus and the 17p's has a general, though subtle, haze vs. the 17. I know the 17 is doing more sharpness processing, but it seems to be the happy medium IMHO.
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iPhone 17 Pro Unimpressed with 17 series camera quality
Yep, seeing the same on my regular 17 - generally better performance in some scenarios. See here - face is slightly out of focus and the 17p's has a general, though subtle, haze vs. the 17. I know the 17 is doing more sharpness processing, but it seems to be the happy medium IMHO.
Are you touching the screen where you want the camera to focus? The iPhone cameras are AF-C continuous auto focus and the camera will focus first on the closest subject to the camera like the blanket in front of your dogs face. Just a curious question. Nice looking pup.
You should post a comparison, unless I guess you already got rid of the 16 Pro.
No, but the larger yellow "box" that shows up did highlight the dog's frame perfectly on both phones before I took it, so it seemed to know what it was looking at? 🤷♂️
OK, well that's only the cameras face detection, the camera isn't actually focusing within that yellow face detection box. The square box with the sunburst is the focus box. Drag your finger down the screen after touching to focus & the exposure can be adjusted to meet your needs. Give it a try.
Look, my iPhone 17 pro has all these same issues as in this thread. Maybe we can ALL nudge them to at least try to fix this software wise.
If everyone here could submit a report in the beta feedback app something might get resolved soon-ish but we need more reports. I did some for other issues on my Mac and as soon as more people reported it, it actually got fixed.
If everyone here could submit a report in the beta feedback app something might get resolved soon-ish but we need more reports. I did some for other issues on my Mac and as soon as more people reported it, it actually got fixed.
The 17 Air also behaving like the regular 17. Tact sharp and the focus blur effect from portrait mode is just incredibly well done. See here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/photo-of-the-day-november-2025.2470230/post-34289331
The 17 Air also behaving like the regular 17. Tact sharp and the focus blur effect from portrait mode is just incredibly well done. See here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/photo-of-the-day-november-2025.2470230/post-34289331
Half of the bokeh is probably the internal reflections in the lenses.
Cannot be replicated with a professional camera just because of how the app declared which to blur computationally
It definitely can be. Just use a non-crap prime lens with a wide open aperture. That'll have a similarly short DoF at that focal length.
Crap lens on a proper camera against a neutral background. (I took this):
Now you can't do that on an iPhone!!
What I meant was that optical blur is different than computational blur. If you'd taken the same frame same mm lens on the windshield of a car on a traffic stop with a professional camera with detachable lens, the blur won't look the same as the one from 17 Air since it's optical blur not computational blur.
To me as a non professional hobbyist, the computational blur from iPhone 17 Air portrait mode is now just as good as the optical blur from a detachable lens from an optical lens blur perspective whereas the previous iPhones have a more obvious computation blur on them and could not give an illusion of the look of an optical blur
Yep true.
Well there's a couple of things going on, all of which are horrible. There's the depth of field thing on the iPhone which at close focus causes only a narrow region to be in focus because the lens designs are so compromised so they fit in a phone body. Then there's the processing which makes it look like it's supposed to by removing the hideous distortion the raw image from the sensor has. And then there's the portrait mode "blur" over the top which is smearing some heuristic editing over the picture.
If you take a photo with these modern phones, they use the LIDAR as well and provide a depth map which is used to apply the effect post-photograph. Which is crap. I think people who like it tend not to have seen photographs - the effect is totally different. It's really jarring looking at iPhone photos after going through a box of old ones.
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Anyway I've got a 17 Pro. It's fine for casual snaps but anything you care about, nope. I drag my full size mirrorless around for that almost everywhere.
Not sure how many of us are under any sort of beta program with Apple, but they do have a pretty good support service for products that are under warranty. You will actually be able to talk to a human being that actually is not completely idiotic (very much unlike most large companies), and they can refer your issues to experts. I've been reporting about my iPhone 17 Pro camera issues on several occasions to them now, all the sample photos and my reports have been handed over to the engineering team. Still waiting for the final results of this, but at least they are taking actions to look into it in quite detailed level.
Wholeheartidly suggest everyone who is experiencing issues to do the same, bitching here on the forums doesn't actually help turn the boat… 😅
I literally can’t get a sharp focus on anything. I know how to take photos, It’s not user error. I find this camera to be the worst one of any phone I’ve had in the last few years and I upgrade my iPhone every year. I literally took a picture with an iPhone 8 Plus and took the same with my 17 Pro and the 8 plus blew it away in detail and sharpness. It actually seems like my 17 Pro has a focusing problem because I can’t imagine this is normal. I can’t post the comparison because it was with a coworkers phone and it was of a person who does not want to be posted but I can’t believe this.
Even in perfect lighting, zooming in on my subject shows a blurred out of focus image. Low light photos are even worse.
However, my front camera? Sharp crisp images that look fantastic.
I did unfortunately trade my 16 Pro back in but at this point, I wish I hadn’t.
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The 17 pro focusing situation is crappy. It uses the LIDAR as well. Does it improve if you stick your finger over the LIDAR sensor? Mine does.
Also big problem with taking photos through windows on the Pro devices. They always focus on the window and not through it. I must admit that I'm slightly regretting buying the 17 Pro at the moment. I should have just got the straight 17.
IMHO, the bias of knowing that the 17 Air does computational photography for its portrait mode f/1.4 depth setting, I've asked a few of my relatives and friends and they thought this photo was taken from a professional camera and was surprised that the 17 Air portrait mode is capable of taking sharp photos and that optical illusion bokeh. Like it or not, iPhone has caught up with professional lens when it comes to bokeh rendition to my eyes at least
I do think the issue lies with the LIDAR since both 17 and 17 Air have great focus in most conditions
Not quite there. That's roughly a separation of foreground and background. And you can see that it's applied a uniform blur across the entire depth of field. So it can't emulate depth properly. Makes it look unnatural. Also impossible to do perspective shots.
If you look at the following you perceive the distance in the objects not just the fact that they aren't in focus. That includes things nearer to the camera than the subject like the fence.
You can't really emulate away glass unfortunately.
So I take a lot of photos of my daughter and comparing them older photos in my library from my 16 pro in similar lighting conditions, the difference is night and day when it comes to focus and sharpness.
Covering the LiDAR does not seem to have much an affect so far for me. I remember first getting my 15 pro and finding my photos were too soft and out of focus at first but with software updates, that improved tremendously. However, I feel like this situation is different and it may not be a software issue at this point. My wife’s 17 pro seems to be the same, maybe even slightly worse.
I called Apple to complain about this issue and they said that they do have this documented that people are complaining of soft or blurry photos and sent me a few things to try, all obviously did nothing.
They want me to send some comparison photos from an old iPhone 14 I have (that’s taking sharp photos) and also do a sysdiagnose and send it to them.
Anyone having this issue should really be reporting it, squeaky wheel gets the grease. Maybe this can really be fixed in a software update but who knows. I just saw someone photos from Reddit that looked phenomenal from their 17P, and reminded me of how my 16P was. Maybe some of these are faulty, I’m at a loss.
They want me to send some comparison photos from an old iPhone 14 I have (that’s taking sharp photos) and also do a sysdiagnose and send it to them.
Anyone having this issue should really be reporting it, squeaky wheel gets the grease. Maybe this can really be fixed in a software update but who knows. I just saw someone photos from Reddit that looked phenomenal from their 17P, and reminded me of how my 16P was. Maybe some of these are faulty, I’m at a loss.