Apple: iPhone 5 Defect “Normal”

[Draax]

Its a camera on a phone ... not a high-end DSLR. Reasonable expectations need to be reasonable.

 

[Spewn]

I've never seen this with my phone's camera but then again I hadn't ever seen it before now so who knows. I'll see if I can try and reproduce it, but from the sample pictures it doesn't seem like it's necessarily something that happens every time there's glare. I don't really think it's a "defect" as much as it is a drawback of making really tiny and cheap cameras.

 

[Sly]

Purple fringing is a common problem in camera phones, and even some SLRs. Those of you claiming that your non-Apple phone doesn't do this should attempt to take a picture with the sun slightly out of frame.

How about apples own camera?

 

[Gorankar]

That a particular behavior is normal, does not mean it is desirable.

I have had other phones that had odd colored lens flare, but they were all older flip phones. One of my Razors had rainbow flare, but the replacement I received did not have the same issue.

 

[Maplehamwich]

; )

Built in instagram!

 

[bbqrooster]

How about apples own camera?

I think the answer would be something like "iPhone 4 is exceptional." But then what does that leave for iPhone 5? I have not seen purple tint so bad in my Samsung Focus. Don't know about other phone cameras though.

 

[Ocellaris]

If you listen to Anandtechs podcast they discuss this. I won't go into exactly what he says, but basically it's not even an issue and this is just stupid to talk about. Listen to their podcast if you want if nothing else it's a great podcast.

It's Apple, and Apple must be bashed on [H].

Also a guy at work went outside and took a picture directly at the sun with a few different angles and there was no purple in the pic. I am sure if we messed with it, we could have gotten some purple fringe and made a nice article about it

 

[wonderfield]

Chromatic aberration, I believe it's called - and it would be ridiculous except this is an Apple product we're talking about, people pay through the nose expecting perfection/"it just works" etc.

It isn't chromatic aberration.

 

[dr.kevin]

oh, purple fringing? pfttt.

I've seen that on my old canon dummy digicam. it also had a sony ccd inside.

apple users need to learn how to use their shit. When Windows was too hard for them to learn, they quit and bought an Apple. There's no quitting here. Time to learn the shit.

 

[dr.kevin]

those 2 pics don't even have the same amount of sun rays. Is that even an orange to orange comparison?

 

[Mchart]

This is what happens when you use sapphire glass. You'll see the same thing on higher-end watches with sapphire glass. When sun passes through it has a bit of a pink hue to it.

The problem isn't an issue. As is typical, people are being idiots.

The benefit of having sapphire crystal as the lens on a camera phone far outweighs using plastic, or mineral glass. Sapphire glass just doesn't scratch.

 

[Wshmaster0]

I hardly saw anyone complaining about scratched or cracked lenses with the 4 or 4s or 3gs.

This is what happens when you use sapphire glass. You'll see the same thing on higher-end watches with sapphire glass. When sun passes through it has a bit of a pink hue to it.

The problem isn't an issue. As is typical, people are being idiots.

The benefit of having sapphire crystal as the lens on a camera phone far outweighs using plastic, or mineral glass. Sapphire glass just doesn't scratch.

 

[Yossarian22]

"You can have any color you like, so long as it's purple."

 

[Vermillion]

I understand that this is probably "normal" (The wife's Droid RAZR, my Galaxy Nexus, and my old Thunderbolt certainly don't do anything like that but I digress) however Apple's response is just stupid.

For such a great marketing company their PR is pretty shitty at times. Why not release a complete and detailed answer as to why this isn't an issue. Instead they say "it's normal" which is pure cannon fodder especially when the difference between iPhone 5 and iPhone 4 is pretty incredible. Apple at times is their own worst enemy.

 

[thefreeaccount]

Good reason to upgrade to Lightroom 4.1 - you can apply global purple defringing in autodevelop mode and then touch up any tricky spots left in individual photos with the local defringing color dropper (a really nice tool - when you click a pixel it gives you a 2D chart of surrounding tones to choose from). It doesn't introduce blur or weird reductions in local contrast.

There are already lots of specalized photoshop plugins for defringing, but Lightroom makes it easy to quickly defringe an entire bulk import at once, as long as you have the proper settings dialed in for your camera.

 

[Inacurate]

Wow. Just wow. If I had a fucking nickel for every time I saw an idiotic post.

If only I had a tenth of a cent for every person who gives Apple a free pass. I'm not imply you do, but a large percentage of people do and it's baffling. Also, I didn't jump on the hatewagon for Apple, I feel I built the thing. I've long disliked Apple for their business ethics, their condescending approach to handling customers and the iron grip they like to exert over their products, leaving you without options in some scenarios because they disabled/removed a feature you enjoyed.

Like with this purple tint issue. Apple's response is horrible and they did not handle this situation properly. They should have gotten out in front of the problem (Apparently they didn't learn after the improperly designed antenna issue) and educated customers on the type of components used and its effects. They'd still get laughed at by those who aren't indoctrinated since that kind of tint should not be acceptable, but at least it wouldn't have been a PR issue, minor or not.

*irrelevant information here*

Guess how much their profit will be this quarter? What about next quarter (which should include the iphone5 sales and holiday sales)?

What does any of that have to do with the future? I didn't say tomorrow, simply that I cannot wait for it to happen, as it inevitably will. Apple has a track record for this kind of thing. They've broken out of the expected timeline due to the popularity, inflated and undeserved, of their "smart phone" product, but as people wake up again as they always do, it will be back to a niche. Which, technically, they still are by mobile phone units sold, just not profits.

 

[Trepidati0n]

Good reason to upgrade to Lightroom 4.1 - you can apply global purple defringing in autodevelop mode and then touch up any tricky spots left in individual photos with the local defringing color dropper (a really nice tool - when you click a pixel it gives you a 2D chart of surrounding tones to choose from). It doesn't introduce blur or weird reductions in local contrast.

There are already lots of specalized photoshop plugins for defringing, but Lightroom makes it easy to quickly defringe an entire bulk import at once, as long as you have the proper settings dialed in for your camera.

So I should have to pay money to make my pictures not look like shit? So the cost of the iPhone just went up how much? Oh..and that time to fix my pictures is free...right? Man, the kool-aid must be damn good.

 

[Maplehamwich]

So I should have to pay money to make my pictures not look like shit? So the cost of the iPhone just went up how much? Oh..and that time to fix my pictures is free...right? Man, the kool-aid must be damn good.

It sure seems like it.

 

[thefreeaccount]

Like with this purple tint issue. Apple's response is horrible and they did not handle this situation properly. They should have gotten out in front of the problem (Apparently they didn't learn after the improperly designed antenna issue) and educated customers on the type of components used and its effects. They'd still get laughed at by those who aren't indoctrinated since that kind of tint should not be acceptable, but at least it wouldn't have been a PR issue, minor or not.

EVERY digital camera has purple or green fringing in high-contrast areas. Here is a long tutorial on fixing purple fringing:

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/04/new-color-fringe-correction-controls.html

As you can see, many of those images were taken with expensive DSLRs and happen to be near-perfect apart from the fringing issue.

Apple is excellent at educating/indoctrinating their customers on how to use Apple products. As a result, every time a new Apple product is released, "fringe" issues formerly considered only of interest to the geek community go mainstream.

How many times have you advised someone to look at resolution and not just size when choosing a display, only to be ignored? Well, now consumers are educated - sort of - they still don't know anything about resolution, but they know to ask "is it like a retina display?"

 

[Phoenix333]

I remember a long while back I purchased a Creative Labs SB card (don't remember the model) that came with an 8X CD-Rom drive. The CD-Rom was unstable and caused streaming errors on video reads for Privateer 2, as well as generally not liking to recognize disks. When I contacted Creative about it, they declined to honor warranty, claiming it was a "design flaw". You don't say! I thought that was the whole purpose of having a warranty. Silly me for trying to apply reason instead of just drinking the Kool-Aid.

So me being a bird and poor and thus unable to obtain legal counsel and sue them into oblivion, and unfortunately being of a lawful good persuasion and thus not able to just firebomb their headquarters in good conscience, I simply decided to never buy another Creative product again and did my best to solve the problem myself. I did find that putting tape on the CD's made them sometimes work.

I put Apple in the same category as Creative. If we birds wiped our arses I wouldn't even use an iPhone or iPad for that. I'd feel more soiled after wiping than I did before.

 

[wonderfield]

What does any of that have to do with the future? I didn't say tomorrow

Tomorrow is the future.

 

[Mchart]

I hardly saw anyone complaining about scratched or cracked lenses with the 4 or 4s or 3gs.

I own a 3G and 4.

The plastic lenses were the most easily scratched thing.

There you go. You just saw at least one person complain about plastic scratching too easy.

 

[david_]

Took over 350 pictures last week in Kauai with an Iphone 5. It's pretty sunny there. No purple.

 

[Matalim]

Took over 350 pictures last week in Kauai with an Iphone 5. It's pretty sunny there. No purple.

No pro Apple posts please.

-[H] community

 

[glynor]

Chromatic aberration, I believe it's called

No.

This is what happens when you use sapphire glass. You'll see the same thing on higher-end watches with sapphire glass. When sun passes through it has a bit of a pink hue to it.

The problem isn't an issue. As is typical, people are being idiots.

The benefit of having sapphire crystal as the lens on a camera phone far outweighs using plastic, or mineral glass. Sapphire glass just doesn't scratch.

No.

How about apples own camera?

Like this?

If you're just here to troll, that's fine (though it makes you look silly). If want to know the truth, dpreview covers it well.

I can easily reproduce this with every camera I own, including a variety of smartphones, point-and-shoots, and a Canon 5DS Mark II. Lenses that are small and flat, with no lens shade, are worse, but you can do it with essentially all cameras.