iPhone 12 Pro 12 Pro Max night mode, huge step down?

[motorazr]

This is consistent with my experience — are

12 PM

you saying this is an improvement to the 11pm shot? Your photo from the 12pm is darker, and fuzzier. Look at the couch stitching; the réfection in the window... there’s detail that appears lost or out of focus from the 12pm

 

[ToddH]

Guys, I can’t believe I have to write this post. I hope I’m wrong in some way.

We all knew there were some concerns about the much larger sensor in the 12 Pro Max. Samsung has had issues with large sensors in the past: focus issues, sharpness issues. The whole stabilization system has been reworked as well. It’s obviously a huge change for Apple to do this, so while I felt a little apprehensive, I was confident they would have thoroughly figured it out and nailed it.

Well, if the 12 Pro Max camera was even approximately as good as the 11 Pro Max in night mode, I wouldn’t be writing this post.

It seems much worse.

Every single shot I take.

Speaking specifically about night mode here: with every shot, my old 11 Pro Max locks focus perfectly, every time, and the result looks tack sharp, every time, rendering lots of detail in foliage and buildings. Comparatively, I am finding the 12 Pro Max every single time to produce comparatively smudgy, hazy, blurry images that are always slightly out of focus or otherwise lacking detail.

This wasn’t just one shot, either, or just a couple. I walked all around my neighborhood and took shot after shot after shot, and my heart sunk as I inspected the results. It seems like the new sensor is actually making my beloved night shots look much worse than they did on the previous-generation phone.

It’s when you zoom in to look at details – sometimes it just looks a little worse, but sometimes it’s dramatic. See attached example.

I’m not sure what to do yet. Maybe I have a bad unit? Nothing really seems to be wrong with the hardware though, from anything that I can see.

I can probably provide more/better examples later but I’m just attaching the one for now. The 12 Pro Max image (left) is brighter because night shots are taken in HDR now, which is cool, but look at the sharpness level on the sign and the road lines. This is 87% better low-light performance? Why would they have done this? Is mine really maybe just a bad unit? This just doesn’t seem like something Apple would ship.

I just wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing this and maybe it’ll help corroborate whether something seems wrong with my device. Cheers.

My night mode shots on the 12 pro max look good. I have adjusted the exposure compensation on some to a +1 and some to a -1. The LIDAR sensor could be generating false data or not working properly. The night mode on the stars above look good and sharp on my iPhone, have you tried that? Here are what my night mode shots look like:

Are you touching to focus or letting the camera do it? I’ve tried both ways and they both work fine.

 

[Madtiger27]

This is consistent with my experience — are


you saying this is an improvement to the 11pm shot? Your photo from the 12pm is darker, and fuzzier. Look at the couch stitching; the réfection in the window... there’s detail that appears lost or out of focus from the 12pm

Remember these are compressed photos. The actual photos...12PM pic did not lose any details. It is much cleaner. I pixel peep to max.

 

[Saturn007]

Just stumbled upon this thread…

Midkay, whatever happened? How did your replacement iPhone 12 Pro Max turn out? Did you have the same issue? What did you end up concluding was the problem?

 

[midkay]

Just stumbled upon this thread…

Midkay, whatever happened? How did your replacement iPhone 12 Pro Max turn out? Did you have the same issue? What did you end up concluding was the problem?

The replacement 12 Pro Max I got may be doing slightly better in Night Mode, but I still think it’s less sharp than the 11 Pro Max was in some cases. However, I’ve learned to live with this minor regression, in light of there being many other major upsides to the 12 Pro Max: the bigger sensor does lead to less noise in non-night mode shots, plus faster night mode exposures; deep fusion on the ultrawide lens makes for a massive improvement in detail vs. the 11 series; the addition of night mode on the ultrawide lens is a game changer and super useful; night mode portraits; and so on. On balance, I find these all to be worth the minor step down in 1x night mode clarity. I’m curious if this may have gotten better on the 13 Pro Max as I haven’t upgraded this year (was super tempted though, given the camera improvements).