iPhone 4 Camera Quality Questions/Concerns

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Am I missing some kind of default settings with the camera on the iPhone 4?

No matter what apps I use, and I have several, Hipstamatic, Camera+, King Camera, the default Camera, and Photosynth, and a few more actually, all "normal" pictures, meaning with no effects, and especially ones I take indoors, look pretty bad.

I am definitely making sure the settings for all of these apps have the image quality set to highest, yet almost every normal image I have taken with the phone looks really grainy when viewed at full size.

INDOOR IMAGES

Here is an image taken with King Camera (indoors).

Here is the same exact image, once again taken indoors, with the default camera (everything set to Auto for this one)

OUTDOOR IMAGES

Here is a panoramic image taken with Photosynth (that is why it looks obviously stitched) and enhanced a bit in Iris.

Here is a picture I used Hipstamatic for, and it looks pretty good.

Now the common thread of the images that look good are they are outdoors.

Is it just the images one takes indoors with no flash really look that bad?

Perhaps I am missing some global settings for the camera itself?

I did just get this iPhone last Thursday, so I am relatively new to it, even though I own an iPod and iPad, so I am very familiar with iOS itself, and I do not see any settings I may have missed. Then again if I saw them, I would not be missing them. :laugh:

TIA for any help or advice.

[~Johnny]

Looks normal to me - phone camera sensors are quite small, and they quite prone to producing noisy pictures without good lighting, which you tend to get indoors.

[SMELTN]

I posted on your G+ thread Larry but I have the same problem with my wifes iPhone4. Horrible pictures indoors.. Grainy is not the word for it..

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Looks normal to me - phone camera sensors are quite small, and they quite prone to producing noisy pictures without good lighting, which you tend to get indoors.

This makes sense, I just swear my Droid which was the original launch model took much better pictures indoors, but honestly I was also not that into the camera as I am with the iPhone, so perhaps I just never noticed it, or never cared.

I will also state that the main reason I started this thread was I had googled "iPhone 4 Camera Quality" and out of the first 5 or so results, I saw nothing but praise about how good the quality of the camera is, so I really thought maybe I was just missing something, but the more research I did after posting this, and just your incredibly simple explanation, really does lead me to believe it is absolutely normal, and it is what it is.

I posted on your G+ thread Larry but I have the same problem with my wifes iPhone4. Horrible pictures indoors.. Grainy is not the word for it..

Yep thank you for that sir, I commented there as well. I guess pictures are just not meant to be taken indoors. :blink: :laugh:

Just a side note, the free Photosynth app from MS for panoramic images really is kick ass. The one I posted above does not do it justice, it really is an amazing little app, especially for free.

[Stonkwell Bogtrotter]

Here is the quality of my iPhone 4 picture. Taken indoors, daytime with one small light on.