Hi, I’m from the UK and after you bringing this issue to my attention I noticed my new 16 pro max had the issue. I bought my phone direct from Apple so went to my local Apple Store. I wanted to be able to replicate the issues in store so took a small cardboard box to eliminate any light, sad but proved worthwhile. The iPhone genius agreed there was an issue, he tried his phone and it was ok, and agreed to replace mine. I said I wanted to test the new phone before I left the store without going through a full set up which he agreed to do. The first replacement phone was worse than my original but the second was good. Luckily the Apple Store had several phones in stock as I would have gone through the lot until happy and at that point in time they were happy to do this. Fortunately I bought direct from Apple and not a third party….
I also went strait into Apple Store and they said they would swap me untill it was all good, luckily it was good 1st try, and my girls 16 came and was fine. Crazy
if you had bought it from a third party you would've gotten the same treatment apple's warranty is the same warranty, independent of where you got the phone from.
My thought, with other recent iPhone models still available New, why bother with iPhone 16 at all? Especially for long-exposure, night photography, iPhone 16 is not the only game in town, why even bother with this headache?
yeah but this shouldn't of happened in the first place. Why are they selling phones with KNOWN defects? Apple is a trillion dollar company I get it they are pulling all there man power towards Ai but don't forget the one thing that makes Apple Apple. Stability and usability with little to none mistakes. I just just like game devs who back in the game would have game testers to test for bugs and when the game is published it is flawless no bugs or mistakes or if there are bugs there incredible small. This was apple making there products easy to use and bug free but now they seem to start becoming what game devs do now. Release a game with Major bugs that inhibit the expeirnce and fix it later. It's not a matter of it's not possible becasue it is they have done it before its matter of will. Only god can know why this greedy corp is letting mistakes slip just so we can get our perious Ai so we can generate pictures of cats eating soup and drogs with cowboy hats 💀
Right, the amount of people that are actually doing serious nighttime/ astrophotography is probably such a niche part of Apple's clientele that it's easier for them to ignore such a small group. But I'd like to see this get more media attention
That doesn’t make any sense, the phone literally has the tag “Pro” in its name meaning that just like apple themselves says it in every keynote IT IS TARGETED for the pro/photography audience, if want average iPhone results the regular series is more than enough for average person, Pro phones are MEANT to used by the nerd audience and an audience like this is gonna get into every single little detail and gonna care about it all, this is just apple being “ok we fix that in 17 so you can spend more money on our phones next year” kinda thing, which they have a good track of doing.
So just put the word out and boycott iPhone 16, plenty of other iPhone models and Androids that can get the job down without the headache of worrying about a defect. Especially when dishing out the $$$$$ that Apple demands.
The people that are actually doing serious nighttime/ astrophotograph are a very small niche. The people doing it with iphones is much much smaller than even that
This is almost certainly a hardware issue. Apple is likely to do everything possible to avoid addressing this problem to prevent potential profit loss, especially since most users may never notice.
My only suggestion to pressure Apple is to make it known on Twitter/X. This is where journalists hang out and if they sniff a story they will write about it.
Hi, I'm from Switzerland and my first iPhone 16 Pro Max (shipped on Sept 20th) had the blue-lines issue. Before I saw Shayne's test with the phone put down on a table in the dark, I took pictures of the milky way that didn't look great at all. I would consider myself being an experienced photographer. Thanks to Shayne I discoverd my iPhone 16 Pro Max was a faulty unit. I called Apple tech support and after some online testing they agreed to replace it. However I had to go to a local Apple store to do so. In the store the Genius again performed several camera tests with their diagnostic software and since a camera sensor issue was reported, they replaced the phone. Luckily, my new 16 pro Max doesn't show the blue lines anymore. Long story short, it seems to be a sensor related issue.
Thanks for explaining the difference between the apps and how they go about taking 30s night time images. Been testing back and forth with different apps the images are horribly blue using the standard camera app.
16 pro max user here, and no issues with blue glaring. Counting myself lucky. Edit from the future: Tried all camera’s with an exposure of 30s. Not seeing blue glaring but I am seeing a lot of blue pixels on all camera’s modules. Not so lucky as I thought I was
@@domdomdomme1203Thank you for commenting this. I was about to waste god knows how long with Apple trying to get my new 16 Pro Max replaced. I only have two small blurry blue orbs on the right hand edge of the image. Really small though. I had to zoom in to see them.
I have too those blue dots/pixels appear in photos in all those cameras on my 16 pro max when I take photo in complete pitch black darkness, but they aren’t actually dead pixels, more like hot pixels which is normal acting for camera sensors overall? And it did took those photos at that max 30 second so it was completely dark. But that blue banding, I’m not noticing those blue banding ”poles” but sometimes shadows when editing brightness up, I notice those horrible blue mess in shadows, so don’t know if that’s normal
I had this issue with my 16 Pro too, and Apple just sent me a replacement a couple days ago that works perfectly. The process was easy here in the US, once I showed them photo examples of the issue it only took a few minutes to get a replacement order in.
Good on ya, Shayne, for pursuing this. I changed to Apple after a decade of Android phones primarily because of my perception of their superior customer service. Looks like I was wrong. My 16 Pro Max is buggy as heck. it keeps dropping Bluetooth connection to my hearing aids, photos and videos frequently present with incorrect orientation, or only display as tiny thumbnails. Very disappointing. Glad to have you on our side.
@@LAMethWitch I have that too but it's gotta be a software error as it only happens when I take a photo and look at the photo from the camera app. If I later go into the photos app all looks well. So a IOS 18 error rather than a iphone 16 error.
@@bunkermagnus yeah, man i have 2 iphone 16 pros!!! I got 16 pro 256GB in desert colour on opening day- and now 2 days ago I got 1TB 16 pro max in white
I've done the opposite. Had Apple phones for ages. Was so disappointed with the 16 Pro Max (which had the blue streaks), I sent it back and switched to Android. No issues with the S24 Ultra. And it's cheaper.
Stick with them Peter. I’m sorry as a user myself that the 16 Pro has been bad for you, mine seems good. I couldn’t possibly find the audacity to defend Apple who would I think I was to do so, but in my experience their customer service has always been very good. I suspect there is many reasons this phone has got little bugs - I think the phones weren’t ready and it’s all because of this A.I thing. I’m willing to bet by six months in the phone will be exactly as it should be although, it shouldn’t have to take that long.
Wow, I am glad you randomly popped up in my recommended, top notch effort on this video mate, you’ve done your due diligence and clearly know your stuff, love from a fellow Aussie ❤🇦🇺
My 30 second exposure is perfect black on my iPhone 16 pro max. I'm running the 18.2 beta just in case that matters. Seems to me it could well be a software issue but only time will tell. Keep up the good fight.
@@russwright I’m hoping this is software not lining up with the new hardware. If it’s totally fine for a 10 second long exposure, something needs to be calibrated for 30 seconds. Otherwise it would start to show up at 10 seconds and get worse for 30 seconds.
@@jamesn7156 I think software should fix it for most people, but I also think that a hardware problem should not be ruled out, since I’ve heard about a lot of hardware issues with the iPhone 16. However, we do hope that a software update will fix it. :)
I have a 15 pro and did the face down 30 second exposure and I do have blue specks and patterns in the image. I did it on a white paper and it wasn't as noticeable as the darker colors I tried it on. It is not always repeatable even if the the blue is there, it is less noticeable in different shots. So, it may be present on all phones, we just don't notice it. Love your videos by the way!
This is crazy, my work 15 Pro Max does similar thing, especially noticable with telephoto. Friend of mine have 16 Pro and there is same issue, we also went together to Apple store and tried in on multiple phones that we could, and every single one had this issue. But at the same time, my significant other has 16 Pro Max, which so far seem fine, no issue at all, and it is early device when preorders opened.
I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max and I am certain that this model has also the issue. In my case there is a combination of blue and red noice. There is even a photo I posted in the fb page that appears in this particular video. Greetings from Greece, I really love your channel.
Really?! Was it red on your 15 pro? I seen where some 14 and 15 had red and some had blue and also some with blue red and green lol So you had it then didn’t have it after an update on the 15 pro for sure?
@@KMakrozahopoulos that’s wild, thanks for the info, I have been trying to figure out what’s causing it and how long it’s actually been an issue, seems going all the way back to at least the 13 pro max this has been a thing in some devices. Crazy, I have found some galaxy users also have issues with long night mode as well, so I don’t think it’s only iPhone either lol but that’s another story I suppose
I just found on my iPhone 14 Pro Max today, thanks to your video. I bought the my iPhone 14 Pro Max 2 years ago. For those who want to inspect, Open Camera, Set Night Mode Timer to 30 seconds. I got this blue line mentioned in the video. Man this start to bug me, after making aware of this issue after 2 years after buying the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
My iPhones 16 pro max had blue streaks covering up to 90% of the screen but as of the most recent beta update doing the same test results in maybe 4 or 5 blue pixels which is a massive improvement.
I had some interesting results from testing with camera face down in the dark, with my 16 Pro Max. My first one was crazy blue noise with a circle in the middle. Then the next ones were black with white noise/pixels spread out. Didn’t matter if I was shooting raw or not. It’s almost like it had to do some pixel mapping first to get all black after. There was a weird anomaly on that blue circular one as it wanted to call it a portrait but I wasn’t in portrait mode… EDIT: I was able to reproduce the blue circular noise…if I’m in photo mode, jpeg, have manual aperture on, shoot 30s, it will give me crazy blue noise effect. If I don’t have manual aperture on, it won’t give crazy blue effect. In RAW, you dont get the custom aperture option, and in my case I get all black, with white pixels spread out
This is so sad. I can affirm that this is hardware related. I have apple care+, they took my word for it, verified it, and replaced my phone. My new one is perfect. My friend also got the same 16 Pro Max, his was fine. The difference between his and my first phone was mine had a battery manufactured in August 2024. His iPhone and my replacement iPhone have batteries manufactured in July, both don’t have issues.
Following on from my previous comment, I replaced my 16 pro yesterday. I was in my 14 day return period and I knew software wasn’t going to fix my issues, despite AppleCare saying there’ll ‘definitely’ be a fix in the next 2 weeks. New one doesn’t have the blue streaks issue. Quite a few hot pixels but nowhere near as bad as my previous 16P. At ISO8000 I’m getting completely black images. At ISO10000, the hot pixels appear but it’s not a massive dealbreaker. Photographic styles also seem to be behaving themselves this time.
Sorry, but how exactly do you get the ISO that high? When I do the test that he explained in the video, I’m only getting ISO 1250 in a completely dark cabinet.
I remember seeing a very similar looking issue in photos on my HTC M7 back in the day. Just like Apple, HTC said that there was no issue until they started repairing phones for free. Turns out the camera module was not thermally insulated that well and the heat from the processor was interfering with the camera causing pink banding. Before I got mine fixed I would always notice the issue disappeared if I took photos while outside in the snow but reappeared when I went inside to a warmer environment.
Thx for surfacing this issue. My 16PM does not have the issue. My wife’s phone has it. We bought it at the same time directly from apple. Going to try to replace hers in an apple store as others suggested.
Hello Shayne i love your videos and would like your opinion i am contemplating getting the 16 pro max for myself do you think i should wait for the 17 or wait a few months to get the 16 to give them time to address the camera issue?
they aint going to address the issue as they dont think it is big enough to worry abot,i have the 16 pro max and my phone doesnt have the issue. So its a lottery or gamble it seems.
I took mine (2 days old) to the Apple Store. The technicians tried everything that you shared, Shayne. I replicated the aurora borealis blue screen for them. We tried the same test on the store's 16 Pro Max phone and their phone was fine, with no blue haze. At this point, they ordered a new camera unit and I will take the phone back in to have them install the new unit. If it still is messed up, they agreed to replace the phone. My question, though. Every new boxed phone is sealed. Once we rip open the sealing strips, the phone now becomes an open-box phone if we do not accept it after testing. How many new phones will the Apple Store allow us to open before finding a good one? Hopefully, the 1st one I open (anticipating the new camera will not work) will be good to go.
Just found your channel mate hope you do this for all iPhones. I have the 13 pro my first iPhone . When I first got it said it didn’t have enough storage. Even though I only had 70gb used anyway they talked me into buying more storage that I didn’t need. It was a problem with the phone. They’re terrible to deal with.
This seems to be a sensor calibration issue, since sensors typically will have hotspots that are calibrated and compensated for in the calibration process.
Do you see this looking at the pics on a computer monitor? It could be the actual phone screen. OLED screens are notorious for banding issues, and you'd often only see it in certain backgrounds. I returned a TV because of this.
It's 100% a hardware error where certain batches of sensors are faulty. Big corporations chasing profit margins will lead to this and 95% of iphone users will never notice this as it is a fringe use case so Apple will ignore this. the difference between my first 16 pro and my replacement 16 pro is like night and day, no pun intended. First phone had super blue all over the frame while the replacements looks exactly like my wife's 15 pro. Also, Apple staff at the Apple store managed to reproduce the blue noise while I was in the Apple Genius bar.
@@turnbasedtoddy7664 Well I guess it's just as much an enigma as the fact that my wife's iphone 15 pro did NOT get this error after updating to IOS 18.
It's just the phone's inclination, when resting on the back, because of the protrution of the rear lens there is a little gap from where enters a tiny bit of light to the sensor, which produce the akward images we're getting. Try taping all the lenses and then take a shot and you will probably get a pitch dark one.
The desktop test is simply to see where the lines are. Apple are not interested in a black photo with blue lines and nor should they be. Its only to see where they are. Then go and take some photos and see if it turns up in the pics. If its in the pics, they absolutely should be fixing this.
This is super interesting in the fact that Apple will hopefully fix. As tech getting more and more advanced, if any phone manufacturer wants to have the best camera capabilities, they need to listen to the users of all genres of use. Great video Shayne!
I saw your vid a few weeks back and that’s the first thing I checked when I opened the box.. Lucky mine was good, but my point is ‘I was Lucky’. Cheers for pointing out about the 30second shutter speed too.. All this years I had a 12 and I never knew. Anyway, if you guys need a partition signed or anything else to help get ya through this, send it my way coz I’d be more than happy to help.. Also, just bout to order a lumilapse.. sounds interesting 🤘
I had camera module issues on the iPhone 14 Pro. Apple was very nice and replaced it 3 times. I was told it was the camera module and no one else would notice this issue taking "regular" photos. Engineer said they would not be correcting this issue as efforts would be focused on the iPhone 15. I tested the iPhone 15 Pro in the store when it came out and bought it. No issues. I am thinking this is the same issue with the 16 camera module.
I think it might be a software issue. When I first conducted the test I had it minor in the complete black test and it did not show up at all in my night photos running iOS 18.0.1 after upgrading to iOS 18.1 (non beta) it is 300% worse and showing up in the night shots. Wish there was a way I can send it to Shayne so he could see it himself.
I'm glad this video popped up because I have the exact same problem on the US model! On the Chinese model (which I purposely bought, since I was sure their version would be different, as it always has been), this problem does not exist.
I’ve checked several iPhone 16 Pro in Singapore … at the Apple Store and local mobile service providers… so far no issues (no blue streaks) appearing with the 30s exposure photo shots So I went ahead and purchased my new iPhone 16 Pro. Tested it.. no issues detected. The stock sold in Singapore is manufactured in China.
It's like the green orbs that float around in almost all iPhone videos. Step 1, the hardest step, is always to get Apple to admit there is a problem. I'm a software engineer and our company identified a bug in macOS Sonoma. It took about 3 months to get them to acknowledge a problem and another 4 months for them to fix it. They likely eventually will in your case: you'll just need to buy an iPhone 17. This looks like a hardware issue to me. Could be caused by uneven heat distribution on the camera sensor so using it in a warm environment might make it worse. Wonder what would happen if you cooled the phone a bit and then tested it?
Thanks for this video, was going to get the iPhone 16 pro and get into astrophotography, but will do a bit more research or just get the 15 pro, will be interesting to see if Apple eventually sort this out
It seems sort of rare for a company to put out a product (hardware or software) that is perfect from the start. But when they try to deny there is a problem, without first investigating, is very bad. This is the risk you take when you are an early adopter.
I just took a 10 sec night mode photo with my iPhone 16 ProMax. I put the lens against my bed sheet in a dark room. The resulting photo was just black with a small amount of noise. No blue lines. Then I realized you said 30Sec. So I waited for 30Sec to show up (instead of 10) and took a 30sec shot with the aforementioned technique. This time the resulting photo had a blue pixel in the centre of frame, three around the top and also 3 around the bottom. I’m starting to think this might be a computational problem. I believe you can “turn off” the individual lenses in the camera settings. And this might help to answer what’s going on.
Thanks for highlighting this. After watching your earlier video I found that my phone had this issue. Called Apple support and the guy did the test and did an appointment for my phone checkup. Sadly here in New Zealand there is no Apple Store so these issues are handled by “Authorised “ Apple repairs and these guys acknowledge the problem but want me to hand over my phone for couple of days for repairs. Am not comfortable with that as I want a straight swap. Thoughts people on what to do now?
It looks like amp glow or thermal glow and if it’s down to that it isn’t a hardware fault per se, but a characteristic of the sensor quality that can vary quite a bit from sensor to sensor. Astrophotographers will usually subtract such average sensor issues by taking an iso and temperature matched “dark frame” - a black exposure like your test and subtract that from the raw sensor data. I don’t get as many blue streaks as you do on the dark frame test, but they are there along with some hot pixels and some red amp glow at the fringes. Usually the magnitude is of these errors are “low” wrt to the dynamic range of the sensor so I think that Apple are stretching the histogram too much post stacking which while makes the starfield look better will exacerbate these sensor errors.
That's a bummer. I just got the iPhone 16 after having the Xs for six years. Now I'm stuck with the 16 for another six years. I just did the test, and mine has all kinds of blue in it. That sucks.
Now Red noise. I had the same issue and went to the Apple Store. They said that they had not heard of this and stressed that it was a software issue. They had me downgrade off of the beta to see if it was still there. It was but instead of the blue banding it only had a few blue hot pixels. They still exchanged the phone and now I have red noise on one side. No blue at all, but now red. 😢 I should have just kept my original.
Take the test photo in RAW to get a less processed base image of the problem. Also can’t remember but there used to be a site the decoded serial numbers so we can see when the unit’s we’re manufactured and what plant and line etc and compile a list of good vs bad units and might be able to work out what batches are bad and to avoid.
There was a rumor about the iPhone 16 pro max getting the new Sony sensor this year. I wonder if it’s an issue for this years main sensor versus the old ones
It’s nothing new, there are iPhone 13, 14 and 15 with this same issue, some have red banding, some blue, I seen one with red and blue and some green, and some like mine (replacement) iPhone 16 pro and my girls iPhone 16 pro work great totally. In all honesty during my round with the blues on my first iPhone 16 and first iPhone ever, I ran into some galaxy’s that had issues with night mode not working properly at long exposure as well. So it may really be a hit and miss issue regardless the brand. It has just gone unnoticed for the most part because it’s a small amount of people using it in this way, and out of them and even smaller amount of people that have the issue and beyond that even smaller amount that notices it lol. But for those that do I agree they should be able to get it fixed. Apple Store told me in person that if my replacement does it then I can bring it back as well and they would swap untill I get one that works as it should through and through so idk, I’m glad I didn’t have to go back.. I was able to show them “normal” night mode photos with the blue mess along with the blue screen that I captured in a darkened room. I did a ton of investigating on this, looked at loads of night mode astrophotos from all model iPhones to compare and see what I could find, being new to Apple I was not happy I had the problem, and so It was driving me nuts inspecting endlessly lol
When I was in the Apple store in the UK looking at this because I raised it as a support issue, they tried 2 store phones to see if there was an issue. One had the issue (like my phone) and the other didn't. Both Apple techs agreed there was an issue. I kept my phone because I wanted it logged as an issue on my phone early on in the process. Guess this memo means that there was no point and I should have tried to get a replacement. Watching this story unfold with great interest.
This is likely a camera module calibration issue with dark current. Due to second sourcing of sensors, some might be more prone to this issue than others.
Well I tested mine and did not have the banding. My Lumilapse just arrived so when I can get out of my light pollution area I will give it a real test.
This looks like readout noise. Depending on many factors this may be hard to calibrate out effectively. You don’t see it in bright light because the noise is quite low relative to the light being received and converted to electrons. In low light, this is however there and is intrinsic to the sensor (detector layer plus read out). It could be contamination in the manufacturing process or even intrinsic to the design / fab process. Hard to say. My guess is that SW will be hard to fix it with in all cases. Sensor calibration techniques are common and are certainly already used. But there are limits. Many many iPhones have been built so far and are in the distribution pipeline. I suspect this won’t go away soon.
you are really passionate for phone camera's i do hope you get to try the vivo x200 pro or x100 ultra that phone camera is a beast. I'm switching from the 15 pro max and will be waiting for my vivo to arrive. As a person who constantly changes phones I always find apple behind the competition
i would say it is , i noise bleed, on some cameras there is pink color. its just pushing to much sansitivity on iso side, and it just a electronic noise
Thanks. I've been holding off buying a 16pm. I normally wait for a couple of months to allow for problems to surface and for fixes to be revealed. I've already had ifs about the quality of the UW lens. So I'm going to continue to wait to learn more from your experience. When/if I decide to buy I'll go to an Apple store. In the past I've bought through 3rd party sellers. I'd want to test it before I leave the store. I have a black microfiber lens cloth which makes it easy to get a 30s night mode shot at ISO 5,000.
Very interesting I watch your previous video about this issue. Been subscribed to your channel for a while. I love night photography and I have shared your video now with several bigger TH-camrs in North America. Hopefully they will start covering it and make this a bigger issue and hopefully Apple will fix this.
Did the test and I was relieved to see my 16 pro doesn’t have this issue! Hopefully apple changes this attitude because it will really hurt them in the future…
I'd imagine that these camera modules themselves have an issue during manufacture, call it a QA issue, maybe a coating over the lens, or the sensors themselves, but it seems like from the 15 to the 16 a change has been made to the light sensor has been made (to cut costs of manufacture?) but, maybe Apple have realised that a higher percentage of that particular componet has this issue and so are slyly trying to back out "Oh, its noise, every camera has to deal with this!"Yeah, right, then WHY doesn the Pixels and the Samsungs and previous iPhones NOT have this issue hmmm??? 🤔🤨🤨🤨 😎🇬🇧
Mmm… hard to say what causes this issue exactly, and why it does not occur with other iPhones … but, generally speaking, in digital sensor cameras, the closer the noise-level is to the signal-level (noise to image data ratio), the more prevalent banding will be, if you show underexposed. And under exposure is exactly what occurs when a camera in auto-mode, takes a primarily dark subject, and presents it as “truly dark”… a normal exposure of pure black, would result in the same as for pure white… middle grey, so in fact the image is underexposed, by pulling exposure down from middle grey to the blackness you see, thus bringing image noise (blue bands) and image data closer together… banding could specifically be due to sensor heating, just as with sensor hot pixels on traditional digital cameras
It actually does happen on other iPhones, some 13, 14, and 15 as well with red, blue, and blue green and red…..and I’ve seen some galaxy users have issues with night mode long exposure as well, not all but some…but this makes sense as a possibility, I suspect that when the photo is processed the fault I think is coming as the processing happens and there is a glitch when it is trying to process the darkest parts of the photo in night mode, so your reasoning is making sense to me along with what I was already thinking about. I have been trying to figure it out since it happened to me lol, I got mine fixed (replaced) but I still am trying to figure it out and find solutions outside of Apple. So maybe there will be a fix found for those unfortunately stuck w this issue. Thanks for sharing
@@willbelial3775 right… what you can try is this… using an Astro-photography enabled application (affinity photo etc), try and set the purely black photo (intended to be black, but displaying the banding/defects), as a black-frame reference, and add the other actual Astro photographs you want to use as the final image. The stacked result should subtract the defects in the black frame, rather effectively
@@willbelial3775hmm… my two attempts at replying to you failed… stupid TH-cam! Last try… take a black-frame reference … intended to be a purely black image, but showing the banding… use this in an astro photography app supporting stacking and black and white frame references… select your photo with the same sort of banding defect, but with the intended night sky image, as the actual source… stack them, and see what happens
So this is a sensor issue. I had the same type of issue with my Canon 5D3. The issue is that the sensor is having a banding issue with the low light shooting. The way to get it fixed is to shoot a truly long exposure for the foreground and then take a tracked image for the sky at a lower iso. It’s not the shooters fault that all these phones being able to shoot a night shot is cool but the act of actually doing it with a real setup that will give you actual control of taking the photo.
Shayne, I’m glad I wasn’t tempted this year, I was disappointed with the 15 Pro Max last year, I think I’m done with the iPhones now, I like my new mini iPad 7, but iPhones? Nah….
So, I tried this dark frame 30s capture on my iPhone 15 Pro Max. At first, I had a strong gradient show up on the top right of the photo. I think that was because the camera lens and the photo bump caused light leakage due to not being quite flush with the table. I then took some Starbucks gift cards and propped up the lower left corner of the phone and tried again. It took a couple of tries, but I got the right thickness to get the lens properly flush and blocking out all exterior light. This time, I got a completely black frame. I’ll have to do some further processing to bring up the gain to see if there’s any hidden streaks, but on initial inspection, it looks like I don’t have this problem. Of course, this is just one data point.
I been trying to tell people, it’s not just iPhone, many phones struggle in night mode long exposure even Samsung, hope you can find a workaround for it!
I’m feeling super fortunate that my 16 pro max doesn’t seem to be suffering from this issue. I love taking pictures of the night sky so I would be very unhappy if I couldn’t do that.
So apparently this is a software issue or at least mostly a software issue. If you shoot in ProRaw and then edit the photo in the photos app, the lines will go away. However this did not fully work for me personally and I was left with a bunch of blue dots that somewhat looked like stars. The blue streaking happens in any other mode other than ProRaw and cannot be removed by doing this. I am unsure if all the dots left over are actually physical deformities in the sensor but I am still exchanging mine just in case anyway. For the most part I assume that it’s mainly a software issue and only some phones have physical issues.
@@ShayneMostyn Is that what it's doing? I just hit the edit button and didn't really change anything about it and they disappeared for the most part. I guess the situation really is a lot more complex than just a software problem then. I'm hoping the next one I get doesn't have the issue at least.
I am in the UK and spoke to apple about this after the initial issue with my iPhone 16PM camera app was resolved with IOS 18.1. He tested his phone using the same lay it flat on the desk test and saw the same issue but then repeated the test by holding the other end of the phone slightly off the desk and issue went away for him. I tried the same and it improved the amount of blue on my picture but it wasn't completely gone. He also passed issue on to engineering but has recommended that I go to Apple store which I will do some time in next few weeks.
Presumably it only improved because it no longer was dark enough (once he lifted it up a bit) to shoot with a 30 second exposure. That’s something I’d check if you want to be sure. As it’s only happening with the 30 second exposure.
He did say that himself and even made sure I took my phone out of the case to ensure the case wasn’t raising the cameras enough to let light in. I’ll just have to see what happens when I get to my local store
I've tested my 30s exposure photo on a flat surface and total darkness and my 16 pro max didn't have any blue lines or any other artefacts it was perfectly black photo. The phone is the EU version with SIM! Model A3296 bought in Romania!
Well I finally got my camera to work, another bug bug with the camera app crashing on the iPhone 16 pro max. And then had a chance to finally capture the northern lights in my area to see blue dots mixed with the stars. This like many camera sensors indicates dead spots on the sensor. I never had the blue bands with mine. They tried to tell me it was expected noise and normal, I argued the point and was escalated to the next level. Then they agreed to replace it, so I’m waiting on the replacement now. Let’s see if I end up with a blue band one, another one with dead spots on the sensor, or one that works like I would expect for the cost of this phone.
It is possible that the reason for the photos request from Apple is that in some testing they found light leaks that may be causing the problem and wanted to see if something in the assembly process was different with the phones that have the problem. So may not be doing anything nefarious. Certainly there may be those at Apple that may try to just make the problem go away, but I suspect most engineers are trying to find out the cause so they can fix it. Good on you, though, for pointing this out and staying on it.
well I have just tried my iphone 16 pro which was bought on release day and if you try just putting the camera down on a flat surface and take 30second photo it has blue streaks some I have seen some people say how they tested it and the same II even tried it in a box. If however I then take the same photo in the Darkroom there is no blue banding what so ever. So I wonder if its just that the sensor is picking up any sort of tiny exterior light. Either way looks like my phone is good.
I’m sure you’ve ruled out things like climate/geographical location as culprits? I.E. some places are more humid or more colder than others which can screw with camera lenses? I’ve had the blue issue happen with a Nikon D3500. It didn’t matter which lens I put on, this would happen when I was attempting to photograph storms at night: tornadoes, lightning, sprites, even just the auroras the last few months. The only times it would appear in my night photography is when it was too humid, or too cold. I thought there might’ve been an issue with dirt on my lenses or even in my camera, which happens while shooting in windy, dusty fields. I usually have to get my Nikon cleaned up after a heavy storm season even with the best protection I can get on my camera. I live in Ontario, Canada and the summer temperatures can get up to 35-40°C with very high humidity. In the winter, it’s generally -10°C to -25°C, and while there’s obviously no humidity in the winter, if I skip the arduous process of acclimating my Nikon to the temperature in my apt (which is generally very warm given I’m directly over the boiler room - yes it’s hell in summer) then the same thing happens. I’ve only had my iPhone 16 for a few days but so far, it’s passed the ‘test’ on my desk in a dark room with no other lighting. It’s unseasonably warm with humid nights at the moment, so I’ll take it out the next few nights and give it a test with my tripod and see if it happens. Not sure if this will help at all. Hope you do get it resolved though.
Just tested it with my 16 Pro Max. In my case it only seems to happen when the camera app uses the Fusion lens. When I manually force it to only use the wide angle or tele lens, it doesn't have the blue band(s). Weirdly enough I have not been able to disable the Fusion lens in 1x mode.
I was so keen to update my phone but this is concerning. Basically, I'm going to have to test the absolute F out of it within the 14 day period so I can swap it if need be, or just get my money back and be done with it. This whole release feels so half-baked from the phone, to the AI lacking staggered rollout and the iOS in general, so many issues all around that it feels like a lot of corners have been cut.
It looks like typical shielding issue of the cable/connector or on the module itself. It causes noise leaks on the data path - that's why they are on stripes. If this is cable then fix should be easy and cheap. If on module - it could be quite expensive to fix. Also this type of hardware issues indicate assembly issues in factory - that's why some iphones have it and other wont. It would be useful to compare S/N numbers of the phones. Jus a private opinion.
Great channel. Just want to make sure I’m not missing something here. With a proper astro camera, calibration frames are required to take care of a host of noise issues with the sensor. Setting aside sensor quality for a moment, could one not fix this with dark frames?
Cheers mate. I appreciate the way you asked that. Some of the other "astrophotographers" come here being wankers and big noting themselves because they can buy loads of expensive gear, just to put down hundreds of thousands of people that are doing this with phones. I honestly appreciate the way you asked that. Yes, you could probably resolve it (i'm sure) with dark frames on the desktop. But thats not what phone astro is. When possible (and it always has been) it should be 100% on the phone. This isn't a situation where we go "this is a problem, go and buy a desktop and software to resolve it". Its a situation where it should be working, just like all other phones. Thanks mate
I’ve just done a face down 30 second photo on a soft dark surface and didn’t get any of the blue at all on my 15 Pro Max. But I then done the same thing a few more times and got the blue lines, they were in different places each time with a bit of red sometimes. I’m assuming it could be a bit of light leak of some sort, but it’s only an assumption.
@@ShayneMostyn I see it in some low light photos, the test photo of the face down I did was a 30 second exposure with an ISO of 10000 and was very strong blue markings in the photo. A photo that I took of the Aurora was a 30 second exposure with an ISO of 3200, but the blue markings were very faint (not in the same areas).
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 88 | คู่เอก "ป้อมเพชร vs อัสลามจอน"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ZqTVVbMgbo/mqdefault.jpg)
Hi, I’m from the UK and after you bringing this issue to my attention I noticed my new 16 pro max had the issue. I bought my phone direct from Apple so went to my local Apple Store. I wanted to be able to replicate the issues in store so took a small cardboard box to eliminate any light, sad but proved worthwhile.
The iPhone genius agreed there was an issue, he tried his phone and it was ok, and agreed to replace mine.
I said I wanted to test the new phone before I left the store without going through a full set up which he agreed to do.
The first replacement phone was worse than my original but the second was good.
Luckily the Apple Store had several phones in stock as I would have gone through the lot until happy and at that point in time they were happy to do this. Fortunately I bought direct from Apple and not a third party….
I also went strait into Apple Store and they said they would swap me untill it was all good, luckily it was good 1st try, and my girls 16 came and was fine. Crazy
if you had bought it from a third party you would've gotten the same treatment
apple's warranty is the same warranty, independent of where you got the phone from.
My thought, with other recent iPhone models still available New, why bother with iPhone 16 at all? Especially for long-exposure, night photography, iPhone 16 is not the only game in town, why even bother with this headache?
Good for you!
yeah but this shouldn't of happened in the first place. Why are they selling phones with KNOWN defects? Apple is a trillion dollar company I get it they are pulling all there man power towards Ai but don't forget the one thing that makes Apple Apple. Stability and usability with little to none mistakes. I just just like game devs who back in the game would have game testers to test for bugs and when the game is published it is flawless no bugs or mistakes or if there are bugs there incredible small. This was apple making there products easy to use and bug free but now they seem to start becoming what game devs do now. Release a game with Major bugs that inhibit the expeirnce and fix it later. It's not a matter of it's not possible becasue it is they have done it before its matter of will. Only god can know why this greedy corp is letting mistakes slip just so we can get our perious Ai so we can generate pictures of cats eating soup and drogs with cowboy hats 💀
Right, the amount of people that are actually doing serious nighttime/ astrophotography is probably such a niche part of Apple's clientele that it's easier for them to ignore such a small group. But I'd like to see this get more media attention
That doesn’t make any sense, the phone literally has the tag “Pro” in its name meaning that just like apple themselves says it in every keynote IT IS TARGETED for the pro/photography audience, if want average iPhone results the regular series is more than enough for average person, Pro phones are MEANT to used by the nerd audience and an audience like this is gonna get into every single little detail and gonna care about it all, this is just apple being “ok we fix that in 17 so you can spend more money on our phones next year” kinda thing, which they have a good track of doing.
BUT Apples entire marketing on EVERY iPhone is that "you don't need a camera because the iPhone is just as good".
So just put the word out and boycott iPhone 16, plenty of other iPhone models and Androids that can get the job down without the headache of worrying about a defect. Especially when dishing out the $$$$$ that Apple demands.
If this ever goes to court if apple does not replace a known bug they lose. Also class action.
The people that are actually doing serious nighttime/ astrophotograph are a very small niche. The people doing it with iphones is much much smaller than even that
This is almost certainly a hardware issue. Apple is likely to do everything possible to avoid addressing this problem to prevent potential profit loss, especially since most users may never notice.
Thank you for this! I was about to order an iPhone 16 to replace a 14, but now I think I'm going to wait.
Tim Apple: "you're shooting it wrong"
Thats a jasniac answer 😂
If Steve Jobs was still alive, that would be the exact response he would give! 🤣
My only suggestion to pressure Apple is to make it known on Twitter/X. This is where journalists hang out and if they sniff a story they will write about it.
Hi, I'm from Switzerland and my first iPhone 16 Pro Max (shipped on Sept 20th) had the blue-lines issue. Before I saw Shayne's test with the phone put down on a table in the dark, I took pictures of the milky way that didn't look great at all. I would consider myself being an experienced photographer. Thanks to Shayne I discoverd my iPhone 16 Pro Max was a faulty unit. I called Apple tech support and after some online testing they agreed to replace it. However I had to go to a local Apple store to do so. In the store the Genius again performed several camera tests with their diagnostic software and since a camera sensor issue was reported, they replaced the phone. Luckily, my new 16 pro Max doesn't show the blue lines anymore. Long story short, it seems to be a sensor related issue.
oh bei welchem store warst du?
@@svenp538 Glattzentrum
Thanks for explaining the difference between the apps and how they go about taking 30s night time images. Been testing back and forth with different apps the images are horribly blue using the standard camera app.
16 pro max user here, and no issues with blue glaring. Counting myself lucky.
Edit from the future: Tried all camera’s with an exposure of 30s. Not seeing blue glaring but I am seeing a lot of blue pixels on all camera’s modules. Not so lucky as I thought I was
Blue pixels are on most phones so that wouldn’t bother me. But the blue banding is a big issue.
Same thing for me, apparently this is normal, I’ve found multiple posts about this and this seems to be the case even for older iPhones.
@@domdomdomme1203Thank you for commenting this. I was about to waste god knows how long with Apple trying to get my new 16 Pro Max replaced. I only have two small blurry blue orbs on the right hand edge of the image. Really small though. I had to zoom in to see them.
I have too those blue dots/pixels appear in photos in all those cameras on my 16 pro max when I take photo in complete pitch black darkness, but they aren’t actually dead pixels, more like hot pixels which is normal acting for camera sensors overall? And it did took those photos at that max 30 second so it was completely dark.
But that blue banding, I’m not noticing those blue banding ”poles” but sometimes shadows when editing brightness up, I notice those horrible blue mess in shadows, so don’t know if that’s normal
I’m reading about the blue dots now, that might be infrared from the TrueDepth lidar sensor. The camera interprets it as blue light supposedly. 😮
I had this issue with my 16 Pro too, and Apple just sent me a replacement a couple days ago that works perfectly. The process was easy here in the US, once I showed them photo examples of the issue it only took a few minutes to get a replacement order in.
Good on ya, Shayne, for pursuing this. I changed to Apple after a decade of Android phones primarily because of my perception of their superior customer service. Looks like I was wrong. My 16 Pro Max is buggy as heck. it keeps dropping Bluetooth connection to my hearing aids, photos and videos frequently present with incorrect orientation, or only display as tiny thumbnails. Very disappointing. Glad to have you on our side.
yeah i got those issues too,, the tiny thumbnails and orientation fkn arghh
@@LAMethWitch I have that too but it's gotta be a software error as it only happens when I take a photo and look at the photo from the camera app. If I later go into the photos app all looks well. So a IOS 18 error rather than a iphone 16 error.
@@bunkermagnus yeah, man i have 2 iphone 16 pros!!! I got 16 pro 256GB in desert colour on opening day- and now 2 days ago I got 1TB 16 pro max in white
I've done the opposite. Had Apple phones for ages. Was so disappointed with the 16 Pro Max (which had the blue streaks), I sent it back and switched to Android. No issues with the S24 Ultra. And it's cheaper.
Stick with them Peter. I’m sorry as a user myself that the 16 Pro has been bad for you, mine seems good. I couldn’t possibly find the audacity to defend Apple who would I think I was to do so, but in my experience their customer service has always been very good. I suspect there is many reasons this phone has got little bugs - I think the phones weren’t ready and it’s all because of this A.I thing. I’m willing to bet by six months in the phone will be exactly as it should be although, it shouldn’t have to take that long.
Wow, I am glad you randomly popped up in my recommended, top notch effort on this video mate, you’ve done your due diligence and clearly know your stuff, love from a fellow Aussie ❤🇦🇺
Cheers mate
My 30 second exposure is perfect black on my iPhone 16 pro max. I'm running the 18.2 beta just in case that matters. Seems to me it could well be a software issue but only time will tell. Keep up the good fight.
Did you try it before the update?
@@jamesn7156 Good test idea. I am on 18.1 (the version coming out Monday) and I have two very very small blue orbs on the right edge of the image.
@@jamesn7156 sadly no which is why I say time will tell
@@russwright I’m hoping this is software not lining up with the new hardware. If it’s totally fine for a 10 second long exposure, something needs to be calibrated for 30 seconds. Otherwise it would start to show up at 10 seconds and get worse for 30 seconds.
@@jamesn7156 I think software should fix it for most people, but I also think that a hardware problem should not be ruled out, since I’ve heard about a lot of hardware issues with the iPhone 16. However, we do hope that a software update will fix it. :)
I have a 15 pro and did the face down 30 second exposure and I do have blue specks and patterns in the image. I did it on a white paper and it wasn't as noticeable as the darker colors I tried it on. It is not always repeatable even if the the blue is there, it is less noticeable in different shots. So, it may be present on all phones, we just don't notice it. Love your videos by the way!
I'm was really torn between upgrading my xs to a 15 pro or 16 pro, and I think this video made it easier for me to choose 😆
This is crazy, my work 15 Pro Max does similar thing, especially noticable with telephoto. Friend of mine have 16 Pro and there is same issue, we also went together to Apple store and tried in on multiple phones that we could, and every single one had this issue. But at the same time, my significant other has 16 Pro Max, which so far seem fine, no issue at all, and it is early device when preorders opened.
I have an iPhone 15 Pro Max and I am certain that this model has also the issue. In my case there is a combination of blue and red noice.
There is even a photo I posted in the fb page that appears in this particular video.
Greetings from Greece, I really love your channel.
I had it on the 15 pro and a software update fixed it at some point.
Time to test the pixel 9 pro astrophotography 😁
Really?! Was it red on your 15 pro? I seen where some 14 and 15 had red and some had blue and also some with blue red and green lol
So you had it then didn’t have it after an update on the 15 pro for sure?
I have a blue - red stripe problem on my iPhone 15 pro max
@@KMakrozahopoulos that’s wild, thanks for the info, I have been trying to figure out what’s causing it and how long it’s actually been an issue, seems going all the way back to at least the 13 pro max this has been a thing in some devices. Crazy, I have found some galaxy users also have issues with long night mode as well, so I don’t think it’s only iPhone either lol but that’s another story I suppose
That’s unfortunate. I’ll not be upgrading for sure.
I just found on my iPhone 14 Pro Max today, thanks to your video. I bought the my iPhone 14 Pro Max 2 years ago.
For those who want to inspect, Open Camera, Set Night Mode Timer to 30 seconds.
I got this blue line mentioned in the video.
Man this start to bug me, after making aware of this issue after 2 years after buying the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
My iPhones 16 pro max had blue streaks covering up to 90% of the screen but as of the most recent beta update doing the same test results in maybe 4 or 5 blue pixels which is a massive improvement.
Yep, I did the 30 second test on my desk and got the blue lines. Thanks for posting this.
I had some interesting results from testing with camera face down in the dark, with my 16 Pro Max. My first one was crazy blue noise with a circle in the middle. Then the next ones were black with white noise/pixels spread out. Didn’t matter if I was shooting raw or not. It’s almost like it had to do some pixel mapping first to get all black after. There was a weird anomaly on that blue circular one as it wanted to call it a portrait but I wasn’t in portrait mode…
EDIT: I was able to reproduce the blue circular noise…if I’m in photo mode, jpeg, have manual aperture on, shoot 30s, it will give me crazy blue noise effect. If I don’t have manual aperture on, it won’t give crazy blue effect. In RAW, you dont get the custom aperture option, and in my case I get all black, with white pixels spread out
This is so sad. I can affirm that this is hardware related. I have apple care+, they took my word for it, verified it, and replaced my phone. My new one is perfect. My friend also got the same 16 Pro Max, his was fine. The difference between his and my first phone was mine had a battery manufactured in August 2024. His iPhone and my replacement iPhone have batteries manufactured in July, both don’t have issues.
Following on from my previous comment, I replaced my 16 pro yesterday.
I was in my 14 day return period and I knew software wasn’t going to fix my issues, despite AppleCare saying there’ll ‘definitely’ be a fix in the next 2 weeks.
New one doesn’t have the blue streaks issue. Quite a few hot pixels but nowhere near as bad as my previous 16P. At ISO8000 I’m getting completely black images. At ISO10000, the hot pixels appear but it’s not a massive dealbreaker.
Photographic styles also seem to be behaving themselves this time.
What exactly are hot pixels? I’ve tested my camera but apparently I’m seeing some blue pixels, is that what you are referring to? Is it normal?
Sorry, but how exactly do you get the ISO that high? When I do the test that he explained in the video, I’m only getting ISO 1250 in a completely dark cabinet.
I remember seeing a very similar looking issue in photos on my HTC M7 back in the day. Just like Apple, HTC said that there was no issue until they started repairing phones for free. Turns out the camera module was not thermally insulated that well and the heat from the processor was interfering with the camera causing pink banding. Before I got mine fixed I would always notice the issue disappeared if I took photos while outside in the snow but reappeared when I went inside to a warmer environment.
Thx for surfacing this issue. My 16PM does not have the issue. My wife’s phone has it. We bought it at the same time directly from apple. Going to try to replace hers in an apple store as others suggested.
Hello Shayne i love your videos and would like your opinion i am contemplating getting the 16 pro max for myself do you think i should wait for the 17 or wait a few months to get the 16 to give them time to address the camera issue?
they aint going to address the issue as they dont think it is big enough to worry abot,i have the 16 pro max and my phone doesnt have the issue. So its a lottery or gamble it seems.
After watching your video, I tried it and yes, I send the lines there immediately and wait for the blue one to arrive.
Perhaps a characteristic of the new faster read-out sensor? Faster sensors often compromise on DR and this is most apparent in dark shadows.
You just talked me out of buying the 16. Was planning to upgrade from my se ‘22
Just tested all three cameras on my 16PM and so far so good. Hoping this gets resolved for others.
I took mine (2 days old) to the Apple Store. The technicians tried everything that you shared, Shayne. I replicated the aurora borealis blue screen for them. We tried the same test on the store's 16 Pro Max phone and their phone was fine, with no blue haze. At this point, they ordered a new camera unit and I will take the phone back in to have them install the new unit. If it still is messed up, they agreed to replace the phone. My question, though. Every new boxed phone is sealed. Once we rip open the sealing strips, the phone now becomes an open-box phone if we do not accept it after testing. How many new phones will the Apple Store allow us to open before finding a good one? Hopefully, the 1st one I open (anticipating the new camera will not work) will be good to go.
Just found your channel mate hope you do this for all iPhones. I have the 13 pro my first iPhone . When I first got it said it didn’t have enough storage. Even though I only had 70gb used anyway they talked me into buying more storage that I didn’t need. It was a problem with the phone. They’re terrible to deal with.
Thanks for this. Happy I watched this today as it’s helped me decide to stick to my 15pro
Mine has only one short faint blue line in the bottom right. It’s usable. Sorry to see that others are having it much worse.
This seems to be a sensor calibration issue, since sensors typically will have hotspots that are calibrated and compensated for in the calibration process.
this actually makes sense. I wonder if its the lidar sensor that could be causing the blue lines in particular....
Do you see this looking at the pics on a computer monitor? It could be the actual phone screen. OLED screens are notorious for banding issues, and you'd often only see it in certain backgrounds.
I returned a TV because of this.
Thanks for keeping us informed. I was going to the the 16 just for night mode; I'll wait.
It's 100% a hardware error where certain batches of sensors are faulty. Big corporations chasing profit margins will lead to this and 95% of iphone users will never notice this as it is a fringe use case so Apple will ignore this. the difference between my first 16 pro and my replacement 16 pro is like night and day, no pun intended. First phone had super blue all over the frame while the replacements looks exactly like my wife's 15 pro. Also, Apple staff at the Apple store managed to reproduce the blue noise while I was in the Apple Genius bar.
Explain how this is happening to my 15pro if it’s hardware? It only started doing it after I updated to iOS 18
@@turnbasedtoddy7664 Well I guess it's just as much an enigma as the fact that my wife's iphone 15 pro did NOT get this error after updating to IOS 18.
It's just the phone's inclination, when resting on the back, because of the protrution of the rear lens there is a little gap from where enters a tiny bit of light to the sensor, which produce the akward images we're getting. Try taping all the lenses and then take a shot and you will probably get a pitch dark one.
The desktop test is simply to see where the lines are. Apple are not interested in a black photo with blue lines and nor should they be. Its only to see where they are. Then go and take some photos and see if it turns up in the pics. If its in the pics, they absolutely should be fixing this.
@@ShayneMostynbut the lines are there cause light coming in from the corner? In pitch black room doing the desktop test they don't appear
@@ShayneMostyn blue lines are light, how hard is to comprehend that??? your test is beyond stupid...
@@ISKMFINalso my experience
Lets think differently. Who manufacturers the sensors in the camera. I've been having the exact same issue with a dji product.
This is super interesting in the fact that Apple will hopefully fix. As tech getting more and more advanced, if any phone manufacturer wants to have the best camera capabilities, they need to listen to the users of all genres of use. Great video Shayne!
Well, keep us updated so we know what happens!
Hi Shayne just tested my iphone seems to be good just had to clean the lenses as it was picking up fine dust as soon as i cleaned them had no problems
I saw your vid a few weeks back and that’s the first thing I checked when I opened the box..
Lucky mine was good, but my point is ‘I was Lucky’.
Cheers for pointing out about the 30second shutter speed too..
All this years I had a 12 and I never knew.
Anyway, if you guys need a partition signed or anything else to help get ya through this, send it my way coz I’d be more than happy to help..
Also, just bout to order a lumilapse.. sounds interesting 🤘
I had camera module issues on the iPhone 14 Pro. Apple was very nice and replaced it 3 times. I was told it was the camera module and no one else would notice this issue taking "regular" photos. Engineer said they would not be correcting this issue as efforts would be focused on the iPhone 15. I tested the iPhone 15 Pro in the store when it came out and bought it. No issues. I am thinking this is the same issue with the 16 camera module.
I think it might be a software issue. When I first conducted the test I had it minor in the complete black test and it did not show up at all in my night photos running iOS 18.0.1 after upgrading to iOS 18.1 (non beta) it is 300% worse and showing up in the night shots. Wish there was a way I can send it to Shayne so he could see it himself.
Yep, mine got a lot worse when upgrading to 18.1 but I noticed the ISO went up to 10,000 from 5000 so that makes sense
I'm glad this video popped up because I have the exact same problem on the US model! On the Chinese model (which I purposely bought, since I was sure their version would be different, as it always has been), this problem does not exist.
Yeah that is a valid problem. My iPhone 13 Pro shows nothing of sort, and according to Apple my phone shouldn’t be the greatest iPhone yet.
I’ve checked several iPhone 16 Pro in Singapore … at the Apple Store and local mobile service providers… so far no issues (no blue streaks) appearing with the 30s exposure photo shots
So I went ahead and purchased my new iPhone 16 Pro. Tested it.. no issues detected.
The stock sold in Singapore is manufactured in China.
It's like the green orbs that float around in almost all iPhone videos. Step 1, the hardest step, is always to get Apple to admit there is a problem. I'm a software engineer and our company identified a bug in macOS Sonoma. It took about 3 months to get them to acknowledge a problem and another 4 months for them to fix it. They likely eventually will in your case: you'll just need to buy an iPhone 17. This looks like a hardware issue to me. Could be caused by uneven heat distribution on the camera sensor so using it in a warm environment might make it worse. Wonder what would happen if you cooled the phone a bit and then tested it?
Thanks for this video, was going to get the iPhone 16 pro and get into astrophotography, but will do a bit more research or just get the 15 pro, will be interesting to see if Apple eventually sort this out
It seems sort of rare for a company to put out a product (hardware or software) that is perfect from the start. But when they try to deny there is a problem, without first investigating, is very bad. This is the risk you take when you are an early adopter.
I just took a 10 sec night mode photo with my iPhone 16 ProMax. I put the lens against my bed sheet in a dark room. The resulting photo was just black with a small amount of noise. No blue lines. Then I realized you said 30Sec. So I waited for 30Sec to show up (instead of 10) and took a 30sec shot with the aforementioned technique. This time the resulting photo had a blue pixel in the centre of frame, three around the top and also 3 around the bottom. I’m starting to think this might be a computational problem. I believe you can “turn off” the individual lenses in the camera settings. And this might help to answer what’s going on.
Thanks for highlighting this. After watching your earlier video I found that my phone had this issue. Called Apple support and the guy did the test and did an appointment for my phone checkup. Sadly here in New Zealand there is no Apple Store so these issues are handled by “Authorised “ Apple repairs and these guys acknowledge the problem but want me to hand over my phone for couple of days for repairs. Am not comfortable with that as I want a straight swap. Thoughts people on what to do now?
It looks like amp glow or thermal glow and if it’s down to that it isn’t a hardware fault per se, but a characteristic of the sensor quality that can vary quite a bit from sensor to sensor.
Astrophotographers will usually subtract such average sensor issues by taking an iso and temperature matched “dark frame” - a black exposure like your test and subtract that from the raw sensor data.
I don’t get as many blue streaks as you do on the dark frame test, but they are there along with some hot pixels and some red amp glow at the fringes. Usually the magnitude is of these errors are “low” wrt to the dynamic range of the sensor so I think that Apple are stretching the histogram too much post stacking which while makes the starfield look better will exacerbate these sensor errors.
That's a bummer. I just got the iPhone 16 after having the Xs for six years. Now I'm stuck with the 16 for another six years. I just did the test, and mine has all kinds of blue in it. That sucks.
My 16 Pro Max has that problem too…
Now Red noise.
I had the same issue and went to the Apple Store. They said that they had not heard of this and stressed that it was a software issue. They had me downgrade off of the beta to see if it was still there. It was but instead of the blue banding it only had a few blue hot pixels. They still exchanged the phone and now I have red noise on one side. No blue at all, but now red. 😢 I should have just kept my original.
Take the test photo in RAW to get a less processed base image of the problem. Also can’t remember but there used to be a site the decoded serial numbers so we can see when the unit’s we’re manufactured and what plant and line etc and compile a list of good vs bad units and might be able to work out what batches are bad and to avoid.
There was a rumor about the iPhone 16 pro max getting the new Sony sensor this year. I wonder if it’s an issue for this years main sensor versus the old ones
It’s nothing new, there are iPhone 13, 14 and 15 with this same issue, some have red banding, some blue, I seen one with red and blue and some green, and some like mine (replacement) iPhone 16 pro and my girls iPhone 16 pro work great totally.
In all honesty during my round with the blues on my first iPhone 16 and first iPhone ever, I ran into some galaxy’s that had issues with night mode not working properly at long exposure as well. So it may really be a hit and miss issue regardless the brand.
It has just gone unnoticed for the most part because it’s a small amount of people using it in this way, and out of them and even smaller amount of people that have the issue and beyond that even smaller amount that notices it lol.
But for those that do I agree they should be able to get it fixed.
Apple Store told me in person that if my replacement does it then I can bring it back as well and they would swap untill I get one that works as it should through and through so idk, I’m glad I didn’t have to go back.. I was able to show them “normal” night mode photos with the blue mess along with the blue screen that I captured in a darkened room.
I did a ton of investigating on this, looked at loads of night mode astrophotos from all model iPhones to compare and see what I could find, being new to Apple I was not happy I had the problem, and so It was driving me nuts inspecting endlessly lol
When I was in the Apple store in the UK looking at this because I raised it as a support issue, they tried 2 store phones to see if there was an issue. One had the issue (like my phone) and the other didn't. Both Apple techs agreed there was an issue. I kept my phone because I wanted it logged as an issue on my phone early on in the process. Guess this memo means that there was no point and I should have tried to get a replacement. Watching this story unfold with great interest.
That white cane walking with engineering looking into the matter resulted in coffee on the screen! 🤣
Does this happen on 16 base? Or is it only on Pro/Pro Max?
Very good find, you're the only one speaking about this issue. I hope Apple fixes this ASAP
This is likely a camera module calibration issue with dark current. Due to second sourcing of sensors, some might be more prone to this issue than others.
Well I tested mine and did not have the banding. My Lumilapse just arrived so when I can get out of my light pollution area I will give it a real test.
I have the issue - bought at launch day - and it is massive when using 30 second night mode. The entire picture is blue.
This looks like readout noise. Depending on many factors this may be hard to calibrate out effectively. You don’t see it in bright light because the noise is quite low relative to the light being received and converted to electrons. In low light, this is however there and is intrinsic to the sensor (detector layer plus read out). It could be contamination in the manufacturing process or even intrinsic to the design / fab process. Hard to say. My guess is that SW will be hard to fix it with in all cases. Sensor calibration techniques are common and are certainly already used. But there are limits. Many many iPhones have been built so far and are in the distribution pipeline. I suspect this won’t go away soon.
Thank you Shane for the information
NGL, the sentence "if you use your *phone* for astrophotography...." got me :) The advance of technology behind this statement ...
HAHA cheers mate
you are really passionate for phone camera's i do hope you get to try the vivo x200 pro or x100 ultra that phone camera is a beast. I'm switching from the 15 pro max and will be waiting for my vivo to arrive. As a person who constantly changes phones I always find apple behind the competition
i would say it is , i noise bleed, on some cameras there is pink color. its just pushing to much sansitivity on iso side, and it just a electronic noise
Thanks. I've been holding off buying a 16pm. I normally wait for a couple of months to allow for problems to surface and for fixes to be revealed. I've already had ifs about the quality of the UW lens. So I'm going to continue to wait to learn more from your experience.
When/if I decide to buy I'll go to an Apple store. In the past I've bought through 3rd party sellers. I'd want to test it before I leave the store. I have a black microfiber lens cloth which makes it easy to get a 30s night mode shot at ISO 5,000.
Very interesting I watch your previous video about this issue. Been subscribed to your channel for a while. I love night photography and I have shared your video now with several bigger TH-camrs in North America. Hopefully they will start covering it and make this a bigger issue and hopefully Apple will fix this.
Did the test and I was relieved to see my 16 pro doesn’t have this issue! Hopefully apple changes this attitude because it will really hurt them in the future…
I'd imagine that these camera modules themselves have an issue during manufacture, call it a QA issue, maybe a coating over the lens, or the sensors themselves, but it seems like from the 15 to the 16 a change has been made to the light sensor has been made (to cut costs of manufacture?) but, maybe Apple have realised that a higher percentage of that particular componet has this issue and so are slyly trying to back out "Oh, its noise, every camera has to deal with this!"Yeah, right, then WHY doesn the Pixels and the Samsungs and previous iPhones NOT have this issue hmmm??? 🤔🤨🤨🤨 😎🇬🇧
Mmm… hard to say what causes this issue exactly, and why it does not occur with other iPhones … but, generally speaking, in digital sensor cameras, the closer the noise-level is to the signal-level (noise to image data ratio), the more prevalent banding will be, if you show underexposed. And under exposure is exactly what occurs when a camera in auto-mode, takes a primarily dark subject, and presents it as “truly dark”… a normal exposure of pure black, would result in the same as for pure white… middle grey, so in fact the image is underexposed, by pulling exposure down from middle grey to the blackness you see, thus bringing image noise (blue bands) and image data closer together… banding could specifically be due to sensor heating, just as with sensor hot pixels on traditional digital cameras
It actually does happen on other iPhones, some 13, 14, and 15 as well with red, blue, and blue green and red…..and I’ve seen some galaxy users have issues with night mode long exposure as well, not all but some…but this makes sense as a possibility, I suspect that when the photo is processed the fault I think is coming as the processing happens and there is a glitch when it is trying to process the darkest parts of the photo in night mode, so your reasoning is making sense to me along with what I was already thinking about. I have been trying to figure it out since it happened to me lol, I got mine fixed (replaced) but I still am trying to figure it out and find solutions outside of Apple. So maybe there will be a fix found for those unfortunately stuck w this issue. Thanks for sharing
@@willbelial3775 right… what you can try is this… using an Astro-photography enabled application (affinity photo etc), try and set the purely black photo (intended to be black, but displaying the banding/defects), as a black-frame reference, and add the other actual Astro photographs you want to use as the final image. The stacked result should subtract the defects in the black frame, rather effectively
@@willbelial3775hmm… my two attempts at replying to you failed… stupid TH-cam! Last try… take a black-frame reference … intended to be a purely black image, but showing the banding… use this in an astro photography app supporting stacking and black and white frame references… select your photo with the same sort of banding defect, but with the intended night sky image, as the actual source… stack them, and see what happens
Could the titanium used in the phone,s construction be at the heart of the problem
So this is a sensor issue. I had the same type of issue with my Canon 5D3. The issue is that the sensor is having a banding issue with the low light shooting. The way to get it fixed is to shoot a truly long exposure for the foreground and then take a tracked image for the sky at a lower iso. It’s not the shooters fault that all these phones being able to shoot a night shot is cool but the act of actually doing it with a real setup that will give you actual control of taking the photo.
Shayne, I’m glad I wasn’t tempted this year, I was disappointed with the 15 Pro Max last year, I think I’m done with the iPhones now, I like my new mini iPad 7, but iPhones? Nah….
So, I tried this dark frame 30s capture on my iPhone 15 Pro Max.
At first, I had a strong gradient show up on the top right of the photo. I think that was because the camera lens and the photo bump caused light leakage due to not being quite flush with the table.
I then took some Starbucks gift cards and propped up the lower left corner of the phone and tried again. It took a couple of tries, but I got the right thickness to get the lens properly flush and blocking out all exterior light.
This time, I got a completely black frame. I’ll have to do some further processing to bring up the gain to see if there’s any hidden streaks, but on initial inspection, it looks like I don’t have this problem.
Of course, this is just one data point.
take regular dark photos of the night sky and see if you have the issue on photos
Got the same problem with my Samsung S20U.
I been trying to tell people, it’s not just iPhone, many phones struggle in night mode long exposure even Samsung, hope you can find a workaround for it!
I’m feeling super fortunate that my 16 pro max doesn’t seem to be suffering from this issue. I love taking pictures of the night sky so I would be very unhappy if I couldn’t do that.
No blue lines when I aimed my camera at the table for 30 seconds. That’s a relief
So apparently this is a software issue or at least mostly a software issue. If you shoot in ProRaw and then edit the photo in the photos app, the lines will go away. However this did not fully work for me personally and I was left with a bunch of blue dots that somewhat looked like stars. The blue streaking happens in any other mode other than ProRaw and cannot be removed by doing this.
I am unsure if all the dots left over are actually physical deformities in the sensor but I am still exchanging mine just in case anyway. For the most part I assume that it’s mainly a software issue and only some phones have physical issues.
That doesnt work. It just darkens the shadows.
@@ShayneMostyn Is that what it's doing? I just hit the edit button and didn't really change anything about it and they disappeared for the most part.
I guess the situation really is a lot more complex than just a software problem then. I'm hoping the next one I get doesn't have the issue at least.
I am in the UK and spoke to apple about this after the initial issue with my iPhone 16PM camera app was resolved with IOS 18.1. He tested his phone using the same lay it flat on the desk test and saw the same issue but then repeated the test by holding the other end of the phone slightly off the desk and issue went away for him. I tried the same and it improved the amount of blue on my picture but it wasn't completely gone. He also passed issue on to engineering but has recommended that I go to Apple store which I will do some time in next few weeks.
Presumably it only improved because it no longer was dark enough (once he lifted it up a bit) to shoot with a 30 second exposure. That’s something I’d check if you want to be sure. As it’s only happening with the 30 second exposure.
He did say that himself and even made sure I took my phone out of the case to ensure the case wasn’t raising the cameras enough to let light in. I’ll just have to see what happens when I get to my local store
I've tested my 30s exposure photo on a flat surface and total darkness and my 16 pro max didn't have any blue lines or any other artefacts it was perfectly black photo.
The phone is the EU version with SIM! Model A3296 bought in Romania!
Well I finally got my camera to work, another bug bug with the camera app crashing on the iPhone 16 pro max. And then had a chance to finally capture the northern lights in my area to see blue dots mixed with the stars. This like many camera sensors indicates dead spots on the sensor. I never had the blue bands with mine. They tried to tell me it was expected noise and normal, I argued the point and was escalated to the next level. Then they agreed to replace it, so I’m waiting on the replacement now. Let’s see if I end up with a blue band one, another one with dead spots on the sensor, or one that works like I would expect for the cost of this phone.
16 pro max user here luckily no issues with mine so far
It is possible that the reason for the photos request from Apple is that in some testing they found light leaks that may be causing the problem and wanted to see if something in the assembly process was different with the phones that have the problem. So may not be doing anything nefarious. Certainly there may be those at Apple that may try to just make the problem go away, but I suspect most engineers are trying to find out the cause so they can fix it. Good on you, though, for pointing this out and staying on it.
Great review!!!😮😊😊
I just tried the night mode on iPhone 16 pro max and I’m not getting the blue stripes, it sucks what happened to you
well I have just tried my iphone 16 pro which was bought on release day and if you try just putting the camera down on a flat surface and take 30second photo it has blue streaks some I have seen some people say how they tested it and the same II even tried it in a box. If however I then take the same photo in the Darkroom there is no blue banding what so ever. So I wonder if its just that the sensor is picking up any sort of tiny exterior light. Either way looks like my phone is good.
I’m sure you’ve ruled out things like climate/geographical location as culprits? I.E. some places are more humid or more colder than others which can screw with camera lenses? I’ve had the blue issue happen with a Nikon D3500. It didn’t matter which lens I put on, this would happen when I was attempting to photograph storms at night: tornadoes, lightning, sprites, even just the auroras the last few months.
The only times it would appear in my night photography is when it was too humid, or too cold. I thought there might’ve been an issue with dirt on my lenses or even in my camera, which happens while shooting in windy, dusty fields. I usually have to get my Nikon cleaned up after a heavy storm season even with the best protection I can get on my camera. I live in Ontario, Canada and the summer temperatures can get up to 35-40°C with very high humidity.
In the winter, it’s generally -10°C to -25°C, and while there’s obviously no humidity in the winter, if I skip the arduous process of acclimating my Nikon to the temperature in my apt (which is generally very warm given I’m directly over the boiler room - yes it’s hell in summer) then the same thing happens. I’ve only had my iPhone 16 for a few days but so far, it’s passed the ‘test’ on my desk in a dark room with no other lighting. It’s unseasonably warm with humid nights at the moment, so I’ll take it out the next few nights and give it a test with my tripod and see if it happens. Not sure if this will help at all. Hope you do get it resolved though.
I hope this gets more attention. 16 Pro is no option for me as someone interested in this
Just tested it with my 16 Pro Max. In my case it only seems to happen when the camera app uses the Fusion lens. When I manually force it to only use the wide angle or tele lens, it doesn't have the blue band(s). Weirdly enough I have not been able to disable the Fusion lens in 1x mode.
I was so keen to update my phone but this is concerning. Basically, I'm going to have to test the absolute F out of it within the 14 day period so I can swap it if need be, or just get my money back and be done with it. This whole release feels so half-baked from the phone, to the AI lacking staggered rollout and the iOS in general, so many issues all around that it feels like a lot of corners have been cut.
It looks like typical shielding issue of the cable/connector or on the module itself. It causes noise leaks on the data path - that's why they are on stripes. If this is cable then fix should be easy and cheap. If on module - it could be quite expensive to fix. Also this type of hardware issues indicate assembly issues in factory - that's why some iphones have it and other wont. It would be useful to compare S/N numbers of the phones. Jus a private opinion.
Great channel. Just want to make sure I’m not missing something here. With a proper astro camera, calibration frames are required to take care of a host of noise issues with the sensor. Setting aside sensor quality for a moment, could one not fix this with dark frames?
Cheers mate. I appreciate the way you asked that. Some of the other "astrophotographers" come here being wankers and big noting themselves because they can buy loads of expensive gear, just to put down hundreds of thousands of people that are doing this with phones. I honestly appreciate the way you asked that. Yes, you could probably resolve it (i'm sure) with dark frames on the desktop. But thats not what phone astro is. When possible (and it always has been) it should be 100% on the phone. This isn't a situation where we go "this is a problem, go and buy a desktop and software to resolve it". Its a situation where it should be working, just like all other phones. Thanks mate
I’ve just done a face down 30 second photo on a soft dark surface and didn’t get any of the blue at all on my 15 Pro Max.
But I then done the same thing a few more times and got the blue lines, they were in different places each time with a bit of red sometimes.
I’m assuming it could be a bit of light leak of some sort, but it’s only an assumption.
Do you see it in actual photos, not just the "test"? I havent seen this on a 15
@@ShayneMostyn I see it in some low light photos, the test photo of the face down I did was a 30 second exposure with an ISO of 10000 and was very strong blue markings in the photo. A photo that I took of the Aurora was a 30 second exposure with an ISO of 3200, but the blue markings were very faint (not in the same areas).