Barney Britton and Kelcey Smith for Digital Photography Review:
The most likely cause of the iPhone 5’s purple haze is probably lens flare and internal reflections in the camera lens assembly. All lenses are succeptable to lens flare to some degree, and as you can see from the images at the top of this page, the iPhone 4S isn’t immune either (ditto the iPhone 4 and competitive smartphones from other manufacturers).
It’s a shame that this even has to be said, but apparently many tech writers are so profoundly stupid, they don’t understand it.
I have thousands of photos, most taken on iPhones over the past three years, older ones on other cell phones, and while I occasionally got lens flares, they were always white or pale yellow. Now they’re glaring purple. Two days ago I went to the cemetery, and got photos covered in purple. Something has definitely changed. When the flares were whitish, they weren’t noticeable, but since I got my iPhone 5 I’m constantly seeing purple in my shots. It’s not the existence of flares that’s changed, it’s their color, I think.
I think it’s harsh to call those people “profoundly stupid”, and I think @johndynes’ comment is on the money. If you were taking photos without purple flares before, and now you have pruple flares, that’s a regression. Most people don’t care about the physics.
To back this up, we’ll probably see a fix in the iPhone 5S, physics be damned. They’ll coat the inside of the lens or move it slightly back or something and the issue will almost entirely go away.
FWIW, I don’t have an iPhone 5 so I’m basing my opinions on what other people have said — I’m assuming people are seeing an increase in lens flare in real photos, not just when engineering the situation.
I get lens flare on a £1200 professional Nikon lens. People who pontificate without understanding are indeed profoundly stupid.
That’s what you believe, not a fact. Prior iPhones (at least from the 4 and onward) also got purple flare in certain conditions, but nobody cared than, nor did anyone was surprised by it. iPhone 5 also get purple flare in certain conditions, yet now it’s a problem, since techblogs need Apple-releated problems to talk about. Give me a break.
I’ve found the flare to be both incredibly easy to achieve purposely and incredibly easy to avoid. I’m not one to take tons of pictures, but having owned one iPhone or another since 3G launch day I’ve never experienced this except when I was purposely trying to recreate it when the reports surfaced.