While Apple made a number of significant improvements to the iPhone 5 camera, many users were quick to report that they were noticing purple haze, or a purple flare in photos taken with their iPhone 5. Alarmist reports flew around the web, and some sites reported the matter as a “huge problem” for the iPhone 5.
We noted in our report that the purple haze amounts to nothing more than common lens flare, and now Apple has issued an official support document saying essentially the same thing, and advising users to slightly change the angle of the shot to fix the issue:
Most small cameras, including those in every generation of iPhone, may exhibit some form of flare at the edge of the frame when capturing an image with out-of-scene light sources. This can happen when a light source is positioned at an angle (usually just outside the field of view) so that it causes a reflection off the surfaces inside the camera module and onto the camera sensor. Moving the camera slightly to change the position at which the bright light is entering the lens, or shielding the lens with your hand, should minimize or eliminate the effect.
Indeed, lens flare has affected Apple’s previous iPhones as well. TheNextWeb provides the above header image comparing lens flare on the iPhone 4S to the iPhone 5. Lens flare is nothing new, and it’s not a “problem” with the iPhone 5 camera. If you don’t want lens flare in your photos, just use better lighting for your photos.
