{"id":529417,"date":"2026-04-14T00:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T00:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/529417\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T00:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T00:21:10","slug":"blurry-iphone-text-picture-problem-is-there-an-easy-solution-im-missing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/529417\/","title":{"rendered":"Blurry iPhone Text Picture Problem: Is There An Easy Solution I’m Missing?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Collectively I\u2019d like to think that OMAAT readers know just about everything, so I\u2019m wondering if anyone might be able to help with a solution to my problem\u2026<\/p>\n

My one annoyance with using the iPhone camera<\/p>\n

I review airlines and hotels in great detail, though I take a pretty low-tech approach to doing so. For as long as I can remember, I\u2019ve just been using my iPhone to take pictures for the blog, and I find that it does the trick.<\/p>\n

\"\"The iPhone does the trick for taking plane cabin pictures<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a professional photographer, and for me, the iPhone strikes the right balance between portability, ease of use, and quality of pictures. The reality is that when I board a flight, I often have only a matter of seconds to take pictures, and my goal is also to fly under the radar as much as possible, and not arouse suspicion among airline crews about what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n

\"\"It\u2019s easy to fly under the radar with an iPhone<\/p>\n

The iPhone camera has become really good nowadays, and the quality evolution is impressive\u2026 for the most part. As the iPhone\u2019s features have in theory improved in recent years, there\u2019s one aspect of the camera that I find is getting worse.<\/p>\n

Specifically, when I use the camera to take a picture of text (like a business class menu or a hotel restaurant menu), I find the text is increasingly blurry. I guess part of the issue is that the iPhone has gotten so good and high resolution that it has a hard time deciding where to focus when taking a picture of a page, and that gets tricky with text.<\/p>\n

For what it\u2019s worth, I have an iPhone 17 Pro Max, and before that, I had an iPhone 16 Pro Max, and both have had exactly the same issue (so this problem wasn\u2019t isolated to one phone). For those who have no clue what I\u2019m talking about, below is an example of a picture of an Etihad wine list, and how it\u2019s much blurrier than I feel like it should be.<\/p>\n

\"\"Etihad first class wine list, but make it a bit blurry! (from 2026)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s kind of funny, taking pictures of menus with text is probably the single biggest thing that frustrates me about the photography aspect of flights, because it feels like taking a picture of a piece of paper should be super easy, but it always gives me issues (and I usually end up taking like 20 pictures of the same page, and then picking the best one). I do this stuff for a living, and I should be able to do better than posting blurry text.<\/p>\n

Some people might be thinking \u201cwell wait, has something actually changed?\u201d I know that seven years ago when I was taking pictures with previous generation iPhones, I thought that text was significantly clearer, and less blurry.<\/p>\n

\"\"I feel like iPhone pictures of text have become worse (from 2019)<\/p>\n

Is there some obvious solution I\u2019m missing?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried Googling this question, but there\u2019s oddly little discussion about this online (maybe I\u2019m just describing my problem poorly?). It\u2019s confusing, because I can\u2019t imagine I\u2019m the only person who uses the iPhone camera to sometimes take pictures of text.<\/p>\n

Is there something obvious I\u2019m missing, or something I\u2019m doing wrong? I\u2019ve read it makes sense to take pictures from further away (since it\u2019s partly a focus issue), and then cropping the picture, so that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been doing lately. Even so, the quality is still pretty bad. Is there some setting I have to change? Do I just need to carry another camera or an old iPhone specifically to take pictures of menus and stuff?<\/p>\n

Sorry, I know this is an arbitrary question, but it\u2019s something I\u2019ve been dealing with for quite a long time now, and I figure I should ask and see if there\u2019s a solution. With some upcoming travel, I figure this is as good of a time as any to ask.<\/p>\n

I should mention that I appreciate that an increasing number of airlines and hotels publish their menus online, which is ideal. In those situations, I can just screenshot the menus there, and don\u2019t have to worry about taking pictures.<\/p>\n

Some people might suggest that I get a scanner, or something, but that\u2019s not really practical. For example, when I\u2019m at a hotel restaurant, I\u2019m not going to bring a scanner to breakfast, and I\u2019m also not going to \u201csteal\u201d the menu (often in a nice binder) and take it home.<\/p>\n

Bottom line<\/p>\n

I feel like my iPhone serves me well for my travel pictures\u2026 except for taking pictures of text, like menus on airlines or at hotel restaurants. I\u2019m sorry for the total newb question here, but I feel like I should be able to do better that this with ease, yet oddly searching this problem online isn\u2019t returning many good results.<\/p>\n

Anyone have any insights about my iPhone camera problem?<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Collectively I\u2019d like to think that OMAAT readers know just about everything, so I\u2019m wondering if anyone might…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529418,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-529417","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-mobile","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}