Apple has verified that an extreme close-up of a generic LED display could generate small blacked-out voids in place of black spots when shooting with its newest iPhones. The company says a software update is on the way.
The artifact had reared its ugly head in early testing of the latest models, including the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Pro Max, where one reviewer reported occasional black boxes appearing on images taken at a stadium concert. The problem is only sparked in certain circumstances, and Apple tells CNN Underscored it will be fixed with a future update.
What Apple says will come next to address the bug
Apple said in a statement provided to CNN Underscored that the behavior is rare and based on the use of ultraviolet lights by television crews, with an LED wall that was too bright and pointed directly at the camera. It’s unclear when the company will release a fix, but one would expect it to be rolled out as part of a software update (implying that the issue lies in the image processing pipeline rather than being related to hardware).
Apple has a history of releasing camera patches with targeted iOS updates—previously mitigating third-party app stabilization oddities on an early Pro model, among other bugs—so it’s entirely possible that the solution in this case is software-only.
Why bright LED walls can confuse phone cameras
Concert backdrops and massive signs used at venues typically utilize LED panels that pulse-width modulate (PWM) brightness extremely quickly. Although the flicker is imperceptible to the human eye, it can alias with a smartphone’s rolling shutter and multi-frame HDR capture. If a scene has an area of huge, over-bright LED, subframes might capture parts of it with different brightness (or clipped).
Today’s iPhones merge several exposures to rein in highlights and raise shadows. If an exposure or exposures are affected by high-frequency flicker of the LED panels or extreme clipping, they may be misinterpreted by the fusion step as pixel blocks that are invalid and masked—think small black squares/patches rather than the familiar horizontal banding. This is not specific to any one brand; it’s a widely known computational photography edge case involving strong artificial lighting and laser effects.
How often it happens, according to early testers
Accounts from an early reviewer indicate that about one in 10 photos taken at a concert resulted in the artifact when shooting directly into a blinding LED backdrop. Outside of those extreme conditions — daylight, indoor ambient light, or scenes that don’t feature dominant LED walls — testers have not widely been able to reproduce the issue. And that pattern aligns with Apple’s framing of the situation as “rare.”
Other top points for general image quality, from independent reviewers evaluating the latest lineup: Detail preservation across both the main and telephoto lenses has been enhanced, with notable improvements also covering low-light performance.
Practical workarounds to try until the fix arrives
- Reframe and shoot around to reduce LED blast. Tilt the phone slightly, or frame it so that less of the LED wall is in the shot. Even small modifications can avoid the worst aliasing interactions.
- Lower exposure manually. Use the exposure slider in the Camera app (tap to focus, then drag the sun icon down) to avoid clipping highlights. This often makes darker exposures more resilient in these situations.
- Try a manual camera app. Third-party apps that allow you to choose a shutter speed divisible by mains flicker (say, 1/60 or 1/120 second) may help with LED-induced artifacts. Locking exposure and avoiding fast auto-adjusts may also be helpful.
- Consider ProRAW or HEIF Max. Shooting suites which minimize the aggressive post-processing are often able to avoid these edge case fusion glitches, but with different results depending on how the light level and panel refresh work out.
- Forget lasers and other extreme light sources. Besides the current software peculiarity, lasers aimed at cameras can irreparably damage any phone’s sensor; venue photographers and camera rental houses have long warned of this danger.
For iPhone photography in general: broader takeaways
This episode highlights a larger truth about computerized photography: the more phones are hunting for ways to push dynamic range and low-light performance with ever-complicated multiframe pipelines, the more one-off edge case scenarios can emerge around synthetic lighting. The good news here is that software is also the quickest lever for a fix, and Apple says it is on its way.
They function just fine for most people’s everyday shooting. “If you are going to a concert or have other plans for a place with blinding LED signage, just take the second to make exposure adjustments,” he wrote, “or simply change your shooting angle — and wait for Apple’s update (and pray it doesn’t make those precautions unnecessary).”
