Pixel 7 camera bug prevents some owners from saving certain low-light photos

Damien Wilde | Mar 10 2023 - 6:26 am PT

It appears that a Pixel 7 camera bug is preventing some owners from taking low-light macro photos on their devices in certain conditions.

According to a growing thread on the /r/GooglePixel subreddit (h/t Android Police), some devices appear unable to take close-up or macro photos in low-light conditions while the flash is enabled. It’s not clear what is causing the problem at this stage, but, personally, I have not been able to replicate the camera bug on Pixel 7 or 7 Pro running the latest Google Camera 8.7.250.494820638.44 update on Android 14 DP2 and Android 13 respectively.

Redditor /u/MintySkyhawk shared a short video explaining that they had been trying to capture a picture of the inside of their PC using their Pixel 7 Pro. In the clip, you can see that when the flash was enabled, the Pixel 7 Pro has an odd camera bug that prevented an image from being saved to the device’s internal memory after the shutter is pressed.

Another poster in the original thread experienced a similar issue and decided to pull a logcat while attempting to take a photo with their own Pixel 7. The pulled data seems to indicate that the Google Camera app is the cause of the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro camera bug. An early theory suggests that HDR is to blame and that the image-capture algorithm is bugging out as a result.

Just how widespread this camera bug is on Pixel 7 and 7 Pro devices isn’t clear. As we note, we’ve been unable to replicate it on several devices running the latest Google Camera build, but it could be dependent on the subject matter in frame. If affected and use the flash on your Pixel 7 or 7 Pro, it could be worth switching it off and using Night Sight for a little while until Google can resolve this problem with an update.