🐛 Camera cannot focus at close range (~10cm) on iPhone 18 Pro — works on iPhone 12 Pro

[klabusta]

Prerequisites

• I have read and followed every applicable step in the Nitro Modules Troubleshooting guide.
• I have read the VisionCamera Troubleshooting guide.
• I have searched existing issues and found nothing matching.
• I am on the latest version of react-native-vision-camera, or have a specific reason I cannot upgrade.

Steps to reproduce

1. Call useCameraDevice('back') on an iPhone 18 Pro
2. Use the returned device in a <Camera> component (default config, no custom format/zoom)
3. Hold a product label or barcode at ~10cm distance from the camera
4. Observe that the image is blurry / out of focus — barcode scanning fails

What did you expect to happen?

The camera focuses sharply on a barcode/label at ~10cm distance, as it does on iPhone 12 Pro and older devices.

What actually happened?

The image stays blurry at ~10cm. The wide-angle camera on iPhone 18 Pro has a minimum focus distance of ~20cm due to its larger sensor, so anything closer is out of focus. The barcode scanner cannot decode the codes.

Moving the phone further away (~25cm+) brings the image into focus, but for our use case (scanning small product labels on automotive parts) this is too far — the codes are too small to fill enough of the frame.

Affected platforms

iOS (device)

Device(s) affected

iPhone 18 Pro (built with XCode 27 / iOS 27): broken — blurry at 10cm, iPhone 12 Pro (built with XCode 26 / iOS 27): works — sharp at 10cm

VisionCamera version

5.1.0

React Native version

0.84.1

React Native architecture

New Architecture (Fabric / bridgeless)

Features being used

• Preview
• Photo capture
• Video capture
• Frame Processors (worklets)
• Skia Frame Processors
• Code/Barcode Scanner
• Location metadata
• Multi-cam
• Depth data
• HDR / custom dynamic range
• Custom format / FPS / resolution

Relevant logs / stack trace

Minimal reproduction component:

const device = useCameraDevice('back');

const scannerOutput = useBarcodeScannerOutput({
  barcodeFormats: ['code-128', 'ean-13', 'qr-code', 'data-matrix'],
  onBarcodeScanned: (barcodes) => { /* ... */ },
});

<Camera
  style={StyleSheet.absoluteFill}
  device={device}
  isActive={true}
  outputs={[scannerOutput]}
/>

No errors in the console. The camera opens and streams frames, but the
autofocus system never achieves sharp focus at distances below ~20cm on
iPhone 18 Pro. The same code focuses correctly on iPhone 12 Pro at the
same distance.

[klabusta]

We also tried switching to the ultra-wide-angle camera via physicalDevices: ['ultra-wide-angle', 'wide-angle'] as a workaround. While this does focus at close range, the resulting image is too fish-eye / distorted.