If anybody is wondering how to achieve this in iOS 7, here's a solution (iOS 6 compatible too)
[self.navigationBar setBackgroundImage:[UIImage new] forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];
self.navigationBar.shadowImage = [UIImage new];
self.navigationBar.translucent = YES;
Setting translucent to YES on the navigation bar does the trick, due to a behaviour discussed in the UINavigationBar documentation. I'll report here the relevant fragment:
If you set this property to YES on a navigation bar with an opaque custom background image, the navigation bar will apply a system opacity less than 1.0 to the image.
Reference from: Make UINavigationBar transparent