Manually Control Smartphone Camera

With the development of phone industry, the need of manual controls in camera is also increasing. Let's take a look on the manual controls in a mobile camera. To take good pictures you first have to know about 'Exposure Triangle' (ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture & Exposure).

ISO

ISO level controls the sensitivity of camera to light. At lower ISO level the camera captures less light & at higher ISO level the camera captures more light. So, putting ISO level higher while taking picture can help to take brighter pictures in low light conditions, but it will cost you some extra noise.

You should know that taking pictures in high ISO level puts the aperture of the camera opened for a bit long time to capture more light. So, it can produce blurriness while taking picture of moving bodies. But, if you are taking picture of still bodies, you always can use the trick to capture more light. When you want more details you should go with lower ISO level.

But achieving a good result in smartphones is tough for it's limited sensors.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is controlled by the moving part of DSLR resizing the size of aperture. But smartphones doesn't sport such a part. So, phones sporting a longer shutter speed can take pictures with artistic blur such as illusion of flowing water or sometime else & phones with shorter speed can be used to take pictures of the things in motion. But too short shutter speed will make a picture dark.

Aperture & Exposure

Aperture tells us the size of the lens opening with which light passes through on its way to the sensor like our pupils. Larger apertures take more light as well as create more separation between foreground focus & background focus. DSLRs feature a moving part by which we can set the size of aperture. But, smartphones don't sport such moving parts so it's better to buy a phone which aperture is bigger (f/1.8 over f/2 & so on).

For a smartphone it's better to set the exposure in automatic mode, as it don't give a spectacular result. But if you like to control all the features, of course you can control it.

Some other features we see in smartphones today:

White Balance: By this we can change light into it's possible colours & can produce a artificial colour which can look great sometimes. Indoor shots can be some bit orange. Cloudy, Fluorescent pictures can also be taken.

HDR: Now a days High Dynamic Range feature is in every good camera app. Smartphones take a HDR picture by taking a number of picture at the same time in different exposure levels. So, the process takes a bit extra time, but the pictures are always better. So, it's better to keep HDR on always. But keep in mind it takes a bit extra time.

RAW: Now we can save RAW pictures by our smartphones directly. Pictures are saved in RAW format for editing in longer purpose.

That's it, now click & edit to make your photos a master piece.