Using Manual Mode in Android Camera.

So many of the new android phones have manual mode in camera and it is very important to know how this mode works. With it you will be able to take control of your photos, how they look and define what you want to take in photos.

"Manual mode brings in DSLR level control to our photos."

Many small budget phones now have manual camera such as Zenfone Selfie, Zenfone Laser, Moto G4, and various others. So check that your phone has manual mode in its camera. If it has, you are about to have a new perspective of your phone camera.
So you are gonna learn here about using manual mode in you camera.

Let us begin. First of all you must know a few basic things in camera. These are:

1. ISO
2. Aperture
3. Exposure Time

 

These are the basics a DSLR owner must know to take control of its photos. But for phone camera you only have to know ISO and Exposure Time. You cannot change aperture in phone camera.

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ISO is not any abbreviation but it only defines sensitivity of the camera sensor towards light. The more the ISO, more is your camera sensitive towards light. What that means if you are in low light conditions, you should raise your ISO so your sensor will be more sensitive to light and your sensor can read information in little light.

So key points in using ISO:

    Higher ISO:

• When Using in low light.

    Lower ISO:

• When in Dim Light.

However, the more ISO you raise, the more noise is generated in the image. So avoid using higher ISOs and go for lowest ISO. 

      "Noise is generation of fine grains in the photo."

Here in the image on right, there was a lot of noise when taking photos in ISO800. So I increased the exposure time, and took the shot. There were no more noise in the photo.

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Aperture is the lens opening in the camera. It defines how much your background will blur. We can't change aperture in phone camera, so let's skip this.

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Exposure Time is the amount of time your camera gathers light. The more the shutter speed, the more the light it will gather. So if you have lots of light such as in bright sunlight, you need to decrease your Exposure Time, otherwise the camera will gather more light and your photo will be white. But if you are in low light condition, you need to increase your exposure time.

Also the smaller the exposure time, the faster the image will get captured, hence less motion blur. In longer exposure shots, the moving objects will get blurry or completely vanish. So motion is the enemy of long exposure shots.

So key points in using exposure time:

   Smaller Exposure time:

• When lots of light is available.

• When you want to freeze the motion and doesn't want to cause motion blur.

• Doesn't requires steady hand.

Longer Exposure Time:

• In dim light conditions.

• Needs a steady hand.

• When you are not shooting moving objects.

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 When you have understood the above things, there are two more things in manual mode of the camera.

These are 1) Focus and 2) White Balance

 Focus:
 It defines which object will be in focus(sharp) and which objects will be out of focus (blurred).

Focus is generally given as slider in phones as here in my zenfone selfie. When you move the slider up, you focus on distant object while blurring object in the front. When you move it downwards, it will focus nearer object and blur out the farther objects. So you can adjust the slider accordingly.

However, this is required only when you are taking special closeup shots, or you know what to do. Generally, tap to focus works fine for normal shots.

Closer focus(Left),                                                                      Farther Focus(Right)

White Balance: 
 The white balance corrects the colour of light or say temperature of the light. You must have noticed that your photos are sometimes very yellowish or very bluish. This is because the type of light around you. In some phones, it is given as slider for Kelvin scale as in this screenshot. In some, it is given as just a slider or predefined modes of white balance such as cloudy, florescent, etc. 

For kelvin scale, the more you raise the value, the more yellowish the photos will become and bluish if you decrease. That means if your photos are coming bluish, you need to add some yellow by increasing the temperature which will balance the two and give you white photo. Same is true for opposite.

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When you have learned all the controls of the manual mode, you need to learn to implement them. So I will give you various conditions and give you instructions about what settings to use.

Before that remember two things:

1. The lower the ISO you use, the better will be your photos.

2. Under dim light conditions, increase your exposure time rather than raising your ISO. However, for using long exposure time, you need to use firm base such as a tripod otherwise your photos will get a lot of motion blur.

I will give you Instructions soon in upcoming posts about a simple phone stand which you can use to take long exposure shot, which I have used to take photos in the examples in the blog.

Condition 1:

So the first condition is dark environment.

Here is an extreme example of photo in dark environment.
It was too dark, so for the example, I took a shot in automode, without flash.

The photo was took at:
ISO 1540
Exposure time: 1/8 sec.

Notice the amount of noise?
And Barely anything is visible.


So I took another shot in manual mode.

This I took at
ISO 50
Exposure Time: 16" (Double quotes denote sec. So 16sec.)
Without Flash.

See the clarity? 
And the Noise is totally absent.




I took another shot while still in manual mode, but this time, increasing the exposure time to 32 sec.

So the config were:
ISO 50
Exposure time: 32"
Without Flash.

See the magic?

But I must tell you, all these photos were taken while my phone was resting on a firm base.
I used a 2 sec timer, so that my camera doesn't shakes, while taking photos, otherwise there would have been motion blur. 

Condition 2:
When you are in sunlight and you want to shoot moving object without blur.
If you are in sunlight, always decrease your ISO to minimum.
Shoot at least exposure time as possible. That means lower it upto you photo remains enough bright.
Small exposure time tends to freeze the motion, as your camera sensor will quickly take all the information in few millisecond. So motion blur won't be caused. 

Condition 3:
When you want to capture motion of the object.
For this, first rule first, lower the ISO to its least level possible.
Don't decrease the shutter speed too much otherwise the moving object will freeze. Simply select a value which keep the subject lightened up but also has some motion blur. This way you can show a great motion in your photos.

So these are various conditions in which you can use manual mode in android camera to take great photos. Also keep experimenting through camera and be creative. If you have any other thing you wanna tell, please do write it in comments. 
Please leave a feedback about the blog. What you understood and what you didn't. I would love to help you guys.
Thanks.