Database Users

Flash darkens photos?

Anyone else observing that when they take a pic with the flash on in "medium" light conditions, the photo comes out actually darker than if the flash wasn't even used?
I swear the timing of the flash is bad on my S5. When I tap the button to shoot the photo, the flash turns on and the image on the screen looks bright and good. But then I think the photo is actually taken a split second later after the flash has turned off, and the photo that gets taken is dark as hell. I think I've tried all the combination of settings in the default S5 camera app, and nothing helps.

Brent212 said:
Anyone else observing that when they take a pic with the flash on in "medium" light conditions, the photo comes out actually darker than if the flash wasn't even used?
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I haven't seen this with my S5. Unfortunately you didn't elaborate on your camera settings, camera version or other crucial details.
At a guess, and it is only speculation since we don't have your details, you are expecting the flash to act like a fill flash. When the auto mode (which is probably what you are using) probably uses the flash in a conventional manner i.e. a fixed shutter speed (or limited shutter speed range). There are good reasons for that, but the net effect if the subject is outside of the flash range is that little of the flash is reflected back and the (presumably) higher shutter speed lets less total light in resulting in a darker picture.
You can test that thesis by taking some pictures of a subject that is very close to the camera. If the problem goes away with close subjects that implies that the problem is an artifact of using flash for a subject that is too distant for the flash to work with. No flash can work at an unlimited distance which is why people using a flash in a stadium when they are 75 meters from a subject is silly. In this case, flash mode simply isn't appropriate to the situation you are using it in and you'd be farther ahead to use a slower shutter speed, without flash.
It's highly unlikely that a bug would see the shutter opening after the flash.
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It happens with literally *every* combination of the settings in the camera app (with flash set to "on"). Auto mode, beauty face mode... actually, are there any other modes that I'd use to take a picture of something 3 feet away in a darkish room? I have panorama, "shot & more", virtual tour... those wouldn't be right, correct? So both beauty face and auto, with all the combination of settings... hdr on/off, stabilization on/off, iso at auto and all four "manual" options, all three metering modes... nothing makes a difference.
The problem is the same all the times -- it's not just that the non "subject" areas are dark -- the whole image is dark, just like if you turned off the light in a room and snapped a pic at the moment when the light was still on at 50% brightness as it's turning off. It's super annoying just because of how damn good the image looks on the screen when the photo is being taken... it even seems to "snap" the shot at the right time... the shutter sound goes off and the little border animation happens when the pic is nice and bright. Then I open the actual image and it's garbage.
I was hoping someone might know of some setting in a config file somewhere for a delay between when the flash is triggered and when the camera attempts to capture the image, and that maybe mine got changed somehow to a larger than optimal value.
My wife has an s5, I'll have to test with hers and see if it suffers from the same problem.

Long story short: the camera is using a fast exposure time to keep the subject from being "blown out", i.e. overexposed, when the flash is used. That means that the foreground is going to be sharper but anything in the background will be lost in darkness if the ambient lighting is low. When you leave the flash off, the camera will use a longer exposure time (or shutter speed, if you will) to allow enough light, which also lets more of the background be seen in the picture.
Another thing to consider is that if your screen is set for auto brightness control, you will not have the same brightness when viewing the gallery pictures that you will when looking at the camera view. The camera view is full brightness at all times, but if you're viewing the pictures that you took in the gallery, screen brightness will drop down according to ambient lighting. Photos definitely look dark if you're looking at the gallery by lamp light.

Marlin29 said:
Long story short: the camera is using a fast exposure time to keep the subject from being "blown out", i.e. overexposed, when the flash is used. That means that the foreground is going to be sharper but anything in the background will be lost in darkness if the ambient lighting is low. When you leave the flash off, the camera will use a longer exposure time (or shutter speed, if you will) to allow enough light, which also lets more of the background be seen in the picture.
Another thing to consider is that if your screen is set for auto brightness control, you will not have the same brightness when viewing the gallery pictures that you will when looking at the camera view. The camera view is full brightness at all times, but if you're viewing the pictures that you took in the gallery, screen brightness will drop down according to ambient lighting. Photos definitely look dark if you're looking at the gallery by lamp light.
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That's interesting stuff, but doesn't really apply to the problem I described (at least the first part... the screen brightness setting stuff is potentially related, but isn't in my case). The exposure time is fine, it's just **when** the exposure starts that is the problem... a little too late, IMO. Really wish there was a way to adjust when it takes the photo in relation to when the flash is fired.
The foreground objects aren't lit up at all. No difference between foreground and background. Sometimes, I'm taking a picture of a t-shirt laying on a flat surface from 2 feet away. Without a flash it looks pretty good, but it's a little dark so I decide to try the flash to see if it'll lighten it up a bit. Instead, it makes it look like I turned out half the lights in the room.... way darker than no flash.

Same here, three friends of mine too.

I'm having the same problem s5 neo

I just figured out how to correct the pics from coming out dark. Go into camera-settings-exposure value-slide to the right to 2.5 or more.My pics come out fine now. Indoor light normal daylight.( with flash off.) I will know more in other settings (places ,situations )if it needs to be tweaked again.

no problems here
my settings are AUTO MODE
flash AUTO
no effets at all
and still i get good shots in night

Power/current draw issue?
Mine was doing this, and I noticed the first flash (ranging) was fine, but the second flash (to illuminate the image when taken) was much weaker. Whilst plugged into charge, repeated low light experiment, and the low light flash illuminated image was fine!! Maybe battery on its way out?

Does anyone else have banding in their Edge photos on manual?

I was playing around with FV-5 (camera app) and pushing the camera to 3200 ISO to see what kind of quality would result, and noticed that I was getting banding on the screen. I switched back to the Samsung camera app, in manual mode, and noticed (for the first time) banding there as well. I took a couple of pictures of my nondescript carpet to see if it was a screen thing or a photo thing: http://imgur.com/a/69mml
Now I'm seeing it all the time. I've used manual mode before, but never run into this. I'm having a hard time believing that FV-5 broke my camera, but I can't remember having this issue - even in manual mode - with my camera before this. Can anyone else run their camera in manual mode, set ISO to 800, and the shutter so that the EV is in the -1 to -2 range and report back? I'd hate to have to take the phone back and trade it in, but this is just unacceptable performance.

Manual mode noisy. Should i return phone?

Hi All. I got a g6 last month, sent it back and got another one because it had a dust specle inside the lense glass.
Now in the new one I noticed something weird with manual mode in the camera thought you guys could help.
In low light I took 2 photos once in auto mode and once in manual mode.
Both with same iso, whitbalance auto, same shutter speeds. The image in manual mode comes out noisy and the one from auto is not much noisy. This happened all the times in tried with different subjects.
Is this how your phone works too? Or should i return this as well? Pls see attached images. I will really appreciate your comments. Thanks in advance.

sorry. bumping if anyone has any comments?

In manual mode: did you enable "noise reduction" in settings?
Manual mode itself is very noisy on my phone too. Noise reduction is always a software thing, that's why Pixel phones take such great pictures (because Google is good in software). Maybe try a port of the Google camera and compare the results for yourself.

hudl said:
In manual mode: did you enable "noise reduction" in settings?
Manual mode itself is very noisy on my phone too. Noise reduction is always a software thing, that's why Pixel phones take such great pictures (because Google is good in software). Maybe try a port of the Google camera and compare the results for yourself.
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Yes i eventually figured the noise reduction. But couldn't belive the noise when it's off.
Thanks for confirming its same in your phone too.

That is completely normal.

Lol, yeah. Totally normal. Manual mode outputs garbage, but it can be made absolutely glorious with software processing tools.
First image is simple raw -> jpg conversion with no processing.
Second image is raw -> jpg with simple photoshop raw filter processing

a few questions regarding pro mode in the OP camera

I noticed that in pro mode I have the ability to set 30 seconds shutter, however this is not possible in any third party apps, they all have a maximum of 15 seconds. The ISO however is limited to 3200 in pro mode but 6400 in third party apps. Is this intentional by OP or is my phone behaving strange? Can someone confirm?
I also am frustrated about not being able to set both manual iso and shutter speed simultaneously in pro mode, if I do, the shutter speed is ignored. I have reported this as a bug twice to OP but not received any response, so I assume it's either intended to be that way or it's a bug that no one else is experiencing. To be precise, it does work some times but only in specific settings which seems to be random and I'm unable to see a pattern. Can someone confirm this or is it just me?

First of all, you can reach 6400 ISO in pro mode if you set it in auto and your shutter is like 1/8000. Which brings me to the point of questioning your "settings".
Why would you want a 6400 ISO if you have a very long shutter like 30 seconds? That is pointless in itself. This is basic photography and I don't think you understand the correlation between the two.
Not being rude but you should probably learn the basics first before ranting because it seems to me the phone knows what it is doing based on the scenario I've given above. I also tried it and it doesn't "ignore" each other.
Correct me if I misunderstood your intention.

Graffiti Exploit said:
First of all, you can reach 6400 ISO in pro mode if you set it in auto and your shutter is like 1/8000. Which brings me to the point of questioning your "settings".
Why would you want a 6400 ISO if you have a very long shutter like 30 seconds? That is pointless in itself. This is basic photography and I don't think you understand the correlation between the two.
Not being rude but you should probably learn the basics first before ranting because it seems to me the phone knows what it is doing based on the scenario I've given above. I also tried it and it doesn't "ignore" each other.
Correct me if I misunderstood your intention.
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Hi, thanks for the response. The only thing you misunderstood was my intention.. I really don't want to rant, I just want help and to know if I am the only one with this problem or if someone can confirm that this is how it is set up or if I'm doing something wrong.. I do understand basic photography even though I'm not a pro, I studied two years of photography but didn't make it my profession (15 years ago so I might be rusty)
The problem isn't that I necessarily want 6400 iso and 30 seconds shutter, that would just create a white photo.. However, some times I want to raise the iso more instead of the shutter when for example taking a picture of my 1 year daughter sleeping beautifully in a darker room. She doesn't tend to lay completely still for 30 seconds so I might raise the iso and live with the grainyness. If I adjust the ISO but leave the shutter on automatic, the shutter will just take a quick black photo and won't compensate on its own, so I then I might want to set the shutter on manual as well, this will however not work. This is what I mean.. The shutter setting will be completely ignored. I'm not getting anywhere with this in the op camera app. It works fine in other 3rd party apps, that is why I'm assuming it is a bug or there's something I don't know and am doing wrong..
The problem with 3rd part apps is that I can't choose 30 second shutter, only a maximum of 15sec. I can get around by changing camera app ever time I need to but I'd rather have one app that works for everything if possible..

luvis said:
Hi, thanks for the response. The only thing you misunderstood was my intention.. I really don't want to rant, I just want help and to know if I am the only one with this problem or if someone can confirm that this is how it is set up or if I'm doing something wrong.. I do understand basic photography even though I'm not a pro, I studied two years of photography but didn't make it my profession (15 years ago so I might be rusty)
The problem isn't that I necessarily want 6400 iso and 30 seconds shutter, that would just create a white photo.. However, some times I want to raise the iso more instead of the shutter when for example taking a picture of my 1 year daughter sleeping beautifully in a darker room. She doesn't tend to lay completely still for 30 seconds so I might raise the iso and live with the grainyness. If I adjust the ISO but leave the shutter on automatic, the shutter will just take a quick black photo and won't compensate on its own, so I then I might want to set the shutter on manual as well, this will however not work. This is what I mean.. The shutter setting will be completely ignored. I'm not getting anywhere with this in the op camera app. It works fine in other 3rd party apps, that is why I'm assuming it is a bug or there's something I don't know and am doing wrong..
The problem with 3rd part apps is that I can't choose 30 second shutter, only a maximum of 15sec. I can get around by changing camera app ever time I need to but I'd rather have one app that works for everything if possible..
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Thanks for the clarification but in order to help you out I did the test myself.
Setting 1:
ISO: 100
Shutter Speed: 2
Result: Basically a black photo
Setting 2:
ISO: 3200
Shutter Speed: 2
Result: Bright enough photo
Setting 3:
ISO: 3200
Shutter Speed: 5
Result: Blownout photo
Setting 4:
ISO: 100
Shutter Speed: 5
Result: Black photo with some light
Both on Manual Setting. The rest is auto.
So I guess what you want to do works. Didn't do the 30 cause it takes too much time.

Graffiti Exploit said:
Thanks for the clarification but in order to help you out I did the test myself.
Setting 1:
ISO: 100
Shutter Speed: 2
Result: Basically a black photo
Setting 2:
ISO: 3200
Shutter Speed: 2
Result: Bright enough photo
Setting 3:
ISO: 3200
Shutter Speed: 5
Result: Blownout photo
Setting 4:
ISO: 100
Shutter Speed: 5
Result: Black photo with some light
Both on Manual Setting. The rest is auto.
So I guess what you want to do works. Didn't do the 30 cause it takes too much time.
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Thanks! So I tried these exact settings and also tried several manual ISO levels with 8 seconds shutter. Every image was taken instantly, no 2 second, no 5 second and no 8 second shutter. The image results were based solely on the ISO level. So in other words, my phone is the problem since I'm unable to perform the exact tests you just did. Thanks for taking the time! I will now try to contact OP for the third time and see if I can get a response.

Question Long exposure shots in nothing phone 1

Heii...is there any way to take long exposure shots like iphone (motion photo to long exposure) pixel has (motion mode on gcam in 6 and 6 pro)
Is there any method to take such photo .

Yes !
Go camera -professional mode-use tripod and set timer 3 set iso and shutter 4-8 sec

No ,I mean software trick.
To take such in light sorrodings too,as iphones live photo converted to long exposure and pixel motion mode also in same way.is there any such way