How To Use Camera Galaxy S7

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge — Jessica Lee Star/Digital Trends

Samsung'southward smartphones sport some of the best cameras in the industry, and the Galaxy S7 and S7 Border take incredible photos — even in automobile way. Nonetheless, for shutterbugs, the Pro style is a must-have. It takes an already excellent camera and pushes it further, bringing DSLR-style manual controls to your smartphone

The Milky way S7 and S7 Edge sport a wider f/ane.vii aperture in the lens, larger micron pixels in the image sensor, fast focusing Dual Pixel technology, and optical image stabilization (OIS). As such, y'all can do even more than with the Pro mode on the S7 and S7 Edge than always before.

Although it may take some getting used to, using the Pro mode is well worth it. Here are some cool ways you tin can stir your artistic juices and shoot some great images when going manual with either phone.

Real-time changes

An interface with a lot of options may seem overwhelming off the bat, and Samsung peppered Pro with a myriad of settings that could understandably crusade some defoliation. The primary controls inside the interface are forth the right-mitt side. From top to lesser, y'all have settings for filters, focusing, white residuum, ISO, shutter speed, and exposure control. Selecting any one of these options shows another vertical slider to adjust each setting on the fly.

The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge menu with Pro mode selected.

The adjustments you make appear on screen in real time, so yous have an thought of what the consequence looks like.

Here's a breakdown of the features:

The filters are pretty self-explanatory.
Focusing takes greater control over zeroing in a subject, which may be more useful when shooting macro close-ups.
White balance adjusts color to look more natural, and a scattering of different presets forth the vertical line help guide you.
ISO dictates the level of sensitivity to available light.
Shutter speed determines how fast or how long the sensor takes in lite.
Exposure adjusts the effulgence and contrast.

The camera interface on the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.

To the left, the interface offers other controls that are more basic in principle. Once more, from top to bottom, y'all have automatic focus, focus metering, timer, flash, photograph quality, and settings. Most of these are pretty academic, but the top 2 offer adjustments in how the focusing bracket works, be it a tighter focus or a wider ane, similar to how metering works on a DSLR. You tin tinker with this if you lot want to exist a little more artistic, but if not, stick to the default settings.

Color and dissimilarity

The Automobile manner on both phones is very good at choosing the right combination of settings to capture photos in any shooting scenario. Sometimes, though, it's worth taking a firmer grasp with Pro mode to improve composition, because Auto won't always get the color and contrast right.

For example, shooting a sunset in Automobile tends to raise the shutter speed, lower the ISO, and arrange the white residual to avoid washing out the whole prototype. It's not a bad event, but the software is likewise being cautious by not going far plenty.

If you're facing a state of affairs where there's a lack of depth or particular, endeavour tinkering with the shutter speed, ISO, and white rest — in that order. Adjusting the shutter might be enough on its own, but having the other 2 as fallbacks should aid you come out with a better shot.

The wider aperture on both phones is fixed, so even in instances like a dusk, the amount of low-cal coming in is going to exist fairly high, regardless. That tin can mess with colors and make what should exist a dynamic scene look pedestrian. With better color and contrast, photos will look more creative and interesting. The Pro mode'due south manual settings make it like shooting fish in a barrel to get there.

Night and low-light shooting

The results here are some of the best you will attain on any smartphone to date, particularly in Pro style. The wide aperture and larger micron pixels are a huge benefit, while the quick focusing and manual controls help to capture some amazing images with less dissonance and blur.

Nighttime and low-light shooting has ever been hard on smartphones, and while the Galaxy S6, S6 Edge and S6 Edge Plus (including the Galaxy Annotation 5) took a leap frontward, operation, and output is even better on the S7 lineup. Of course, at that place is no "night" or "low-light" way in Pro, as you lot would by and large run across in scene modes under Auto, so you have full control over each photo.

Galaxy S7 night shot 2 — An instance of a night scene shot in Pro mode on the Milky way S7 and S7 Edge.

One benefit of a wider discontinuity and larger micron pixels is that you don't accept to crank up the ISO. The higher the ISO level, the noisier images turn out. See if y'all tin can discover a happy medium between 600-1600, with 600-800 existence a real sweet spot. Focus on the shutter speed, bearing in mind that the lower y'all go with it, the steadier your hand needs to exist.

At the absolute everyman settings, it'southward hard to avert blurry images because the photographic camera is sensitive to jittery hands. Hence, the balance betwixt ISO and shutter speed. If you have the convenience of a tripod or flat surface to remainder the phone on for actually nighttime scenes, put it on a three-second or 10-second timer and let it shoot undisturbed. The results volition likely exist astonishing.

Galaxy S7 dark indoors — A nighttime indoor scene with picayune light shot in Pro mode with the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.

White balancing can be effective hither, also. It may saturate an image with more of an incandescent yellow or orange, which is great for candlelit scenes or illuminated architecture with similar colors. Assuming a building is lit upward with blue or purple, for instance, effort shifting the white balance to a bluer tone for softer contrast.

When time isn't an consequence and you can frame a shot well in dark indoor settings or outside at night, shooting in Pro fashion will undoubtedly lead to superior photos.

Shooting action and movement

This is where things get a little tricky. Professional photographers who shoot sports or other action scenes by and large do so with college shutter speeds to freeze the action. The challenge is that less calorie-free comes in through the lens to the sensor, thus darkening the image. Finding the right balance is key.

This is much easier to do in wide daylight where the photographic camera doesn't take to struggle with capturing a well-lit scene. As an example, if y'all're sitting in the bleachers for your kid's baseball game, y'all tin accommodate the manual focus to go as far every bit it can because the focal point isn't close to begin with. From there, tapping on what yous desire to focus on before shooting should event in a focused prototype. If you're closer, you lot tin can try going with autofocus or manually arrange it yourself.

The real-time changes with the various settings will already tell you whether or not the shot will be properly lit. Naturally, yous would be setting that upwards before focusing on anyone or anything. In any case, information technology's not particularly easy to shoot action in Pro, and you lot may get comparable results with the Car mode, simply it never hurts to try.

Shooting in RAW

The advantages of shooting in RAW over JPEG are numerous, but the gist is that y'all go far more than command over editing and processing afterwards. Since a RAW file retains most 10x the information a JPEG has, the level of item in the prototype is uncompromized, because no processing has actually taken place. It's a slap-up style to tinker with more intricate tools using photograph-editing software on a computer, or a capable app, like Adobe Lightroom.

Galaxy S7 tapas darker setting — A tapas scene shot in RAW with the Pro style on the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge.

The Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge can shoot in both RAW and JPEG, but there is no RAW capture past default. To turn that on, go to the settings icon at the bottom left in Pro mode and cull "Save as RAW file." Notation that when this is turned on, the RAW and JPEG files save simultaneously to the phone'due south onboard storage and non a microSD card — even if you have ane set to store captured images. To become them, you would accept to go through the DCIM binder nether Camera for either phone.

As noted, RAW files are big, so storing them tin can take up a lot of infinite on the phone. Moving them to a computer is advisable to salve space and assistance you edit them later.

You don't have to shoot everything in RAW, but challenging images or once-in-a-lifetime shots on a holiday or trip might exist good candidates. Once you lot get used to how effective RAW can be from start to finish, you lot will grow to learn when information technology's worth information technology.