Most people never leave the automatic mode on their phone’s camera app, and for good reason. The majority of the time, you’re looking for an even exposure that preserves detail in shadows and highlights alike.
An image taken in auto mode on a phone camera looks perfectly adequate, but compared to one taken manually or with a dedicated camera, it may lack depth and contrast.
In this phone photography guide we’ll walk through what actually happens when you press the shutter button on a phone, how the hardware works, and what settings can give you a more artistic result. For this, we’ll use the Motorola Razr Fold, which has one of the best camera setups we’ve seen on a phone this year.
How phone cameras actually work
Digital camera sensors convert light into electrical signals and encode the data into the image file.
A larger sensor means more light information can be collected, leading to a more detailed and accurate image. This is often why a budget phone and a high-end phone differ in quality so much, but resolution can also be a factor.
Due to the smaller size required to cram a camera sensor into a phone, light sensitivity suffers. To combat this, sensors use pixel binning, combining several tiny pixels into one larger effective pixel that collects more light.
Phone cameras are often marketed with high megapixel counts like 50MP on the Razr Fold and even up to 200MP on some recent models, but that count is usually before the binning happens. Quad pixel binning is common, but sometimes they combine more. Pro modes often allow you to shoot at the full resolution supported by the sensor at the expense of some light performance.
Image stabilisation is becoming more common on phone cameras, whether optical or electronic. It helps to counteract shaky hands or slow shutter speeds. Optical image stabilisation physically moves the sensor, lens, or both to achieve a blur-free image.
What a modern phone sensor stack looks like
The Sony LYTIA sensor stack found on the Motorola Razr Fold uses a stacked CMOS architecture that’s fairly typical for modern phone camera sensors.
The feature that sets LYTIA sensors apart from the pack is what Sony calls 2-Layer Transistor Pixel. In a conventional sensor, the photodiode that captures light and the pixel transistors that read information out sit on the same substrate. Sony’s two-layer design moves the transistors to their own layer, increasing the physical area available for light capture.
The result in the image is wider dynamic range and reduced noise in dark scenes; a cleaner image with less grain and better detail in both shadows and highlights.
The Razr Fold uses the Sony LYTIA sensors across both its main 50MP sensor and its telephoto 50MP sensor:
- Main lens: 50MP Sony LYTIA 828, f/1.6 aperture, 1/1.28-inch sensor, 3.5 degree optical image stabilisation
- Telephoto: 50MP Sony LYTIA 600, f/2.4 aperture, periscope design, 3x optical zoom
- Ultrawide: 50MP unbranded sensor, 122-degree field of view, macro focus to 35 millimetres
DXOMARK awarded the rear camera system a Gold Label, which made it the top-ranked foldable camera system in North America at the time.
Why phone images can look flat
When the phone takes a photograph, it’s often not just one exposure like dedicated cameras. The phone captures several exposures in rapid succession: often one for shadows, one for midtones, and one for highlights, then it merges them into a single image.
The resulting image features perfectly exposed details in both shadows and highlights, so that you can see objects in the bright sky and detail in dark areas. The trade-off is contrast, and the final images don’t always reflect reality or the artistic vision you may have had.
How manual settings can help
Auto mode is great for happy snaps. It picks settings based on the average light in the scene to get the most even exposure possible. However, it doesn’t know your intent with the photograph, and it’s not infallible.
Here are the settings you can change and when it’s worth overriding auto mode.
Shutter speed controls how long the sensor collects light for the image, and is measured in fractions of a second as fast as 1/6000 all the way to about 30 seconds. A fast shutter speed opens the sensor for less time, while a slow shutter speed opens longer to let more light in.
Auto mode often uses shutter speed as its main lever for exposure control, and it often defaults a bit too slow. Faster shutter speeds are great for when you need to freeze motion, like when taking photos of animals, children, or sports. Slower shutter speeds can help with night shots or for artistic results like light trails.
Aperture is worth discussing, even if it’s not adjustable on most phones. The aperture is the physical opening in the lens that lets light in. Adjustable apertures can be opened or closed to let more or less light in. The vast majority of camera lenses and even some flagship phones like the new iPhone 18 Pro have an adjustable aperture.
Aperture is measured in f-stops, representing the ratio of the lens’ focal length to the effective aperture diameter; the lower the number, the wider the opening, and vice versa.
A wider aperture allows more light through, allowing a faster shutter speed and shallower depth-of-field characteristics. A narrower aperture keeps more of the scene in focus from front to back. Most phones feature a fixed aperture around f/1.6 to f/2.8, delivering a balance of light performance and depth of field.
ISO controls the sensor’s sensitivity to light, and is measured on a scale inherited from photographic film speed. A higher ISO number is more sensitive, and a lower number is less sensitive.
ISO can introduce noise at higher settings, which shows up as digital grain in the image. The good news is that camera sensors have much better noise performance than early digital sensors from the early 2010s and before. Settings up to 3200 usually introduce minimal noise, and even 6400 is fine on many cameras.
Auto mode often sits too low on ISO settings. In general, ISO is safe to leave on Auto in daylight, and push up or down manually in low light. Locking it to a setting like 400, 800, or 1600 can give you more predictability when adjusting shutter speed.
Exposure compensation is the simplest override on the list, and it’s measured in “stops”, which is a shorthand for doubling or halving light: +1 is double the light, while -1 is half the light. Usually the slider is adjustable in thirds of a stop.
In tricky lighting situations, exposure compensation can be very handy to brighten or darken the whole shot with one slider and no other adjustments. Notably, it only works if you have left either ISO or shutter speed on automatic. It’s helpful to adjust if a backlit subject is silhouetted or a bright scene has blown out highlights.
White balance corrects the colour cast light sources can put on a scene, and is measured in Kelvin. For example, indoor light is often a different colour than sunlight, which can shift the colours in your photo.
Auto mode is generally good at dealing with white balance. Manually setting it can help achieve a consistent look across several different images if you’re shooting for an album, and adjust for skin tone under artificial light.
Focus lock helps to stop the camera hunting for focus every time something moves through the frame. Tap and hold on the area you’re focusing on before shooting anything with movement in the scene to ensure your phone doesn’t refocus when you’re ready to shoot.
Matching settings to the scene
- Low light scenes can benefit from pulling down the ISO manually and allowing shutter speed to vary. This can help you achieve a cleaner result with less noise.
- Fast motion calls for a faster shutter speed to help freeze motion that might otherwise look blurry in automatic mode.
- Macro mode often automatically turns on when the main sensor can’t focus close enough, but since the ultrawide sensor is often compromised, macro mode can result in a lower quality image.
- Zoom is worth understanding; optical zoom is always better quality than digital zoom, and going beyond it is computational. Sticking to the optical zoom range ensures the best results.
When software takes over
Your control of the hardware is only one part of the equation. The phone itself does a lot of the work in creating an image with computational processing.
Modern phone cameras use software image processing that adjusts the image after the shot. Onboard colour science like Motorola’s Pantone Validated colour results in different images from two different phones side-by-side.
Many modern phones use AI to process the image as well, which can result in unrealistic colours or odd details depending on how heavy-handed the processing is. Manufacturers vary on whether this can be adjusted or disabled, but Pro mode often reduces processing.
This phone photography guide is a first step
The manual settings we’ve covered work the same way across all kinds of phones with Pro or Expert modes, as well as dedicated cameras.
Understanding the controls cameras use like shutter speed, aperture, and ISO helps you take better photos with all kinds of cameras, whether they’re built into a phone, a point and shoot, or even an SLR or mirrorless camera.
Each phone and camera has its own handling characteristics, and as you spend time with them you’ll learn how best to shoot with them.
If you’re looking to learn how to take great photos, playing with the manual modes on your smartphone is an excellent way to dip your toes in.
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