And here's a question for the #photography crowd. I often have problems with washout (like the top of this image) on cloudy days like today. I usually try to resolve this by going to "pro" mode (Motorola phone) and messing with sliders. Usually the "shutter speed" (whatever that means on a camera with no mechanical shutter). Is there a better approach? What does that setting even mean for a phone camera?
@intrepidhero On a phone, shutter speed would be how long the image sensor is turned on to expose the image. All other settings remaining the same, a faster exposure (= shorter shutter time) will produce a darker image. That should help with the top, but might make the rest darker. You can use the exposure compensation (generally -/+ symbols in a roundrect) to get the same effect.
Hard to tell from your photo, but you could be seeing overexposure or sunlight hitting your lens. If it's the latter case, use your hand to cast shade on the lens.
@ieure I use the shade trick sometimes when the sun is shining on the website. Today it was pretty dim and I think the camera was just struggling with the dynamic range of the scene. That exposure compensation feature sounds like the right idea. Thanks!
@intrepidhero the feature that you most likely need for this is called Exposure Compensation. Usually it's a little black/white +/- symbol in "pro" modes of phone cameras. With small but important highlights, set it to -1.
And I know you're asking about Motorola/Android but on iPhones, one can simply "tap" the brightest spot on the screen to have the camera meter (measure exposure) from that brighter spot, maybe this works for you too?
While I'm at it 😬 see if you have a manual control for white balance (WB). In forest scenes, most cameras get the white balance wrong — they try to compensate for the sheer amount of green by adding a magenta shift, which shows in the water in your photo. The brown tones of trees cause the auto white balance (AWB) to make the temperature too cool as well, hence the blue-ish tint in the mist. In a situation like this (sunny with a bit of shade), a color temperature around 5000-6000K should be about right (depends a little bit on the scene).
@alexskunz thanks! I do see that setting and I'll try it out. The color temperature thing is another annoyance I have, especially shooting in a forest with lower light. I'll try that out too.
@intrepidhero here's a screenshot of what that looks like for me in the Lightroom app's camera.
The Exposure Compensation feature is just labelled "Exp" here and allows adjustments from -3 to +3. For your forest scene, I would suggest setting the white balance (WB) to the "sun" symbol, or maybe the "cloud" symbol (the latter will be warmer, depends on the light and scene).
Best thing you can do overall would be to use raw data... but then everything gets a little more involved... 😅
@intrepidhero I point the camera half way down, then hold the shutter key half way down, point up to get the full pix and click. Worx for me