White Balance Options
Some Android phones will have a dedicated "camera" button, usually on the lower-right side of the phone as you would normally hold it. When you hold the camera sideways, therefore, the button is right where your right finger is used to feeling for a shutter button on a traditional phone. Some phones, like the EVO 4G, don't have a dedicated camera button, so you simply use the "Camera" or "Camcorder" app shortcut to access them. When your camera is activated, the screen becomes a combination of viewfinder and control panel. On the Nexus One running the standard Android (2.2) Camera software, pictured above, the shot preview takes up the left side of the screen, and the controls are packed over to the right. In most cases, for most shots, you don't need to touch
anything—your camera will automatically focus in the center and adjust all the levels it can to compensate for differences in lighting and color tone.
On the Nexus One, Android offers up a handful of settings you can change from shot to shot. The shot settings appear as white icons overlaid on the image preview. Press one, and a translucent strip appears, and a small menu pops out for the option you pick. At the very top, there's a button that changes the focus mode to either Automatic or Infinity—in most shots, you can stick with Automatic, but play with Infinity to see what kind of shot you can get. Beneath that is a GPS icon that changes whether the phone tries to collect location data to embed in each picture, and in the middle, the "(A)W" button, controls the white balance. This lets you set the color and white balances in the camera's sensor to either automatically adjust, or to compensate for a few specific kinds of lighting. I've found that Automatic works most of the time outdoors, but when you're shooting indoors and seeing tints of blue or orange, setting the white balance manually can be a big help. Second to last toward the bottom is a camera flash setting—auto, on, or off—which I
actually adjust, and zooming in very close can sometimes leave your resulting shot a bit grainy or with digital "artifacts."
Because of the shape of your Android phone, and the way the camera was designed, most shots you take will probably be landscape-style, much wider than they are tall. You can, of course, change your grip and hold your camera upright to take vertical portrait- style shots. When you do so, your settings will rotate and move to the bottom.
Settings Bar in Upright Mode (Instead of Landscape)
On the Nexus One with the stock Camera app, the controls at bottom (or on the right when held landscape) are, from left (or bottom), the on-screen shutter control, the camera/ camcorder switch, and a thumbnail preview of my last picture, which can be clicked to bring up a larger preview mode of recent shots.
Although my Android, and perhaps your Android, lacks a dedicated camera button, you can still do a "half press" on the shutter control on some phones to focus your lens and see what the resulting picture will look like (though this doesn't work at all on the HTC EVO 4G I've tested, and likely other HTC phones are left out, too). To try it out, press and hold on the shutter-style button, and wait for the image to focus and for the green framing bars that appear to show green. If your camera does have a dedicated camera button, you might be able to press it until you feel a small bit of resistance, but don't press it all the way:
This is a really helpful tool when you're trying to time a shot perfectly—if you've already focused and lined up your shot, all you have to do is release the button.
Now, as soon as you release your shutter button, the shot will fire. It's a handy trick for when you're trying to time a shot just right, or avoid wasting an exposure on an image that you know, from the preview, won't look right at all.
On Motorola's Droid X and other "Droid" phones, Motorola made a few changes to Android's stock Camera app, but not too many:
Camera View on Motorola Droid Models
Apologies for the picture-of-a-phone-taking-a-picture image; the Droid X Camera app didn't like my screenshot tool. The Scenes and Effects offerings here are pretty nifty, and more like a standard point-and-shoot digital camera. The Scenes include "Sports" for moving subjects, "Sunset" for low-light outdoor shots, and a "Macro" mode for up-close shots of, well, usually great restaurant food. "Effects" changes the color tint to an old-time- y sepia, a very cool blue, black and white, or a few other goofy-but-fun setups.
On HTC's EVO 4G with the Sense interface, the camera controls are in mostly the same places as the standard Android setup, but there are also some cool unique tools.
tab on the left? That slides out to reveal a whole lot of photo-geek options:
HTC Camera Options
But, wait! What was that bracket you saw in the viewfinder just then? That's the focus indicator. On some phones, the focus is always in the center, or automatic only. On certain cameras, however, you can either tap to set the point of focus in a shot (as with HTC phones), or drag the focus brackets (Motorola phones).
HTC Adjustable Focus Brackets
Take note, though, that on HTC phones, pressing and holding on a point of focus actually takes a shot—it's weird behavior, but, hey, it's their camera.