I’ve been using my GalaxyS22 for quite a while, and overall, I’m really happy with the camera performance — it takes amazing photos during the day with sharp detail and great color accuracy. However, I’ve noticed that in low-light conditions, the results aren’t always consistent. Some photos come out a bit noisy or overly smoothed, especially when there’s movement or limited ambient light.
I’ve tried experimenting with Night Mode and adjusting exposure manually in Pro Mode, but I’m still not sure what combination gives the best results. Are there specific Pro Mode settings (like ISO, shutter speed, or focus) that work best for nighttime photography on the S22?
Also, has anyone found third-party camera apps or filters that enhance low-light shots without losing detail or natural colors? I’d love to hear what techniques or adjustments other Galaxy S22 users are using to get the most out of the camera in darker environments.
Any tips, tricks, or real-life examples from your own experience would be super helpful!
Higher ISO increases the sensitivity to light but introduces noise that, at a high enough ISO value, makes frames appear grainy.
Lower shutter speed exposes the sensor to what light there is for longer but handholding the phone at shutter speeds below about a fiftieth of a second will probably introduce camera shake that blurs subjects in the frame.
Focus would have no effect on the quality of frames of low lit scenes. Though for viewfinder autofocus to work there has to be some contrast in the scene. Laser rangefinder cameras don't require visible contrast for short to medium distances but I don't believe any S22 models have one.
Good aproaches are to use a tripod, reduces the chance of camera shake from low shutter speed. Gradually increase the ISO and find a level that doesn't introduce too much grainy noise. Be a little tolerant of "some" grainy noise because it's a dark scene. Also, try using positive "exposure compensation" on the camera app. Most camera modes call it EV (exposure value) but it's sometiimes a circle with a diagonal line that splits the circle with a + in one half and a - in the other half. EV and +/- are equivalent for this purpose. Set it to +1.0 to double the brightness of a scene, +2.0 to make the scene 4x brighter, etc. It's usually worth using steps of about +0.5 between 0.0 and +2.0 until you find a value that works for you. It's probably not necessary to force a specific ISO if you are using exposure compensation. The camera may provide the compensation using ISO so it's worth watching the visible grainy noise on frames as you use it.
You can automate some of the 0.5 stepping of exposure compensation by using an "exposure bracketing" feature that makes the camera take three or more frames at once each with a different exposure. The same scale is used for bracketing. So, if you set a 3 frame 0.5 exposure bracket but also pre-set the EV to +1.0 then the three bracket frames would be at EV+0.5, EV+1.0 and EV+1.5 from one shutter release. You just pick the best looking frame and discard the others if the space is needed.
A second mention of a tripod is worthwhile, shutter speeds can be reduced to durations where you couldn't hand-hold the phone stable enough to prevent camera shake but with a tripod you could. This would allow you to take frames at shutter speeds such as a tenth of a second or one second or longer keeping the ISO low to avoid noise. But, anything that moves in the scene such as vehicles and most living things, including animals, bushes and trees will probably move enough to be blurred at such long exposures or introduce streaks of light from the passing of things like vehicles. Long distance scenes without vehicles or idle streets and even close-ups without moving lights or objects would probably be feasible at long shutter speeds if using a tripod.
Using a mode that permits saving high dynamic range (HDR) frames can also help because it has more detail in a range of contrast between darkest and brightest areas. That would probably require using EXPERT RAW, if available and shooting RAW format frames to preserve all the dynamic range.
