How to Take Long Exposure Photos on iPhone and Android

This article will show you how to Take Long Exposure Photos on iPhone and Android. If your friends’ light painting pictures on Instagram, Facebook, or any other social media feed show a waterfall or river that looks cloudy and smooth, this is because they used long exposure photography. Once you know where to find the settings and have the right tools, it’s actually pretty easy.

Your phone’s camera has great quality and features, and if you know how to use it to its full potential, you won’t need an expensive DSLR to take beautiful photos. You may have heard of long-exposure photos. They look more interesting and different than regular photos, and you can take them with the camera on your Samsung phone.

Action mode, Cinematic mode, Portrait mode, Night mode, Live Photos, slo-mo, and more are some of these. Still, there are probably a lot of Pro camera options you don’t know about. For example, you don’t need a third-party photography app to take long-exposure pictures with your iPhone and Android.

How to Take Long Exposure Photos on iPhone

If you’ve ever used Live Photos, you’re already one step closer to your long exposure goals. Have you never taken a Live Photo? It’s basically a 3-second video, which is great for those of you who forget to use your iPhone camera to take real movies. Live photos can be taken with the iPhone 6 and later models with iOS 16.

For the long exposure part of the equation, you’ll need a moving subject and an iPhone stand or a stable surface to set your camera on. If you hold the phone in your hand, the camera will shake too much and your pictures won’t be lined up right. Since you’re just starting out, you can try out long exposure shots by letting your water stream drip. Set up your shot by putting your iPhone on the stand so it doesn’t move.

1. Open the Camera app
2. Turn on Live Photos (an icon with concentric circles at the top of the screen)
3. Set the self-timer (a clock-shaped icon to the right of Live Photos) for 3-10 seconds. Using the self-timer for long exposure shots reduces camera shake.
4. Position your iPhone on a tripod and frame your shot.
5. Tap the shutter button to take a Live Photo
6. Open the Photos app and find the photo.
7. Swipe up on it to reveal Effects
8. Swipe left until you see the Long Exposure effect. Tap on it to create your long exposure photo.
9. If for some reason you aren’t happy with the results, you can easily revert back to the original Live Photo by tapping Live in the Effects menu.

How to Take Long Exposure Photos on Android

1. First, open the camera app on your Samsung Galaxy phone and tap “More” in the bottom toolbar.
2. Here are all the different camera modes you can use. The one we want is “Pro” mode.
3. The setting that we’re interested in here is “Speed.” Shutter speed is indicated as a fraction—like 1/30—or a solid number.
4. The numbers indicate how long the shutter is open. 1/30 is 1/30th of a second, 5 is simply five seconds.
5. To adjust the shutter speed, tap “Speed” and use your finger to slide the dial. Which speed should you use? You’ll need to experiment a bit to find the sweet spot for your situation, but typically, anything longer than 1/30 will be slower than a regular photo.
6. Tap the shutter button when you’re ready to take the photo. You will see a progress circle indicating how long the shutter is open.

What is long exposure?

Have you ever noticed how some photos make breaking waves or waterfalls look as smooth as silk? Or the way some photos show how busy a city scene is by showing how cars and people are moving while the background stays still? These are examples of long exposure photos. A slow shutter speed and a tripod are used to keep the camera from moving. Depending on the effect you want, you would set the shutter speed on a DSLR or mobile camera to between 1/15 and 30 seconds to get the long exposure effect.

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