LG G6 Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

[Soundtallica]

Hey everyone! I just got my G6 today and I've spent my evening setting it up. It's been awesome so far.

The only disappointment has been low light photos, it's not too much better than my old Moto Z Play in that regard and certainly not up to par with the S7 and S8. Luckily, we G6 owners are lucky to have the best manual camera controls on any phone. I'm a photography noob so my question is, what are some good ISO, shutter speed, and white balance settings for low light? I'm not looking for a particular situation, I'm looking for a mix of settings that can work in as wide a range of situations as possible.

 

[L0n3N1nja]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Don't own the G6 but I do have a bit of camera knowledge. Unfortunately no phone takes great low light photos, some do it better, but even my S7 is a joke compared to my Nikon.

White balance from my experience on an S7 turns out a bit yellow and needs to be adjusted, if the G6 shoots like the G4 did (I've used that) than it should handle white balance on its own.

ISO increases light sensitivity and the higher you set it, the brighter the image will be but it also introduces digital noise or static at an increasing rate the higher you set it.

Shutter speed is how long the camera captures light. Slower shutter speed will let in more light creating a brighter image, faster will close more quickly and let in less light creating a darker image. This will capture motion as well. You need a very fast shutter to capture something moving fast without it blurring, a really slow shutter will create cool blur effects like light trails.

I can't comment on specific settings, you'll need to play as cameras vary. However if you have no tripod and are holding the phone, a shutter speed of 1/8th will probably be the slowest you can hold it without blur. Photographing moving people or objects set the ISO higher and set a faster shutter speed. If it's something still or a landscape lower your ISO and use a longer shutter speed.

I know this is kind of vague but I hope it provides some help.

 

[SpookDroid]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

If you want a "universal" solution, you'll want a high ISO value, but that will come at the price of the image being noisy. The more you slow down the shutter speed, the brighter your shot will be, but that will come at the expense of motion blur (so keep that hand steady!). I usually leave my ISO settings at a low/mid setting and play around with the shutter speed to get the desired exposure; I'm better at keeping the phone steady and I prefer that to noisy pictures.

 

[Jeremiah Bonds]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Sometimes noisy pictures can be good though... Here's a noisy shot a friend of mine took of me.

 

[devaa]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Camera is solid in low light...

 

[LeoRex]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Camera is solid in low-light as long as you are taking a shot of a static subject. With a halfway steady hand, you can get good results. But it also uses exposure settings that are much longer than other phones (side to side, my G6 exposes about 50% longer than my 6P in a lot of darker shots), so anything dynamic... like my kids... is a royal pain to get a shot that isn't a blurry mess. The G6's sensor is just too small to cope... so they crank the ISO, lengthen the exposure time and then dial up the NR and sharpening to compensate.

This weakness is the reason I'm actually using a G6 to be honest... my wife originally had it, but got fed up with blurry shots from a supposed 'top notch' camera. Now she's on a near two year old phone with a camera that runs circles around it once the light levels start to get lower.

Like Ser Spook suggest... go with higher ISO and quicker exposures... I'd rather have noisy pictures than blurry ones. Well, I'd rather neither, but this phone is not that capable.

 

[Jezza819]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Like Ser Spook suggest... go with higher ISO and quicker exposures... I'd rather have noisy pictures than blurry ones. Well, I'd rather neither, but this phone is not that capable.

Since I'm not familiar with those terms, which way do you go on each scale, towards the higher numbers or lower numbers? Then I've got to figure out which icon controls what.

 

[LeoRex]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Since I'm not familiar with those terms, which way do you go on each scale, towards the higher numbers or lower numbers? Then I've got to figure out which icon controls what.

ISO is how sensitive the camera sensor will be to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive it will be (so it will make a dark image brighter), but the more sensitive, the more noise you'll see in the final image.

Exposure (S in the shot below) is how quickly the sensor captures the image. It's in fractions of a second... 1/60 is half the time of 1/30.

The phone usually handles the combination of those two automatically... And the G6 seems to lean on longer exposures since higher ISO settings on such a small sensor tends to introduce a lot of noise. But as I said earlier, I'd rather a noisy image than a blurry one.

Start with small increments and test it out.

 

[Jezza819]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

ISO is how sensitive the camera sensor will be to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive it will be (so it will make a dark image brighter), but the more sensitive, the more noise you'll see in the final image.

Exposure (S in the shot below) is how quickly the sensor captures the image. It's in fractions of a second... 1/60 is half the time of 1/30.

The phone usually handles the combination of those two automatically... And the G6 seems to lean on longer exposures since higher ISO settings on such a small sensor tends to introduce a lot of noise. But as I said earlier, I'd rather a noisy image than a blurry one.

Start with small increments and test it out.//uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170726/1df8b5bcac917e89096b89d8d7be5b7d.jpg

Thanks for the tutorial. I think I'm going to try a little test run and just walk out on my deck when I get home from work tonight which should be about 6:30pm or so. I'm going to step out and take a shot of the building across from me using the default settings. Then take some more as it gets darker about every hour or so just to get an idea of what it can do. Then tomorrow night repeat it but this time toy around with those settings and see what happens.

One question I have is when I had my G4 I would just use that shutter speed setting when shooting in low light. But then say I wanted to take a shot the next day or so in bright daylight or a well lit interior and the setting would be all jacked because it's still on the low light setting.

Is there a way on the G6 to just go back to the default settings without having to remember where it started at and manually moving it back there? Because 90% of the time default is fine. At least it was with the G4.

 

[LeoRex]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Is there a way on the G6 to just go back to the default settings without having to remember where it started at and manually moving it back there? Because 90% of the time default is fine. At least it was with the G4.

Well, I presume you are in the 'manual' camera mode? Just toggle the AE-L button on the toolbar at the bottom. If it's green, that means you have the settings locked and it won't reset the picture when it focuses. If you toggle that off, it'll switch back to an automatic mode similar to the default 'Auto' mode.

 

[LeoRex]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

the ISO vs Exposure balance is also highly dependant on what you are going to take pictures of as well. If it's a static subject.... like a building lit up at night, you would be better off with a longer exposure/lower ISO... and have a steady hand. If you expect movement in the frame, it's the opposite.

I am going to post a few test shots in a few.. pairing different exposures with different ISOs, so you can see how they both interact.

 

[flyingkytez]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Hey everyone! I just got my G6 today and I've spent my evening setting it up. It's been awesome so far.

The only disappointment has been low light photos, it's not too much better than my old Moto Z Play in that regard and certainly not up to par with the S7 and S8. Luckily, we G6 owners are lucky to have the best manual camera controls on any phone. I'm a photography noob so my question is, what are some good ISO, shutter speed, and white balance settings for low light? I'm not looking for a particular situation, I'm looking for a mix of settings that can work in as wide a range of situations as possible.

Low light is already good with auto mode. However, if it's too dark, you can adjust it in manual mode. Trying to focus on a moving object in low light is difficult as the focus is very slow. My go to setting for that is in manual mode, change the S to 1/50 and then change the ISO accordingly. Image quality won't be great but you'll be able to catch moving objects faster with the focus.

 

[LeoRex]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

OK... I am going to put up a post shortly with examples of hour the different settings will affect the outcome... and also how different photos are processed if you are Auto vs Manual.

 

[Jezza819]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Here are a few I took at a concert this past weekend. I did try changing the settings but I don't think it really helped anything. I also think that trying to zoom on any phone is basically useless. The video I shot also looks just as bad and the audio is terrible.

 

[Mike Dee]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Here are a few I took at a concert this past weekend. I did try changing the settings but I don't think it really helped anything. I also think that trying to zoom on any phone is basically useless. The video I shot also looks just as bad and the audio is terrible.

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Digital Zoom is just a crop of the normal sized image.

 

[Jezza819]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Digital Zoom is just a crop of the normal sized image.

So don't ever do it if you're far away to begin with?

 

[Mike Dee]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

So don't ever do it if you're far away to begin with?

I didn't suggest that....just clarifying what it is. Think of it as cropping in advance but ending up with the same results which is a slight advantage. The other advantage is you can see how much resolution you are losing as you compose the shoot and adjust to a wider shot with better results.

 

[Jezza819]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

I didn't suggest that....just clarifying what it is. Think of it as cropping in advance but ending up with the same results which is a slight advantage. The other advantage is you can see how much resolution you are losing as you compose the shoot and adjust to a wider shot with better results.

Oh ok yes I did sort of misunderstand what you said. On my previous phone, the G4, somebody had said trying to zoom in on something when you're far away to begin with was basically useless and judging by my pics, I would say that's about right.

 

[bobdob]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Camera is solid in low-light as long as you are taking a shot of a static subject. With a halfway steady hand, you can get good results. But it also uses exposure settings that are much longer than other phones (side to side, my G6 exposes about 50% longer than my 6P in a lot of darker shots), so anything dynamic... like my kids... is a royal pain to get a shot that isn't a blurry mess. The G6's sensor is just too small to cope... so they crank the ISO, lengthen the exposure time and then dial up the NR and sharpening to compensate.

Yeah, it's as if someone who doesn't understand photography designed this.

Image stabilization lets you use longer shutter speeds, but you don't necessarily want longer shutter speeds.

The maximum aperture is relatively large but you don't have any control over it. The automatic settings seem to prefer a longer shutter speed rather than larger aperture. In "manual" mode I'd prefer an aperture-priority mode.

I prefer noise too, but then I always liked my film grainy. Ultra-zoomed enlargements were always my favorite.

 

[Fred98TJ]

Re: Go-to manual camera settings for low light?

Aperture is fixed on cell phones.

Noise is horrid. Grain is beautiful. Big difference between the two.

Never digital zoom. Maybe if emergency, like you see Elvis in a UFO and it's taking off.
Crop afterwards.

Autofocus on this camera is not the best, especially as the light drops off. Just have to know that and know what expectations to have for this.