Pro mode camera settings in S7

[Android Central Question]

I am trying to learn how to do long exposure shots but can't get the option to increase shutter time. There is an icon next to ISO and aperture which looks like a circle with +/- inside. This is disabled. Please help. How do I increase shutter time to 5 seconds?

 

[SpookDroid]

That's the exposure level, and will not affect aperture time that much. You're looking for the icon that looks like a lens shutter with an 'A' value underneath. Can't remember if the S7 camera has a Pro mode, but if it doesn't, then you won't be able to control that value beyond the basic exposure level control. If it's disabled, check your shooting settings. If you're in Auto Mode or any mode that might be fixing shutter speeds (like Sports Mode), those controls will be disabled by the mode you're using.

 

[Mooncatt]

The icon that looks like the aperture is your shutter speed icon (the aperture on this phone is fixed and not able to be changed, so that icon can be misleading). Tap that and it should bring up an adjustable slider to change your shutter speed.

The +/- icon is a dual function exposure meter icon. When it's greyed out, it should also have a number by it. As you adjust the manual settings or move your camera to differently lit scenes, that number helps guide you to know if you are about to over expose (a positive number), under expose (a negative number), or exposed correctly (a zero). Since you want to do long exposure work, you will sometimes need to ignore this. For example, I like light painting. When I set up my camera for the shot, the exposure meter will read severely under exposed because it doesn't know I'm about to add light to the shot during the exposure.

The other function is exposure compensation for when you don't have the shutter and ISO locked. My guess is you tap their icons to turn them off, which lets the app work similar to auto mode. This would light up the exposure meter button. Tapping it now would allow you to tell the app to increase or decrease the exposure relative to what it thinks is a proper exposure. I.e. If you notice on the live preview that the overall scene is under exposed for your liking, you'd increase the compensation to make it brighter. This would tell the app to slow down the shutter and/or increase the ISO setting.