I got up,predawn to take my morning pills.
.

I happened to look at the farm stead next door
( 1/3 of a mile to the east)

The colorful pre dawn sky back lit the buildings making a silhouette , that I thought would make an interesting picture.

So I took two shots with my cell phone.
But when I look at the pics ,
The structures are not in silhouette at all, they are well lit and not dark at all.



W.t.h. ? How does that work ?

My guess is that camera recognized the buildings, adjusting exposure to capture a pic of them, rather than the sky as you desired.

Many smartphone cameras have a manual mode where you can control the settings. I only discovered that while taking pics of solar eclipse last year.

Welcome to the 21st century.
Glad to be rid of your Razr?

I have an iPhone. For some subjects like the OP describes, while viewing the subject on the screen, I will tap the area of the screen that I want the camera to adjust for, like the sky in the sunrise, ignoring the building.

quote:

Originally posted by Georgeair:
Welcome to the 21st century.
Glad to be rid of your Razr?

The old Razr was a great phone (the KRazr was even better). It's too bad that Verizon doesn't support them anymore as I'd go back to one tomorrow.

If the sky was properly exposed and not all washed out, it could by High Dynamic Range mode. The camera's brain recognizes small gradations in different areas and exposes differently for those areas.

e.g. it exposes less for the sky to capture the colors and brightnesses it has. But it exposes more for shadowed areas to capture the details there. Then it combines those exposures into one image.

Since cell phones don't have physical apertures like regular cameras, exposure is based on some electronic magic with the image chip.

yep, I was going to say HDR also. I still photograph with film cameras for the challenge. But what you can do with cell phones and digital cameras is amazing now a days.

So, it was seeing stuff with all its electro stuff . That my human eye couldn't.

And then assuming that I didn't want to look at black buildings.
Then
"Enhancing" the image by adding the colors that it saw ?

Is that about right ?

It was seeing the same thing your eyes can, except over a period of time which your eyes can’t do.

Your eyes only see light instantaneously, but the camera’s sensor sees that same light over a period of time controlled by the camera’s shutter. A photo represents light over time.

For example:



That photo, that your eyes are seeing instantly, was 10 seconds of light captured by my phone’s camera sensor.

There’s actually a satellite in that photo. I zoomed in on it below. It appears as a streak because it moved from point A to point B in relation to the camera’s sensor during the 10 seconds the shutter was open. Your eyes would only have seen a dot moving across the sky, but you would have seen the same light over the 10 seconds that the camera’s sensor captured. Nothing your eyes cannot detect was added by any electronics.

The stars would show the same streaking as well if the shutter was open for enough time.

Is it repeating words?

Progress

I'm not well versed in Android phones but I suspect they will have a similar mode but my iPhone will automatically enter night mode and do a long exposure to get shockingly good pics in the dark. There is an override for it in the corner of the screen if memory serves.

The eyes cannot capture many things the camera can.

quote:

Originally posted by Fly-Sig:
If the sky was properly exposed and not all washed out, it could by High Dynamic Range mode. The camera's brain recognizes small gradations in different areas and exposes differently for those areas.

e.g. it exposes less for the sky to capture the colors and brightnesses it has. But it exposes more for shadowed areas to capture the details there. Then it combines those exposures into one image.

Since cell phones don't have physical apertures like regular cameras, exposure is based on some electronic magic with the image chip.

That's wow. Thanks for explaining.

to summarize, longer exposure time in order to gather light enough to display the dark buildings and then digital manipulation to correct the over-exposed areas. Pretty cool automated process but makes doing what you wanted to do more difficult.

^^^^^^
It’s not hard to fix on an iPhone.

Tap on the screen where you’d like the camera to focus.

A yellow box will appear where you tapped, IMPORTANT: with a sun next to it.

To change the exposure put your finger on the sun and drag the sun up to lighten the exposure or drag the sun down to darken the exposure.

Literally click and drag. That’s it. For most exposure situations and changes, that’s all that you’ll need.

Nice overview of the iPhone camera (3.1 is exposure):
https://iphonephotographyschoo...one-camera-controls/


No idea on Android phones.