Smartphone cameras have advanced a fair bit these days. The software is capable of snapping some great photos that will be more than capable of replacing our regular point and shoot cameras. That being said for more advanced photographers, there are probably some features that they are missing that might only be found on more advanced cameras, like DSLRs or some mirrorless camera models.
Well the good news is that if you’re an Android user, it looks like with the Android “L” update, users can soon look forward to full manual controls on their smartphone camera. This is thanks to the new Camera 2 API that Google has introduced in the update. It will allow developers to add manual controls to their apps, such as adjusting shutting speed, color correction matrix, tonemap curve, auto-exposure/auto white balance lock, flash trigger, and so on.
The new Camera 2 API will allow users to capture photos in RAW with DNG support. For those unfamiliar with RAW images, it’s basically images that have the least amount of processing done to them in the camera itself. This allows photographers more leeway when post-processing them, such as adjusting for barrel distortion in Lightroom, choosing white balance settings, and so on.
Interestingly enough it seems that manual controls is quite a hot topic because at WWDC earlier this month, Apple introduced manual controls the their default camera app which will be part of the company’s iOS 8 update. So if you wanted manual controls on your smartphone’s camera, we guess both iOS and Android are some options you can consider.