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Alex says there are three settings in particular you might want to first familiarize yourself with: focus control, shutter speed and ISO. \u201cFocus control gives you the creative ability to adjust what\u2019s in focus,\u201d he explains. “Sometimes you may want to focus on parts of an image that aren’t directly in the center of the frame.\u201d Then there\u2019s shutter speed, which \u2014 as you can likely guess \u2014 determines how long the camera sensor is capturing light. \u201cIf you set a faster shutter speed, you\u2019ll get an effect that looks like you\u2019re freezing motion,\u201d Alex says. And if you set a longer shutter speed, you\u2019ll see the motion sort of blurred. \u201cYou\u2019ve probably seen photos taken of traffic at night where you get light trails \u2014 that\u2019s taken with a slower or longer shutter speed.\u201d<\/p>\n
So focus control controls focus, and shutter speed lets you adjust \u2014 that\u2019s right \u2014 the shutter speed. Pretty straightforward! What about ISO? ISO stands for International Organization of Standards (which, yes, should be IOS, but it\u2019s a long story), and as it relates to your phone camera, ISO is simply the setting that determines how sensitive a camera\u2019s sensor is to light. \u201cAn easy way to think about it is if you use a higher ISO, the sensor is more sensitive to light and as a result you’ll get more noise or grain in the photo,” Alex explains. “A lower ISO means the sensor is less sensitive to light, which results in less noise. Lower ISO works well when there\u2019s bright light or you\u2019re using a longer shutter speed.” And if you opt for a lower ISO and a long shutter speed in order to capture more light, it’s a good idea to use a tripod or stabilize your phone so the image isn’t blurry.<\/p>\n
The Pixel automatically shoots images and turns them into JPEG files, but in Pro Controls you can opt for it to turn them into RAW files, which are less compressed files that save more data than a JPEG. If you plan on playing around with your photos in editing, you should try shooting in RAW. \u201cIt gives you a lot more flexibility in the editing stage to do things like adjust white balance, dynamic range, or noise reduction. The information stored in JPEG is more limited, which also limits the types of editing and adjustments you can do,\u201d Alex says.<\/p>\n
With the Pixel 8 Pro you have the option to shoot in full, or 50 megapixel, resolution. \u201cFull resolution basically means the camera is using every pixel in the sensor and saving that data,\u201d Alex explains. \u201cIf you zoom in or crop the photo later, the details are preserved a lot better and will be much more sharp,\u201d Alex says. \u201cImagine you take a photo out your window down the street: If you used full resolution, you\u2019d be able to zoom in and the street signs would still be clear and readable.\u201d If you didn\u2019t use full resolution, when you zoomed in, the lower resolutions file wouldn’t have preserved this level of detail as well and the result would be more pixelated. Shooting in full resolution means you\u2019ll end up with a higher resolution, larger file that is great for cropping and zooming in later or printing large format photos.<\/p>\n
The Pixel camera has an ultrawide lens, a wide lens and a telephoto lens. The default behavior for Pixel is, as you zoom in and out, the camera automatically switches which camera it uses. \u201cThere are a bunch of different signals that are optimized to get you the best image possible,\u201d Alex says. \u201cBut you might want to choose the specific camera yourself.\u201d On Pixel 8 Pro, you can switch on manual lens control, and then on the camera viewfinder, you\u2019ll see toggles for each lens. \u201cThink of a DSLR camera where the photographer has their own prime lenses and takes one off to switch it with one that has a different focal length,\u201d Alex says. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like that.\u201d Just without all the extra work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n