The Nexus 5
is a great phone, but its camera isn’t the greatest: while the
combination of an 8 MP sensor, an aperture of f/2.4 and optical image
stabilization sounds like a recipe for perfect photos in every scenario,
that unfortunately isn’t always the case. Here’s how to get the most
out of your Nexus 5 camera.
We’re sure you’ve already done this, but if you haven’t then make
sure you have the most up-to-date version of Android. The Nexus 5’s
camera was plagued by a number of issues at launch, but many of them
were fixed in subsequent updates - and upgrading to Lollipop improves
things further, not least by supporting RAW image files in compatible
camera apps. RAW images are photographers’ favorites as they don’t
process the image or compress it like a JPEG does.
If you set your default camera mode to HDR+ (you can do that by
opening Google Camera, bringing up the menu and selecting the HDR+
option in the middle) you’ll see an immediate difference in your photos:
the contrast, motion blur and low-light performance all improve with
little in the way of negatives, bar a very slight drop in your battery
life (it was quite slow initially but the first KitKit update fixed
that). We’re sure you’ll think the difference is worth it. If you’re wondering what HDR+ is doing, it’s taking a burst of
photographs with slightly different settings and then combining them to
get the best picture - so it might take the best shadows from one
picture and the best highlights from another to produce an image that’s
more balanced than either.
We’re not against shutter sounds, but it’s a shame that the bad
behavior of a few creepy smartphone users mean that the rest of us can’t
turn them off. Why can’t we snap a surreptitious shot of somebody who
looks really silly without letting them know we’re doing it? While
shutter sounds are generally hard-wired, you can still mute them on the
Nexus by muting your entire device, plugging in headphones, using a
third-party app that doesn’t make a noise or by renaming your camera
sound file. That last option for how to turn off the Nexus 5 shutter sound requires rooting.
Clear the cache when it crashes
As our very own Scott Adam Gordon writes, clearing the app cache is
probably “responsible for fixing around 98 percent of all smartphone
problems”. It definitely helps if the camera app suddenly stops working.
Go into Settings > Apps > All, find the camera app you’ve been
using, tap it and then select Clear Cache. Do the same for the gallery
app if that doesn’t do the trick.
Take a photo while you’re filming video
You’ve upgraded to Lollipop, right? Then you can take a photo
mid-shoot by tapping on the screen while you continue recording your
video.
If you stick with the Google Camera app you’ll get some nice photos,
but they’ll be nicer still if you tweak its settings. Swipe from the
left and hit the gear icon in the top-right corner (or the bottom-right
if you’re holding the phone in portrait mode) to go into settings and
change Panorama Resolution to Maximum and Lens Blur to High. Your
panoramas and blurs will take a little longer to process, but they’ll
look a lot better too.
That’s L Camera,
of course, the experimental and excellent Android camera app that
enables you to explore the possibilities of the latest Android camera
API. It delivers manual focus, manual exposure and ISO settings, DNG
output (a RAW format that’s becoming popular with snappers) and 30fps
full-res, 60-fps 1080p-res and 120-fps video at 800x600. You don’t need a
rooted phone to use it unless you intend to try the 60fps video, which
requires modification of a system library on the Nexus 5.
Step into the light
The Nexus 5 camera was designed for easy point-and-shoot operation,
and while that’s great it doesn’t suit everybody: its maximum shutter
speed isn’t very long and that means it struggles a bit in poor lighting
conditions. HDR+ mode helps a bit and the flash can cast a bit of a
glow in close-up shooting, but there’s no substitute for good lighting.
There are lots and lots of camera apps out there, many of which
specialize in things that the default camera app doesn’t do very well.
The right app really depends on what you want to do, but we’d recommend
checking out the excellently named A Better Camera, the time-lapse app
Lapse It and the sharing-focused VSCO Cam.
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