New manual exposure settings for iPhone in iOS 14 Beta 2

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There’s a new manual exposure control in the Camera app in iOS 14 Beta 2.

I discovered this by accident while shooting video earlier today. The icon, a plus and minus sign within a circle, appears in the row of additional settings within the Camera app on iPhone 11 and 11 Pro.

When you select it, a familiar slider appears, similar to editing adjustments in Photos. There’s also small histogram also appears that reflects the exposure changes you make.

To get a manual exposure previously in iOS, you would press on the frame and a box would appear with a small sun on a line. You would have to press that line to adjust the exposure. It was always finicky and not really reliable.

In my first test of it, it does not appear to link with the square and sun exposure adjustment. In fact, it seems that you can use both simultaneously. I will play around more with this in the future.

Making manual exposure easier to use is an important addition to the iOS Camera app. While the auto exposure has gotten better and better each year, sometimes you want to accentuate a certain part of the image you are capturing.

A dedicated and easy to use manual exposure control is a welcome addition to the stock iOS Camera app. I often use other apps like Halide because of its ease to manually adjust exposure.

While there was a lot to get excited about in iOS 14, there wasn’t much for Photos or Camera apps, so this is exciting to find.



Date
July 9, 2020