Occasionally I have phones come through for review that have issues with the phone’s camera always hunting for focus every few seconds. This is very distracting and essentially makes the video useless.
Thankfully, there is a very easy fix for most phones with this focusing problem while making videos. The solution is Open Camera, which is a free app from the Play Store.
By setting focus lock, the camera will stay focused at whatever distance the focus is set when you start recording, until you tap on the screen again. At that point the focus will unlock and refocus on the area you have tapped. It will then auto-lock again until you tap again.
In addition to the focusing fix, we also get the excellent option to lock exposure. Locking exposure is not true manual video, because we don’t have control over aperture, ISO, or frame rate. But, it essentially gives us the same result as manual video by keeping exposure constant, instead of auto-exposure, which changes when scenes of varying brightness come into the frame.
Depending on what you’re shooting, you may want auto-exposure, but there may be times when the exposure lock option comes in handy. It’s one more tool in the belt for video.
Unlike focus lock on Open Camera, which allows us to re-focus by tapping, exposure lock stays locked the entire duration of the video, regardless of what you tap.
If you give Open Camera a try, let us know what model phone you’re using it with and how it worked out for you.
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