Help me take a better picture on my phone.

Got a new galaxy A53 and my motion pictures are blurred. On all my old phones on factory settings the riders would be clear.

I don’t often take pictures of cyclists but I do of waves and dogs running on beaches.

Are there settings I can play with?

I get that it isn’t what you want but I really like the photo.

I’d be using that to my advantage!

To get rid of the blur you will need a faster shutter speed. You could also track the rider with the photos as you take the photo, this would give blurred background which should give a sense you speed/movement to the photo.

Under the trees there on a grey day the phone would be setting the shutter speed slow to get a decent overall exposure, and so you get the motion blur.

Has the phone app got an ‘action’ or ‘sport’ setting to try?

As mentioned, unless it has that or you can manually set shutter speed or get to a better lit location, you’ll need to pan with the subject while you hit the shutter button.

If your Samsung camera app doesn’t have manual settings, there are plenty of free camera apps that do.

Personally, I’d probably use a faster shutter speed, get a darker exposure and try to fix it as best I could in post. Or just go with it and embrace the blur.

As the previous posters have said, from a photography perspective you either need a fast shutter speed to freeze the action or to pan with the moving target for background blur instead of foreground.

You’ve got a problem with composition there though in that the rider on the left is moving across the shot and the ones behind are coming towards you. The ones behind them are moving in the opposite direction relative to you! That’s a tricky shot to get right. Stand somewhere else.

I’d be trying a different app though, even just to compare and contrast. There are many. The stock app on my Nokia is awful (and the camera itself isn’t great, which isn’t a winning combination).

The Samsung photo app has a tendency to over brighten scenes beyond reality and the way it does that for the most part is push the shutter speed to longer times – the result is motion blur whether it be bikes or kids etc…

It’s particularly pronounced in anything other than direct sunshine.

So for example in you pic you posted it looks like you’re under tree cover, so the phone has tried to boost the brightness as evidenced by the non-tree cover area being over exposed.

Couple of ways you can reduce exposure – use the brightness slider to reduce brightness or the Samsung app has a manual mode, so you’re best off investigating that and trying to reduce the shutter speed manually but it’s nothing like as point and shoot.

Google pixel phones are much better for freezing this sort of action without much user input – they bias to a more natural exposure, faster shutter speeds and will more readily bump the iso (sensor signal amplification) to achieve the faster shutter speeds.

It certainly wasn’t this green in real life.

Actually, if the rider exiting the frame on the left had been completely in the frame, I’d be pretty chuffed! Just cropping the photo on the right would give a great action photo.

Seems blurred cyclists have a fanclub.

1. 

As others have said you need a faster shutter speed.  On a ‘proper’ camera that will be achieved by using a lens with a bigger aperture or increasing the ISO (or both).  Not sure if you can do that on your phone camera?

What was the shutter speed, aperture and ISO for these shots as it looks shady so always going to be a challenge.

On the stock Samsung app look at the pro setting where you can adjust shutter speed

OK, if I may ask a similar question. When I took this photo, I wanted to have the garden blurred and the bike sharp in the foreground.  IIRC on an old camera increasing the apature size would do that, how to achieve on my phone camera? This is also a Samsung.

On my Google pixel id use portrait mode and focus on the bike. It gives a nice blurred background

Have you got portrait mode?

You’ve answered your own question, you need Aperture Priority. On a Samsung phone I’ve no idea, maybe “pro mode” as someone suggested earlier, or a different app which gives you more control.

Also, that bush needs a trim. Understandable you wanted to blur it.

On the Pro mode you can adjust the,settings, that is if OP’s phone has that.

As kormoran says, Portrait mode should automatically give you a blurred background with a certain amount of bokeh, where highlights form neat little fuzzy dots.

IIRC on an old camera increasing the apature size would do that, how to achieve on my phone camera?

It’s not possible to blur the background on a smartphone by opening the aperture because the sensor size in a phone is actually somewhat less than the size of a fingernail.

This small sensor means that to produce a ‘normal’ looking focal length image like the one above – a 4mm focal length lens is actually used. On a ‘full frame’ 35mm camera, this would be insanely wide-angle. The very small sensor in a phone, however, renders an image that is in effect a very extreme crop of the ultra-wide-angle image you would obtain using a 4mm lens on an 35mm ‘old camera’ with a 24×36 mm sensor plane. Here, it looks ‘normal’ on the tiny fingernail phone sensor.

Sadly, it is virtually impossible to blur out the background in a shot like this made with a 4mm lens – unless you somehow could make a lens with an aperture width many times greater than the focal length itself.

Hence, selective blurring software is now used to implement this effect quite successfully in phone – albeit artificially.

*Probably too much detail here than anyone needed 😂 *

OK, if I may ask a similar question. When I took this photo, I wanted to have the garden blurred and the bike sharp in the foreground.

Here you go @tthew. I’ve Blurred the garden for you.
Hope that helps. 👍

IIRC on an old camera increasing the apature size would do that, how to achieve on my phone camera?

Quite simply, you can’t as explained above.  You can use software to give an effect that tries to mirror a low depth of field with the key word being tries.

To get a blurred background when standing far enough back to take a picture of bike and surroundings you need around a 50mm lens at f2

Phone cameras over-process the picture for SM consumption.

Learn to shoot manual (and battle with a small sensor) and try a different app other than the built in one. Consider shooting RAW if your phone allows it.

Some of the cameras are pretty good on phones – you just need to bypass the processing.

It might be that the battle between noise (small sensor / low light) and high shutter speed is just too much for your phone.  Jack up the ISO a bit and use a fast shutter. Shoot RAW then add Noise Reduction in post.

I quite like the challenge of getting as much as possible out of a phone – especially for trips.

I’d learn to shoot manual – not as quick but you can apply your methods to all cameras then.

Dual aperture phones are coming slowly – see the Sony Pro-I, overpriced and flawed but a great idea.

What’s the easiest 3rd party app to use? Don’t mind paying for one.

Google Camera App works well and has pro settings IIRC.

Not all phones will support the Google Camera app IIRC. If you’re won’t, have a look at Camera FV-5. There’s a free version and a more featured pay one.

I use Snapseed app on Android, which has a lens blur tool amongst many others.

It’s not true bokeh of course, but basically just a point of focus dot that your can stretch to suit your subject but it works well enough for some subjects just to direct the viewers attention.

@kayak23

Usually things are focused or blurred based on depth of field, or the distance an object is away from the camera lens. Not left/right.
<p style=”text-align: left;”>To me, that second photo does not direct my attention to the motorbike, but to the strange effect of feeling like I’ve got a cataract in my right eye. Nice motorbike though.</p>

😂 Yes I know it’s nothing like true depth of field but it was just a quick and dirty example I did of using the tool.
It’s handy for some instances but I agree, it’s not ‘correct’ here at all.

S22 Ultra wil give DoF on close up objects, but not on anything with a bit of distance between the lens and the object

20230306_182211~2 by davetheblade[/url], on Flickr

The portrait blur works quite well though – albeit it’s missed a couple of bits here

IMG_20230513_145030~2 by davetheblade[/url], on Flickr