Open Camera

Open Camera is a popular photo editing software that not only maximizes the shooting capabilities of your device's camera but also provides a variety of editing tools to help you create more beautiful works to share with your friends and win their likes. The software supports remote control functions such as voice shooting, time-lapse shooting, and Bluetooth control, making selfies easy. After shooting, users can add timestamps, location information, and various texts to photos, and adjust color effects, brightness, and other aspects to meet their creative needs.

Features of Open Camera:

Flexible Shooting Modes and Tools: The app supports several capture modes, such as burst mode for action shots, timer-based shooting, and HDR for challenging lighting conditions. Integration of guide grids—like rule of thirds and golden ratio overlays—makes it easier to compose shots with precision. For those who film videos on their phones, Open Camera provides high-quality video recording with adjustable frame rates, resolution, and optional audio control, giving users more creative flexibility.

User-Friendly Interface: A clean, customizable interface helps users access features without unnecessary clutter. Open Camera’s on-screen controls can be adjusted to personal preference, including orientation locks, volume key actions, and easily accessible settings toggles. This flexibility helps streamline the photography process, whether the user is shooting in portrait, landscape, or unconventional angles.

Innovative Trigger and Automation Options: Open Camera distinguishes itself with trigger options that go beyond the standard shutter button. The app can be set to react to audio cues—such as a specific voice command or a simple clap—making group photos and hands-free shots straightforward. Interval shooting is also supported for creating time-lapse sequences or regularly spaced photos, a feature valuable for creative projects.

Comprehensive Camera Controls: Open Camera is a robust photography application for Android devices designed to provide users with a broad range of manual and automatic shooting options. It offers controls that cater to both casual photographers and users seeking advanced configurations. Features include manual focus adjustments, ISO settings, exposure compensation, and customizable white balance options. These allow photographers to fine-tune their shots and achieve more professional-looking results than the default camera app may allow.

Functions of Open Camera:

Manual photo and video controls: Open Camera gives you direct control over ISO, shutter speed, white balance, and exposure lock or compensation. You can use manual focus with an assist overlay and capture RAW photos in DNG for flexible editing. For video, you can set slow motion where supported and record with a log profile to preserve highlights and shadows. These controls rely on Camera2 capabilities on your device.

Advanced capture modes: You can shoot HDR with auto alignment and ghost removal to handle scenes with bright and dark areas. Exposure bracketing helps you create blends or pick the best frame, while panorama mode works with both rear and front cameras. For macro and product shots, focus bracketing lets you take a sequence to combine into a deeper focus image later. These modes support creative and technical needs without extra equipment.

Framing and monitoring aids: Open Camera includes an on‑screen histogram so you can check exposure while composing. Zebra stripes help you spot clipped highlights, and focus peaking makes manual focusing more accurate. Multiple grids and crop guides assist with composition, and auto level keeps horizons straight for landscapes and architecture. These tools help you work quickly and reduce retakes.

Flexible triggering and remote options: You can set timers with an optional voice countdown for group shots or self‑videos. Auto repeat and a noise‑activated shutter give hands‑free ways to take a series of photos. Bluetooth LE remote support enables tripod shooting without touching the phone, and you can configure volume keys or the UI for easier control. An upside‑down preview supports attachable lenses and rigs that flip the phone.

User Reviews of Open Camera:

Love it! Put on my Stylo 6. Just what I wanted. Control over my camera for taking times pictures. Offers so many features to set it up the way you want it for exposures, times, etc. I honestly do not see where it pops up ads yet. IF it does I really do not care. Worth it. Went thru a number of apps, deleted all of them. Kept this. May not do what some people want but does exactly what I want.

Totally useless when I needed a camera app to take a picture in a hurry. No auto zoom and out of focus by default, so can't read any text. Can't save pictures to external sd card. Edit: On Android 9 the zoom function is intuitive and easy to operate, which makes it possible to get a sharper image. Not too complicated. This is once again my favourite camera app.

Fantastic. Been using it for several years. The advantage is full control over the hardware's feature-set, from image size, to resolution, to quality (on lossy-formats, like *.jpg), and so forth. Unlike the default app on my Samsung, which fails to offer control on common settings (on my phone, you know, the one I paid for!). Open Camera is the answer.

A bit daunting at first, this app affords control that can be very useful. Exposure lock and adjustments on the fly along with manual focus (using Camera2 API) allow for some very close-up, well-focused photos. Hands-down one of, if not the best camera apps out there. You don't get fancy filters and dancing hot dogs, you get the raw power you need to take great photos. Great application all around.

FAQs of Open Camera:

Can you implement disabling shutter sound for my phone? 

If Open Camera shows the option Settings/"Camera API", then changing to "Camera2 API" means you'll be able to disable shutter sounds under "Settings/More camera controls...". When not using Camera2 API, if the option "Shutter sound" under "More camera controls..." isn't shown, then it's not available. There are possible workarounds for some of these devices (which is why some third party camera applications may be able to silence the shutter), though the issue is these don't work on all devices, and tend to use methods that Google now discourage. The fault is with the device for not supporting standard method for cameras to disable the shutter sound on Android. In particular, if under Settings/About you see that "Can disable shutter sound?" says No, it means the device's camera API is telling 3rd party camera apps that shutter sound can't be disabled (so either it can't do it, or the API is lying - either way, this should be reported to your manufacturer).

I switched to a new phone, and now something doesn't work!

Google's auto-backup will typically transfer settings to a new phone, but this may mean a camera-specific setting is no longer relevant. In particular, if you set a non-default save location, it may be that the path is not valid on the new device, or if using Settings/More camera controls/"Storage Access Framework", you may need to rechoose the save location (from Settings/More camera controls/"Save location") to grant permission to the new device. You can use Settings/Settings manager/"Reset settings" to reset Open Camera to its original state, to rule out any issues from an Android backup from another device.

My pictures are being rotated/cropped?

This likely means the auto-level option is on. (If they're being rotated even when the phone is held level, it may mean the accelerometer sensor on your device isn't calibrated.) It's off by default, but you may have accidentally switched it on. To turn off, go to the "popup" menu and untick Auto-level.

Why doesn't Open Camera support dual / multiple cameras?

Open Camera supports cameras that are made available to third party applications, although you may need to set Settings/"Camera API" to "Camera2 API". When using Camera2 API, many devices expose multiple cameras via the zoom - zooming out to less than 1x switches to the ultra-wide camera, zooming in automatically switches to the telephoto when required. On other devices, the cameras can be manually switched by using the Switch multi-camera iconswitch multi-camera icon. Note that some devices that allow switching between cameras when zooming only allow this when RAW is not enabled. Note that some devices don't allow third party applications to use their extra cameras, either via zoom or by explicitly switching to the camera. In such cases Open Camera cannot access them.

But another third party camera app can access the extra cameras on my device, why can't Open Camera?

On some devices, it may be possible to access the camera by ignoring what the device claims, and trying to access the camera IDs anyway. This is a hack - on other devices, this will lead to buggy behaviour where cameras are exposed that hang or otherwise don't work. The problem here is that the device does not support exposing the cameras to third party camera applications via the Android camera API.

Conclusion:

So, this is all about the Open Camera app, and we hope you are able to download and use this app. While there are many camera apps for Android available out there, this app is better than others because it comes with many advanced features that can’t be found in other similar apps, and it is completely free too.