[Galaxy S III Q&A, (US Carriers)] MontyPyFly:
Camera settings

As far as "best" all around settings, the following hold true:

*Self portrait: OFF (unless you are taking a self portrait)

*Flash: Auto (for ease) but turn the flash ON in bright sunlight if shooting people within 8 feet, to fill in the harsh shadows)

*Shooting Mode: Single shot if you want to not get carried away and have a million shots to sift through, or Multi shot if you are not good at quick shooting and want to have lots of shots to choose from.

*Scene Mode: None. (for best all around use) the other settings just force higher or lower f-stops and shutter speeds, if you don't know what effect those have on an image, then "none" would be a good choice.

*Exposure Value: 0 for most shooting. + for shooting with bright backgrounds (snow, sand, bright windows etc) and - for dark backgrounds (dark stages with spotlight, concerts with lighting, black walls, etc) The normal light meter wants to blend all light values to 18% gray, so if you shoot a gray wall, a black wall and a white wall, they would all come out looking basically the same with 0 EV.

*Focus mode: Auto for almost everything

*Timer: Off. Unless you are wanting to use a self timer

*Effects: none. They are fun to play with for a couple of minutes, but you probably won't use them much in the real world, and you have a lot more control over effects in an external photo editing program.

*Resolution: 3264x2448. anything else is a waste of the camera specs. Yes, you can use smaller resolution if you are only shooting things to be used on the web, but what if you have a nice shot, and you had the camera set to 640x480? Storage is cheap and plentiful, keep the resolution to the max!

*White Balance: Auto Most cameras now have a very good auto balance.

*ISO: Auto Again, most cameras are good at this. You will get more noise and "grain" with higher ISO settings, but you will get the image. If you keep it set at 100, you will get blurry or unusable photos in low light. Remember, this is a PHONE, not a DSLR camera.

*Metering: Center weighted for most shooting. Spot if your subject and background vary greatly (similar to EV+-)

*Anti Shake: On, what the heck, let technology work for you.

*Auto Contrast: Off. if you are shooting a gray, dreary day, let it be dreary, not corrected to high contrast. Again, you can have much more control of the final image in a photo editing program (even one on the phone)

*Guidelines: off if you are easily distracted, on if you would like some help keeping horizons straight, or to keep the center of interest in the "Rule of thirds" this will help you to NOT put peoples heads in the Center of the photo with all that sky wasting space above them all the time :-)

*Image Quality: Superfine. Why would you want to buy a Lamborghini and only drive it 10 MPH (KPH)?

*GPS tag: your choice. Most photo folders can group photos by location, kinda nice. I leave mine on.

*Shutter Sound: On, unless it bugs you, but it helps you know when the shutter fires as well as letting the subject know when they can quit posing/smiling. If you are trying to shoot secret pictures in the locker room, then silence it :-P Also, Android Lost and other phone finding apps can shoot photos from the front and rear cameras if your phone is lost or stolen, a quiet shutter won't scare the thief.

*Storage: Memory card! Too many things can happen to your phone, keep your pictures on the external card. and back them up with something like dropbox, or manually.

(I have owned Associated Photographics (.com) for 25 years :-) )