[Sony Xperia 5 Guides, News, & Discussion] chgr:
Here a a few tips on controlling the stock camera app in auto-mode that you may or not be aware off.

Just thought it may be of help to other owners.

We know we can control pretty much all aspects of camera in manual mode (focus, metering, ISO, WB, etc).

However, on the Xperia 5 the manual mode generates more noise in the images than the auto-mode, especially noisy in non-HDR mode whith dark environments on the photo background areas, edges and faces.

So I end up using mostly the auto-mode except to force HDR or for long-exposure shots.

In auto-mode, there are quite a few things I found frustrating compared to manual mode, but for which there are solutions:

Control scene detection: sometimes you don't want auto Backlight (HDR), Document, Food, etc. >> To temporarily disable scene detection in auto-mode, simply click on the sun icon on the left. When the icon is blue all photos are taken in standard mode: no HDR or special color processing.

1st Edit: Condition: you must use tap to focus. (If you just focus with the shutter software button, the hardware button or object tracking, scene detection won't disengage unless you actually change brightness or tint.)

Control focus: eye focus works quite well for faces. To focus on other objects, auto-mode has 3 options:

1. Auto-focus (the large green rectangle that appears when you click on shutter soft or hardware button): This tries to guess what the subject is and often leads to unpredictable results.

2. Object tracking (yellow rectangle): This is useful for moving objects. I don't use it for anything else because it typically detects and focuses on the outer edges of objects instead of the center of objects, making for blurred subjects. Also it works really bad for very small objects or when it's darker.

3. Tap to focus (blue circle): This lets you choose precisely the focus point. Much better focus results in general than method 1 or 2 above.

Control exposure: Auto-exposure is pretty good if you just point and shoot. But if you use the precise tap to focus method in auto-mode, light metering is measured on the point you clicked, and you also loose scene detection and HDR, so that's not often what you want, unless you want your black cat to turn white on the photo ! The problem is that in auto-mode there is no option in settings "Touch to adjust: Focus only" (option only available in manual mode). ...Well in fact there is a way: enable "Touch capture" in camera settings. This in fact lets you tap on screen to focus (and shoot), while still doing light-metering on the whole scene and keeping scene detection ON.

1st Edit: When touch capture is ON, tapping on screen sometimes fails to focus because the picture is taken before the camera has time to focus, especially in low light. In this case you have to take the picture twice or use the timer so it has time to focus. Well this pretty much makes this "tip" useless !

2nd Edit: Sometimes the camera fails to focus if there no contrast on the clicked zone, but touch capture is not the cause. Try to tap on a zone with more contrast to improve focus success.

So in summary here is how I set for most pictures:

1. Use auto-mode (better noise-reduction than manual mode)

2. Disable object tracking (enables the more precise tap to focus).

3. Enable Touch capture (preserve HDR, multi-metering and scene detection with tap to focus. 1st Edit: when it actually manages to focus before picture is taken, basically only in good light it seems.).

In some special situations, I adjust the following:

4. Click on sun icon

, 1st Edit: then tap to focus

(when I want to disable scene detection / HDR)

5. Use the lamp flash (only for macro shots in very dark condition to get usable ISO/speed)

6. Use the flash (only when necessary to get usable ISO/speed or to compensate huge backlit situation)

7. Adjust brightness with slider (if I really need to tweak brightness)

All in all I find that all the above settings allow for flexible controls and good results in auto-mode.

Of course you may have a different usage and set yours completely differently.