[Sony Xperia 5 II Guides, News, & Discussion] MrN1484:
Hi.

Like some that bought this phone I found the out of box experience on the camera a bit underwhelming and the pro app very confusing, after a bit of reading and searching and fiddling I've got it setup so I'm very happy with the results. It's not a low light or HDR monster like some camera systems but you can get some pretty nice results easily if the settings are tamed back a bit. So I thought I'd share what works for me.

Over the last few years I've had OnePlus 7t pro, LG V50, Xiaomi K20 Pro / Poco F1, HTC U12+/ HTC 10 and had a reasonable GCam on all of them and going to the Sony system was a bit of a culture shock, but the small form factor, flagship specs, SD card and 3.5mm socket are what I wanted.

BTW, I am not a Photographer or an expert by any means so if I've got anything wrong I'm happy to correct, or if anyone has more Tips and Tricks please post to this thread.

To start.

Use the Pro app AUTO mode for most pictures. It gives more consistent results than the standard camera app and can easily be set as the default.

Go to the basic camera app settings, scroll down to Launch with camera key and set to Photography Pro, this means when you hold the shutter button it'll start the Pro app by default not the Basic app.

Double click the power button and you can set the Camera app as default, that way both apps are easily accessible with the screen off, useful for video.

Make sure the Case you use allows for the 2 step shutter button, the first case I had made the button really stiff so 99% of the time I was just clicking for a shot not locking the settings with a half press.

Open up the Pro app and press the Disp option until you have the Histogram and viewfinder showing. There's plenty of Youtube videos explaining what a histogram is and how it works, it's no guarantee of a great picture but it will be an indication of a bad one.

Don't get too bogged down in all the options, I spent weeks tweaking Exposure/ISO/Shutter speeds without really understanding what I was up to and if you do understand all those options I guess this guide isn't for you!

My settings for consistent results, check out the screenshot in this link

Xperia 5 II XQ-AS52/XQ-AS62/XQ-AS72 | Help Guide | Launching Photo Pro (Photography Pro)

helpguide.sony.net

Drive Mode - Single Shooting

Focus Mode - Continuous AF

Focus Area - Centre

Face/Eye AF - On

JPEG

Aspect Ratio - 4:3 (12mp)

With those settings you can point, preload by half a click and get a reasonable shot most of the time. With the fancy auto multi focus wide settings I was always getting blurred pictures of my dog when he's running around due to the camera trying to focus on him then picking a random object in the frame so by the time I clicked for the picture it was a mess.

When you have a half click loaded, move the centre box around and see what the preview and Histogram is showing, if there's a hard line hitting the top at either the left or right hand side it's either too dark or too light. By moving the centre of the image slightly the camera should adjust the exposure slightly to stop the clipping.

The only other setting I tend to play with is S, click the AUTO button and scroll down to S mode. This allows changing of the shutter speed. This way you can capture faster moving objects in good light or slow down the capture speed in bad light. Here's where the Histogram is useful because if you set the Shutter too high, bright sky will clip and a bright blue sky will be white or you'll end up with a dark fuzzy picture. It's not worth going above 320 or below 80 unless it's in exceptional conditions.

I've attached some recent samples below.

Hope that helps!