How to select the shutter speed for a long exposure in the IPhone 12 Pro Max camera app

I'm playing around with the long exposure in night mode, and don't understand how to set the shutter speed. When selecting night mode, there's a slider to select the shutter speed:

where you can select None, Auto, or Max, and max depends on how still the camera is (e.g hand-held or on tripod). But if I try to set this to any other value, it always snaps to the closest one of None, Auto, or Max. If those are the only options, why is this a sliding control (like exposure), rather than an option (like the timer's Timer Off, 3s, 10s). Is there some way to explicitly set the seconds?




iPhone 12 Pro Max, iOS 14

Posted on Dec 28, 2020 7:18 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 28, 2020 8:21 PM

Great Question. I played around with this section as well. You will notice that OFF (Extreme Left) and MAX (Extreme Right) are the only stations where AUTO is NOT associated / labeled with it. Everything in between the two positions is label with AUTO. This Automatic Shutter Speed spans from 1s to 10s. The scale shows you the live and present choice for night photography and all while it is in AUTO mode. The moral of this story is that shutter speed cannot be manually selected in the Camera app.


But that is not the end of this chapter. There are several third party apps out there in the App Store that will allow you to manually choose shutter speeds on your iPhone's camera with the use of their app(s). Do some research in the App Store and you will find a few right away.


Axel F.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 28, 2020 8:21 PM in response to Monnecr

Great Question. I played around with this section as well. You will notice that OFF (Extreme Left) and MAX (Extreme Right) are the only stations where AUTO is NOT associated / labeled with it. Everything in between the two positions is label with AUTO. This Automatic Shutter Speed spans from 1s to 10s. The scale shows you the live and present choice for night photography and all while it is in AUTO mode. The moral of this story is that shutter speed cannot be manually selected in the Camera app.


But that is not the end of this chapter. There are several third party apps out there in the App Store that will allow you to manually choose shutter speeds on your iPhone's camera with the use of their app(s). Do some research in the App Store and you will find a few right away.


Axel F.

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How to select the shutter speed for a long exposure in the IPhone 12 Pro Max camera app

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