Open Camera

Mark Harman

Contains ads

About this app

Open Camera is a completely free Camera app. Features:
* Option to auto-level so your pictures are perfectly level no matter what.
* Expose your camera's functionality: support for scene modes, color effects, white balance, ISO, exposure compensation/lock, selfie with "screen flash", HD video and more.
* Handy remote controls: timer (with optional voice countdown), auto-repeat mode (with configurable delay).
* Option to take photo remotely by making a noise.
* Configurable volume keys and user interface.
* Upside-down preview option for use with attachable lenses.
* Overlay a choice of grids and crop guides.
* Optional GPS location tagging (geotagging) of photos and videos; for photos this includes compass direction (GPSImgDirection, GPSImgDirectionRef).
* Apply date and timestamp, location coordinates, and custom text to photos; store date/time and location as video subtitles (.SRT).
* Option to remove device exif metadata from photos.
* Panorama, including for front camera.
* Support for HDR (with auto-alignment and ghost removal) and Exposure Bracketing.
* Support for Camera2 API: manual controls (with optional focus assist); burst mode; RAW (DNG) files; camera vendor extensions; slow motion video; log profile video.
* Noise reduction (including low light night mode) and Dynamic range optimisation modes.
* Options for on-screen histogram, zebra stripes, focus peaking.
* Focus bracketing mode.
* Completely free, and no third party ads in the app (I only run third party ads on the website). Open Source.

(Some features may not be available on all devices, as they may depend on hardware or camera features, the Android version, etc.)

Website (and links to source code): http://opencamera.org.uk/

Note that it's not possible for me to test Open Camera on every Android device out there, so please test before using Open Camera to photo/video your wedding etc :)

App icon by Adam Lapinski. Open Camera also uses content under third party licences, see https://opencamera.org.uk/#licence

Ratings and reviews

Overrated and bug ridden. You can't even adjust the gain of your external mic and it is set very low to the point where it barely registers and you have to fix it in post. In fact there are few audio options whatsoever. Currently my app has a bug where every time the orientation changes the video stops recording, even with orientation lock on. It also forces night mode even if it's not that dark, and obliterates quality. Get Film It - It's only an early access but already it's way better.

Works well for the most part. However, after trying out changing the video Bitrate on the camera, it records the video fine but there is some weird desync issue. After the videos are saves to the gallery, I try to play them. The audio track plays but the video stays still, and then when the duration of the video is up, the video starts playing at the timer indicates about 11 minutes for a 30 second video, which is quite odd. Tried changing internal storage and external, same issue

I use this app daily for photos and video and it works great, it has lots of features and is less invasive than the default Samsung app. One thing I wish it would do better is alert you when you are in timelapse mode; I've made the mistake more times than I'd like to admit where I forget my last video was a timelapse and then the next video I record is also a timelapse when it's supposed to be real-time, very frustrating.

What's new

Improvements for pinch zooming. Fixes for split-screen and multi-window mode. Support for zoom and on-screen ISO/exposure display when using camera vendor extensions (for supported Android 13+ devices).

"Touch to capture" option now supports starting and stopping video. No longer cancel panorama when rotating device too far in wrong direction.

Applied a 2s timeout for focusing with original camera API.

Various other improvements and bug fixes.