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
Not as good as on-board camera. The color on this app seems vibrant – I like that, but the focus is funky, and image bounces/goes in and out of focus constantly. Also, the sound isn’t nearly as good as on my phone’s default camera. I tried playing around with settings to fix the focus problem, but wasn’t able to get it to improve. I just need something simple and ready to go, with good sound. Will be deleting this app.
Wow, just wow. I installed this for its small file size, not hoping for much. I’ve evaluated many camera apps, not finding what I wanted: natively take smaller photos than the huge ones new phones force on you. This one goes down to 240 x 320, and you can choose the compression level! ⚠️ All the ISO settings aside from AUTO require manual exposure adjustment. Unlike a true DSLR, you can’t just lock the ISO or shutter speed and let the app adjust the other.
I had an earlier version of Open Camera on a Samsung Galaxy sIII, but used it infrequently. After migrating to a newer Samsung Galaxy S9 I was disappointed to find its default camera program only recorded pictures in bloated “big” and “bigger” sizes, often wasting storage space, which is a problem when photos are backed up to the “cloud” and storage costs money. Open Camera allows shooting in sub-XGA and even sub-VGA sizes when ultra high resolution is not needed.
Fantastic app! When Samsung downgraded the default picture resolution on their mobile app without a way to set default to high-res (and without telling users), they made it difficult to use their phones effectively for work, or even for hobby photography (and created a bunch of nasty surprises for people who thought they’d captured great photos). This app is even better than the Samsung app from before their downgrade, and now I’m able once more to use my mobile for print-quality photos. Thanks!
This is a great app! The one thing I would love to see is a timer option for 59 seconds (just under one minute) to stop video recording. Although you have a 1 minute option, a full minute video is not sendable through IG messenger and also sms here in California. I find snipping the images down to size a bit troublesome. My favorite features of app are the ability to record in very low resolution to save memory and also manual focus.
Seems to be much better than the default camera…which is shocking cuz I bought my OnePlus for it’s superior camera. The only thing I would change…allowing me to save to my default gallery would be nice. This only allows you to save to Amazon pictures or Google photos. Each of which has annoying features. The gallery that came with the phone…just saves… without trying to automatically back up or throw stuff to the cloud….it just performs as needed. Otherwise… perfect!
We have been using this app for years now for work photos. It allows us to take photos in VGA and date stamp right in the app and then upload right from our phones to the website. These are all things that the native Samsung camera doesn’t allow us to do. It’s the perfect solution for our needs and has never let us down. The only thing I would wish for is to be able to move and place the on screen shutter button to anywhere on the screen.
Love this app. On certain devices however there’s still an issue with preview. It looks like 4:3 skewed to 21:9, and no, the setting for preview aspects doesn’t fix anything; it just crops it. My phone is a couple years old, but it takes great pictures.. it’s such a shame to have to use the default camera app 🙁 (Samsung Galaxy A320)
This just doesn’t work. I have it installed on two phones and it won’t properly lock the exposure on either of them. It LOOKS like it’s going to work, but when I press record, it starts automatically adjusting the exposure or under some circumstances it locks in on the wrong exposure settings. It just doesn’t work.
Very impressive… OnePlus 7 Pro. This blows the stock camera app out of the water. Tons of useful and working options for video. Namely the ability to choose an audio source as well as an onscreen meter showing input level. An adjustable input level would be a nice touch, maybe in a future update? I’m not going to complain right now as this is an INCREDIBLE open source and ad free camera app that just made my camera useable for the first time since I bought this phone. I owe the Dev a 🍺!
Good camera app which adds manual controls to newer devices which have removed them in an attempt to dumb things down for the average consumer. It is glitchy, though, as it often hangs after taking a few pictures and refuses to capture a new image until I restart the app. I’m running the latest version of Android on a Google Pixel device, so there is really no reason for compatibility to be an issue. I will definitely increase the stars if/when the bugs are worked out and this becomes less cumbersome to use. Until then, it’s really the best option I could find, but that is only a reflection on the limited alternatives available.
A bit daunting at first, this app affords control that can be very useful. Exposure lock and adjustments on the fly along with manual focus (using Camera2 API) allow for some very close-up, well-focused photos. Hands-down one of, if not the best camera apps out there. You don’t get fancy filters and dancing hot dogs, you get the raw power you need to take great photos. Great application all around.
This app was just what I was looking for. Lots of settings and controls, including the ability to repeat pictures “infinitely” on a timer, also known as time lapse photography. My only issue is the “infinitely” bit. The phone I’m using has no lock and is plugged in and set to keep the screen on while charging, but my time lapse keeps stopping randomly. I have no idea why, it’ll go fine for hours then I’ll check it and realize that it stopped itself. Annoying that I have to check it constantly.
Easy to use and works well with USB mics which is important to me. Update: Unfortunately, there is no support for adjusting the mic gain in the application. This hadn’t been a problem for me, but more recently I’ve found that the gain seems to vary, my recordings with Open Camera are not always at the same level, despite everything else being the same. I also had a recording that was *way* too low and the audio was barely salvageable. Still a great application for what it does (and it’s free!) but I need more mic control so I’ll probably look at Filmic or something else (which will not be free.)
It’s a great idea, and it would be wonderful to shoot RAW images. The problem is that sometimes the photos save, sometimes they just appear to move down to the gallary after taking a photo, but they don’t actually save about 75% of the time. So when you go back and look at your photos later, you’re left with about 25% of the pictures you took – which was really great when we lost a bunch of family photos. Tested both SDCard and Internal storage saving. Same behavior on Xperia 1 and Xperia 1 II.
Very versatile, if you can figure it out. I use it whenever the ‘stock’ camera won’t do what I want. I can control focus, exposure, ISO… The results are lo-fi compared to the built-in camera. Sometimes that is what I want. Force noise, blur, depth of field that the night sight or HDR algorithm will not allow. Only a few criticisms of the app. It’s complicated. I was a photographer when film 🎻… So I understand it. Can’t select the lens!!! Preview exposure does not match actual in the dark.
Love it. But now colors in photos & video are strangely muted. Nearly grayscale, but there is some color. Very weird. Hence I’ve stopped using it. Cannot find a fix. It’s not a camera mode, and doesn’t depend on available light either. Don’t remember when this first started, but seems like a year or more ago. LOVE all the options, settings, and camera controls. But it’s unfortunately become unusable because of missing color. Other camera app doesn’t have this issue.
If you have a pixel 6, highly recommended. I find the pixel 6 to be great, particularly at selfies with the most recent updates. However, the camera app has kind of taken a step backwards. The final picture from the main shooter is overly processed and often doesn’t look as good as the preview, for some reason. When I first got the phone, this app was lacking as the processing seemed nearly non-existent. Now, it is quite amazing. Just wish there were shutter controls.
It used to be ahead of the curve, but the default photo app has caught up. It’s still mega useful for the screen always staying on at full brightness, something I can’t believe the default app won’t do. Open Cam could do without many of its settings, which don’t seem to make a difference, and are organized in a way I don’t understand. Please consider focusing development on the photography experience itself. The “scenes” are a great start – Right now they’re far too subtle. Please go hog wild!
This app does a lot and I’m extremely impressed. It has more features that some of the other paid camera apps. Only one thing I wish it had (or maybe it does and I can’t figure it out): an option to average the entire field of view for auto exposure. I take a lot of pictures of plants and auto exposure from a small area on the screen causes all sorts of wild lighting changes that take a bit of finagling to get right.
A fair amount of advanced features, free, and open-source make this a camera app worth trying. But its user interface is clunky and some elements are so poorly implemented that they render some features largely unusable. Since Open Camera implements the Camera2 API, I’d hoped to use the manual settings for shooting longer exposures at night on my Google Pixel. The controls for shutter speed are a horizontal slider that is rendered about one and a half inches wide on my screen, with no “steps”. Any sort of precision is impossible To make it even worse, the shutter speed is not displayed until you press somewhere outside of the menu. You could spend several minutes pressing the slider and pressing elsewhere, hoping to land on your desired setting by chance. The rest of the app contains more frustrating, inconsistent, and bizarre UI options — I’ll let the previous example stand for the rest of them. I appreciate the ideas behind this app, but its UI cripples the usefulness of it.
Excellent Overall! what more can you ask for than a free camera app which supports unlimited photo taking functions. Program gives you full control over your photos from exposure to iso settings. Very Simple and easy to use. New auto level function was a bit distracting but has a setting to shut it off. Keep up the great work! THE BEST!!! Hands Down!!!
Great app! I do have 2 items on my wish list. That when I’m picture mode, when your click on the video icon it immediately starts recording. Samsung’s old camera used to do that & it was lovely for spontaneous moments captured. The other item is to be able to store my photos on the SD card. If that’s an option now, for the life of me I can’t find the setting for that.
The main reason I got this app was for taking images without noise reduction, but the “no noise reduction” setting still compresses it more than I would like. It also places more restrictions than I would like on my shutter speed. The ISO screen is a little buggy – when I choose 400, it gives me 800; and 800 results in 1600. Still, this app provides a lot more control and freedom than most apps, and is therefore still useful.
Love it! Put on my Stylo 6. Just what I wanted. Control over my camera for taking times pictures. Offers so many features to set it up the way you want it for exposures, times, etc. I honestly do not see where it pops up ads yet. IF it does I really do not care. Worth it. Went thru a number of apps, deleted all of them. Kept this. May not do what some people want but does exactly what I want.
Great app with lots of features. Constant auto-focus on videos is annoying, though. I like that it has an exposure lock, but not being able to lock the focus kind of ruins my videos. The stock camera app doesn’t have this problem, but also doesn’t have the exposure lock. So I have to either settle with the focus adjusting every 2~3 seconds, or the exposure constantly changing with the oem app. Same issue on my old LG (and Moto G7 Plus). If I could lock the focus for videos, this’d be perfect.
A great, feature-packed app for people who want lots of flexibility and control of their photos and videos. Looking through the main settings show what you can do. But the quick menu and other on-screen buttons show all the things you can adjust quickly. I especially like being able to set the image size and aspect ratio from the main screen. The DRO image mode is a nice complement to HDR. Etc. etc. etc. Ten stars!!
I don’t know what happened but ever since a recent update, the app automatically smoothes pictures. As in applies that thing to get rid of wrinkles or whatever. I never turned on a feature like that and can’t seem to figure out how to opt out of it. This app was perfect for using the timer to take pictures but it’s worthless if it smoothes everything automatically :/
Deleted. It may be a nice app for others, but the one reason I got it, it has failed completely at for the last time. It just can’t seem to remember the setting for my flash storage and I’ve taken too many pictures now where it just sends the image into nowhere land instead of saving it to my card. Too many memories lost now. That has to be the one thing that a camera app cannot fail at. The second thing is to ensure as good a picture as possible with as little input from the user as possible. All I want is a simple click and shoot and save and don’t use all the fancy bells and whistles of the app.
Initially this app was a bit cumbersome for me to use although I fully understand the mechanics of photography. And I suspect that individuals who are not familiar with or trained May give up in frustration. There’s a definite learning curve involved. If you’re willing to take the time to train yourself and experiment you will find that this is an excellent app that meets all the standards of normal photographic operations. It’s still tough to capture those fleeting moments as it takes time.
Wow, this camera is amazing! I was having trouble taking videos longer than 30 minutes with my stock phone camera shutting off unexpectedly. This camera app has settings that can override that, plus a vast array of options. So impressed with the capability. A little complicated unless you understand camera language, but you can just leave everything on the default settings.
I’ve given this alot of time to work itself out but I’m getting real tired of this app failing me. It is fantastic when it does work, but I find myself missing 6/10 impromptu shots because the UI gets stuck or is hidden for some reason. Or refusing to take a shot when manual settings are used. Most times I have to restart the entire phone to fix my UI, since killing it and relaunching doesn’t do it. I’d gladly pay $20+ if ALL these kinks were worked out. Whether it’s hardware incompatibility or whatever, I shouldn’t have to miss a shot, under/overexposed or not. When I push the button I want results… bad or not. Not an inactive UI that tells me nothing about what is wrong when I push the button. Also, I don’t know if it’s this app or my SMS App Pulse, but when I take a picture in Pulse using Open Camera.. rotating the camera from portrait to landscape and visa-versa, forces the photo preview pane to disappear. Leaving you to have to re-start the process of attaching a photo. Still waiting for that golden update but for now 3 star is all I got ’cause your making it real hard for me to NOT carry around my DSLR.
Excellent app, especially for shooting films. Let’s you select frame rate to match that of the film. Gives you a flickerless image. Lacks other features, though, and if I preset zoom and white balance, it refreshes after only a couple of minutes, making it impossible for me to set up the camera for an upcoming scene. Seems to lack a host of manual features, but otherwise works well.
I’ve loved this app until it updated this last time had been nothing but disappoint after another . As soon as I start the app or starts snapping photos w/o even focusing. Going to have to go another way bc it doesn’t work so can’t use it. I’ve always heard, “if it’s not broken don’t fix it”. Was nice while it last. Also if it were me I wouldn’t take to heart all the advice from Google, they definitely need to get the definition of what “static” means! Thanks
This is a powerful, flexible upgrade from standard phone apps. It has tons of useful features that you can choose from the extensive setting menus. I especially like the easy-access short menu with settings you might want to change before each shot, like the shooting mode — which includes not only HDR but a faster alternative, DRO, that does a really good job without merging three images. It will save both DNG (RAW) *and* JPG, so you’ll later have the DNG if it’s best on a particular shot.
Great! The only reason I installed this was for the timer feature and the interval feature! I was able to perfectly capture proposing to my girlfriend by having it automatically capture a picture every three seconds! I set it up as if we were taking a timed photo and everything went exactly as planned. I would highly recommend!
Recently the app has started refusing to take any pictures. When I try to take a picture, the white border appears and then… nothing. The preview freezes. The sliders still work, but the preview is frozen. Even after UNINSTALLING THE APP, it is still somehow using my camera. There are periods where sometimes I can take photos, but I have no idea what constitutes such a period because I have no idea what is causing this bug. Unfortunately I cannot continue to use this app because of this…
So when it works it works well but other times it just drops the video. I was filming a 20 minute long video with my microphone plugged in and then when I was done I press the stop button and it just said “an error has occurred video will not be saved!”! So I was pretty upset so I went through all of my files trying to find yhe video and it wasn’t anywhere! So then I tried again the next day and the same thing happened! So get this app if you want but be ready for disappointments!
Seems like a great app with many features. I installed primarily for the external microphone feature. But I am having an issue with the brightness of videos. I tried switching the API and it increases the preview brightness but not the saved files. Have also tried messing with the white balance and exposure features.
OK camera, does what it says: takes pictures. Significant delay between pressing the shutter and it capturing the image means that spontaneous pictures are not possible. I’m not impressed with how one changes settings, although exposure compensation and flash are at the top. Would be more helpful to have white balance rather than a separate button for exposure lock.