While recording videos on my iPhone 11 with the default Camera app, I have been oftentimes experiencing a flickering problem. The flicker can be especially visible in bright video scene areas like skies or white walls when the lighting conditions in the scene change. For instance, when you move the focus of the camera from dark to bright areas of the scene or vice versa.
Many iPhone users report the same issue with other iPhone models, such as the iPhone 12 and 13 series. From watching phone camera videos on YouTube I have learned that some Android phones may have similar problem.
By the way, this flickering is different from the common flickering caused by LED light, which is fixable with the camera’s shutter speed change to match the frequency of the LEDs.
Lowering Exposure Can Help
While trying to fix the described skies-and-walls flicker by changing different video settings in the iPhone’s Camera app, I have noticed that reducing the exposure also reduces the flicker.
I achieved the most optimal results by lowering the value on the exposure slider in the Camera app to -0.7. Lowering the exposure even further makes the flickering less pronounced or even unnoticeable, but it also makes the whole scene darker. However, at -0.7 or even -1 the video still seems nicely exposed. As a matter of fact, videos with the exposure value set to default 0 or higher, may look HDR-ish and unnatural to some.
How to Lower Exposure
To lower the exposure in the Camera app, tap on the exposure scale icon in the upper left corner of the app, near the flash icon, to reveal the exposure slider. Then just move the slider to -0.7 or to your liking.
Another method is to make the scene darker by tapping on the Camera’s viewfinder area to reveal the yellow focus rectangle and sliding with the finger down the screen to lower the exposure. But, as soon as you move the focus to another place in the scene the exposure setting resets itself. So this can be useful for exposure adjustment only if you don’t plan to change the focus during the video shooting.
You can also tap and hold on the Camera’s viewfinder area to activate the AE / AF Lock (Auto-Exposure / Auto-Focus Lock) and then slide with the finger down to lower the exposure. In theory, the AE / AF Lock should completely keep the scene exposure fixed at the given level. But in the iPhone’s case, the exposure still changes to an extent, even with the Lock on. And again, you lose auto-focus with the Lock on.
Note: This guide was tested on the iPhone 11 with iOS 15, but you can expect similar or the same results on other iPhone models like the iPhone 13, 13 mini, 13 Pro, 13 Pro Max, iPhone 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max, iPhone 11, 11 Pro, 11 Pro Max, iPhone SE 2, XR, Xs, or Xs Max. This can be applied to older iPhones that rely greatly on computational camera technologies, as well as to Android and other phones relying on them.
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