S26 Ultra photos brightness

ThatGirl54 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 13:25:44 GMT

HI, ALL!!

I've had my S26 Ultra phone for 5 days. I've noticed that when I take a pic, the brightness decreases in the finished photo and I'm not sure how to fix that. It's in both indoor and outdoor pics. Still learning what settings are best overall for all photos. Any suggestions would be appreciated 😀

Re: S26 Ultra photos brightness

maird — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 18:34:14 GMT

I'd turn off or minimise all the AI adjustments for the camera. I'd shoot only using Pro or Expert Raw mode and use the EV control at a +ve setting for brighter pictures. EV+1.0 should be double the default brightness but isn't as significant as it sounds. I almost always only shoot using the 200MP W(ide angle) camera and do my own cropping if needed but don't expand back to a larger image size, rather than letting the camera crop and expand for me. Sometimes I use the 50MP UW or the 50MP T camera but in all cases I limit the zoom to the optical range of the camera which is 1x for the W, 0.6x for the UW and, IIRC, 5x for the T camera. Outside of those ranges the frame is automatically cropped and expanded back to at least 12MP by the camera software and the results are pretty bad in my opinion. With a S26U make sure you are looking face on at the screen and the lower brightness is not due to the screen hiding feature. But I suspect some of the AI features cause your problems and exploring with +ve EV will give you the best outcome. Negative EV values darken the frame, for example if you wanted to catch contrast in bright clouds but didn't mind ground objects being dark. There are a couple of other things you could try but the minimal effort one is using the Exposure or EV control in Pro or Expert Raw mode (as an icon it's usually displayed as a circle containing a + and - character, + for brighter, - for darker). The method is similar to"exposure compensation" and you should find lots of published material about it and using it, though the Samsung phone cameras can't do all that you'll read, e.g. change depth of field. It's rare but not unusual for me to use + or - 2.0 (four times as bright or dark) and even + or - 3.0 (eight times as bright or dark).

Re: Re: S26 Ultra photos brightness

ThatGirl54 — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 18:46:35 GMT

Wow, thank you SO much for the in depth reply, I appreciate that alot and will try that!!!! ❤

topic S26 Ultra photos brightness in Galaxy S26

S26 Ultra photos brightness

Re: S26 Ultra photos brightness

Re: Re: S26 Ultra photos brightness