Samsung brings astrophotography and multiple exposure to Expert RAW

For all of you professional and aspiring photography aficionados out there, Samsung is giving you a couple of new toys to play with. Expert RAW is receiving an update that will bring multiple exposures and astrophotography mode to the app.

Samsung’s advanced camera app for its Galaxy smartphones, Expert RAW, is getting what the company calls “special shooting techniques.” These new techniques will be provided as a beta for only Galaxy S22 owners who have upgraded to One UI 5.

Multiple Exposure

The first technique will be a multiple exposure mode — something we’ve seen in a few Chinese brands like ZTE, but is new for Galaxy devices. With multi-exposure mode, Samsung states users will get two recording methods and four composite methods. The two recording methods include:

• Continuous shooting — This is where pictures are taken continuously at regular intervals.
• Manual shooting — This is where you can take pictures one by one.

If you don’t want to use these settings, the app allows you to turn them off by going to the multiple exposure icon and tapping on the “v.”

As for the four composite methods, you can expect to get:

• Increase (Add) — Increase takes the pixel values of each input and combines them to create a final result.
• Average — Average takes the average value of each pixel value and composites them.
• Bright — The bright method takes away dark values and stores only bright values when compositing.
• Dark — Dark does the opposite of bright, storing only dark values when compositing.

Astrophotography

The second technique Samsung mentions on its community site is astrophotography. The company states that astrophotography follows six steps: celestial search, composition settings, camera settings, continuous shooting, compositing, and post-editing. And high-quality images usually require several dozen or more pictures to be combined over several hours. Finally, astrophotographers use specialized equipment, like an equatorial, to automatically track celestial bodies.

The tech giant claims that its astrophotography mode will provide all of that. In addition to these tools, the company says it will provide a guide to check the constellations. However, Samsung also states that to get the best shots, you’ll need a tripod for your Galaxy S22.

Below you can see what the astrophotography mode is capable of.

Although multi-exposure and astrophotography are exclusive to the Galaxy S22, there’s a chance it could come to other devices on One UI 5 once the beta period is over.