You do mean lengthen the exposure time rather ‘increasing the speed’ meaning a quicker and therefore shorter exposure??
Yes, I’m sorry it wasn’t clear my explanation, I wasn’t talking about camera overall reactiveness and velocity.
My aim was to find a way to lenghten the exposure time for the Fairphone3 from 1/2 seconds to ex. 30 seconds.
I came from LG G4 that has got this capability (exposure range from 30 seconds to 1/8000 seconds) and it runs a Snapdragon 808. I don’t think is a question of CPU but instead just a minimal programming modification.
I also tried to contact the fairphone’s support 1 month ago but unfortunately none reply.
So my thinking was if was possible to increase the exposure time from 1/2 seconds just purchasing a camera+ module or in another software modification way, but as the fairphone 3 team don’t reply to that request I would like to ask you if some of you could try to see if this exposure time on a camera+ module increase from the 1/2 seconds of the standard module one.
Or if someone of you have tried the “exposure magisk module” to increase that exposure time.
Thanks all
Yes I would imagine the same
From experience and other posts Fairphone support is very laggy and your request is probably way down their list of priorities.
By the way way would you want 30 secs, and if you have used such long exposures do they really work. I don’t know enough about the sensors so I wonder if they can collect an increasing amount of photons over 30 seconds and store it as voltage effect ??
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I recommend you look into the thread on the Google Camera port for a confirmed stable port of Gcam. (I recommend Urnyx05 7.3)
They have a night photography mode which increases the maximum exposure time, albeit through closed software.
I’m not an expert here, but I imagine that with long exposures, it’s possible to just do the sums in software - provided that there is still some access to the raw data, I presume. Super long exposures are crucial in night photography (e.g. of the sky) since stars don’t emit much light themselves. A drawback is that the camera must be extremely still during this timeframe. This is why, in part, it’s usually not worth the hassle to do it on your phone, at least not without careful preparation. I’m somewhat curious to know about how good of an image you could get out of a Fairphone 3+ for night photography, even if it doesn’t seem to be the right tool for the job to me 
Yes unless the subject is very still, unless of course the objective is to show the change in star position relative to the observer location.
On the idea of summing data. The software will have to store the 48Mpx clear the sensor every so often, maybe once every second, for 30 seconds ~ some storage and summing ~ 1.5G data to CPU through.
Questionable
You would only need to store the last frame, so it’s not much data!
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Yes summing on the back of the last figure, I’m surely loosing the plot so only 100Mpx
Yes I used to do night shots with my old LG G4 and it was a nice feature to have.
Smartphones cameras has got wide angle lens ( from 28 mm to 24 mm full frame equivalent) that in dslr are very expensive but suitable for night photography.
For example I attach you in the first photo an example of a night shot made with my old LG G4 with a 30 seconds exposure time with 400 iso, i used to place him in a stable position for the entire time of the shot.
I tried also the GCam port on Fairphone 3 and using the astrophotograpy mode. I noticed that the exposure time increases to 1 seconds ( better from the 1/2 seconds from other manual camera apps) but unfortunately the sofware decides itself autonomusly the ISO sensibility that is frustrating and furthermore 1 second is still not enough for astrophotography. I attach you a second example shot made up with a Fairphone 3 camera with Gcam port and astrophotograpy mode, as you can see the results are disappointing (it was an hand held test, but I did also still tests pointing the camera to stars but the results are not good: stars were invisible).
From that I would like to ask you if someone have experience with the camera+ module (or with a Fairphone 3 +) with night shots and if some of you has tried the exposure magisk module as it is specified into the gcam ported app.
Thanks all
I tried asl!
![InShot_20190823_223847551|400x500]
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Hm, I’d recommend trying out a different port, possibly the 8.1 Nikita port… I recall the advanced settings having longer exposure times. (could it have been 16 seconds?) Turns out that the version of the port really makes a big impact on the extra features that it has. I can’t recommend this entirely, as my experience with GCam has been mixed, and after awhile the images did not save to my camera.
To answer your other question I have a FP3 with added camera + module and the longest exposure time (in OpenCamera) seems to be 0.3s. However, this may be a limitation of the Camera 2 API, at least according to this thread I found.
https://sourceforge.net/p/opencamera/discussion/general/thread/c8fc482e/
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I’m using the 8.1 Nikita
Under Night Site option > drag down the menu arrow and selecting > Astrophography the max shutter delay is at max two seconds, maybe one and a half ??
There’s no Astro max Time option 
There is a timer which is a common delay before ‘shutter opens’,
Just installed the app again…
In the settings, Advanced, there should be an option to increase maximum exposure time. It’s called ISO/Exposure Time HDR. There you should see an option for 32 seconds.
Edit: I tried this feature out by just putting my phone face down on the table (complete darkness) and it didn’t seem to actually impact the time it took the image… So I’m not sure what this does
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Thanks all for the informations.
I just tried the 8.1 Nikita too but modificating all kind of settings the maximum exposure time is still 1/2 seconds. I think there is no way to increase the exposure time if not by modificating the Camera 2 API or by try a way to install the magisk module.
I hope that the Fairphone support will reply in future about this topic it seems to not be any way to resolve this issue.
Alright, I have one more mod version for you!
MGC_8.1.101_A9_GVr by BSG. I downloaded the ENG one.
This one did seem to give a longer exposure time, when I tried it out. Make sure that astrophotography is on, and that the phone is still enough at the start, so that “stars” appear, and the phone notifies you that Astrophotography is enabled.
I don’t give this solution the highest confidence, just given my experience with GCam in the past (stability issues mainly), but it seems to be the only solution I know of.
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Just to add I’m using NGCam_8.1.101-v1.0 with (1.5 to 2) sec shutter
Yes I have tried to set from 1 .5 to 2 seconds but still no facing improvement in exposure time, it continues to be now just 1 second.
Then I tried the port suggested by @punyidea but unfortunately i still obtained just 1 second exposure pictures. I attach you one example of the photos you could get, very noisy and not detailed (you could note also that gcam hasn’t got a feature for manual focus so i wasn’t able to focus well).
I hope the Fairphone 3’s team will improve this feature in the future (even if it’s not a key feature), all an all i think it just a question of replacing some numbers in the Camera2api codes.
Defenitively I can assume that Fairphone 3’s camera can’t replace your dslr in low light photography
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I found a simple but quite usable solution without root and without magisk or TWPR installation to shoot night shots/astrophotography with Fairphone 3.
I installed the port of google camera “Camera PX Mod v4.1” by back.rider555, johngalt1 and cstark27.
The app itself is similar to all the other ports but it has in the settings, entering in the menu “PX Mod settings” the option “Non-ZSL Frame count”.
The command works shooting a quantity of photos ( max. 45 images) in series and with AI (i guess) it merges that togheter eliminating image noise.
The fact is that, even if the sensor itself has a limited exposure of 1/2 seconds, it permits to capture every variation in light in every of the 45 shooted images working like the sensor is still capturing light but in a software way.
So, like a simple long exposure shot, you have to keep stable your phone during the shot.
I suggest for astrophotography to set this setting to 45 images.
Then, after the non-ZSL Frame count setting impostation, activate the “show astro buttons” in the “PX Mod Settings” menu.
Then just go in the “night sight” view in the app itself and activate the buttons “astrophotography” and “light paintings” buttons in the right bottom of the screen.
Then take a photo in the night taking care of keeping stable the phone during the shot.
I attach you an example of a night shot.
Morover I suggest you to activate also the mod “Super Res Zoom always on” mod in PX mod settings to increase the details in photo.
s
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Very cool! Thanks for persisting. I actually went ahead and tried out another mod, Butchercam 2.1.
It seems to be a bit more stable (than other gcam apps I’ve tried, not necessarily Camera PX mod) and also allows for longer exposure times. Also key is the libpatcher settings, which allow you to mess a bit with inner settings like max iso. So far I got a kinda mixed result but maybe it’ll be better later.
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Also found this thread for those interested:
https://www.designpieces.com/2018/01/how-to-long-exposure-photos-iphone-android
Looks like there may be an easier option after all! Searches for “long exposure” or “slow shutter” may help.
Edit: I spoke too soon when I posted this. I accidentally downloaded a different app than I previously claimed - Slow Shutter Camera. It additionally seems that there is no manual control over shutter speed here. So far the best options seem to be the GCam mod, with no manual controls
Edit 2: Camera FV-5 Lite seems to have a “synthetic exposure” setting that looks like what we’re looking for. If I have time these nights I’ll do some quick tests with them.
Edit 3: Camera FV-5 Lite was quite disappointing. The Synthetic exposure feature severely distorted the colors of the image. It is also for the moment limited to low resolution images. Synthetic exposure | Camera FV-5
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