# Why do my phone/digital camera pictures look different from the preview screen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 9, 2013, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-my-phone-digital-camera-pictures-look-different-from-the-preview-screen/660535 "2013-06-09T08:36:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-my-phone-digital-camera-pictures-look-different-from-the-preview-screen/660535/1 "2013-06-09T08:36:53Z")
Okay, that’s a lie. I understand it to some degree, I’ve done film photography (with, like, chemicals and a dark room and everything) – so at least to the amount I can remember I know about aperture, shutter speed, etc. Enough to function and understand how it affects the captured image. I know digital cameras, despite saving the picture to a disk/card largely operate in a similar way (though I’m not clear on the specifics). However, while my camera has options for shutter speed, aperture, and all that (even when I can’t remember how that screen works), my iPhone doesn’t. As far as I can see anyway. Either way, with both digital cameras and camera phones, I often have lighting problems, such as when a scene is “obviously” light enough but it recommends flash. And sure enough, without flash it’s really dark and impossible to see anything. My question is: obviously if it’s on my screen it’s in the camera’s memory somewhere. Sure, maybe it’s overwritten the next instant, but still, if a picture is good enough, why doesn’t there seem to be an option to just save the currently active frame buffer? Sure, hardcore photographers might get annoyed, but I imagine that most people want to just take the picture they see. Not the picture except with weird lighting because of settings they don’t understand. Especially on a phone where you don’t have that fine of control anyway. I know that at the very least, my damned phone should just save what I see at the same lighting I see on the preview screen. So… is there any reason for this? Inertia from film cameras? Is it actually a technical hurdle? Maybe I’m just imagining the problem? ---
**Author:** ![tellyworth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-my-phone-digital-camera-pictures-look-different-from-the-preview-screen/660535/2 "2013-06-09T09:45:21Z")
You’re saying that the live preview on the iphone screen looks good, but when you hit the shutter button the photo is much darker? The preview is taken at a higher ISO and/or lower shutter speed than the final image. On a camera with a variable aperture, it’s also taken wide open. It looks fine on a small screen, but if you did capture a single frame of the preview and look at it closely, you’d see that it’s noisy and blurry. The final image is at a lower ISO to reduce noise, and a faster shutter speed to reduce motion blur. Both of which make it darker. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [June 9, 2013, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-my-phone-digital-camera-pictures-look-different-from-the-preview-screen/660535/3 "2013-06-09T12:18:34Z")
A screen shot on my desktop computer is 72 dots per inch, and it looks great. But that same 72-dot-per-inch picture out of a printer would be far from ideal, a disaster if a portion of the pic is enlarged to any extent. I don’t know what the resolution is on a phone’s screen, but it isn’t likely to be high. Using your low-light condition, the picture may look OK on a tiny display, but no such luck with the final result; bumping up its resolution requires more light, whether still pix or video. And everything tellyworth said.