Galaxy S20 Camera Light Source

[Sullibrandon]

I've been bouncing around Google, YouTube, and the forums trying to find an answer to my issues, and I'm still unsure of it.

This issue occurs on my s20+, when a light source such as the sun, a lamp, headlights, etc, is in the shot. It happens with both my front and rear cameras. What will happen is that if I tap the light source, the foreground will go dark. 

This gets very frustrating with sunset pictures, especially, because if I'm trying to take a selfie with the beautiful sunset in the background, the Camera will alternately Light up my face and turn the sun into a bright orange blob, or make my face go super shaded and the sun extremely defined. It seems no matter what settings I tweak, I can't make it so that I and the light source are equally defined/look good. 

My wife has an iPhone 12 and she does not encounter this issue at all. 

It's not the infamous auto focus issue. I've fixed that. I'm stumped - somebody help!

[Archer_Legend]

Where you tap is where the phone adjustes the exposure to get a correct exposure for it and adjust the one of the others as a consequence, if your wife's iphone does that it is not a good thing, it means that apple does not let you choose the subject to expose. It is completely normal and it works like that on every camera.

Regarding the sunset you need to turn on HDR since it is a photo with contrast where you want to get details from both, the iphone should have it turned on whereas you apperently turned it off. When using HDR you do not need to tap on the subject because HDR will try to adjust itself the exposure of everything, whereas if you tap you are basically telling the phone not to use hdr.

Also keep in mind that if you are doing a close up you can get a bokeh effect of the subject in the foreground and therefore have a blurried background, if you do not want the bokeh to be that evident because you do not like it you need to get a bit away from the subject or use the telephoto which is useful for portrait where you want no boken.

By the way from what I understood you tap the sun to put it into focus, that is stupid: with any camera you must not try to put the sun in focus or a studio light in focus because the strong light of the subject if focused on the sensor can cause permanent burn marks on it