You take Xiaomi out of your pocket to capture a beautiful sunset or a cute baby photo, but the result is disappointing: the pictures are dull, noisy or slurred. Familiar situation? In fact, even Redmi's budget models are capable of taking flagship-level photos -- if you know a few professional secrets.
This article isn’t about abstract tips like “use good lighting.” Here you’ll find specific Xiaomi camera settings, composition techniques that work on all models, from the Redmi Note 12 to the Xiaomi 14 Ultra, and post-processing inside the phone gallery, and how to get around the limitations of smartphone optics, what camera modes professionals never use, and why your Instagram photos look worse than they do in the gallery.
Ready to turn your Xiaomi into a DSLR-like tool? Read on, and in an hour, your shots will be likes!
1. Check the basic settings of Xiaomi's camera
Before you get into creative ways, make sure your camera is set up optimally, and by default, many of the options in MIUI are geared toward "universality" rather than quality.
Open the Camera app and go to Settings (⚙️) → Camera settings. Pay attention to these points:
- 📸 Photo resolution: Set the maximum for your model (usually 48 MP, 50 MP or 200 MP). On the Redmi Note, this can be hidden in the Additional → Permission.
- 🔄 Aspect ratio: Use 4:3 for print or 16:9 for story. 1:1 is only for Instagram.
- 📥 File format: If there is an option HEIF or RAW — turn on. HEIF It saves space without loss of quality, and RAW It gives you more opportunities for editing.
- 🎯 Focus: Turn off the car-HDR (It often over-lights pictures) and turn on Continuous AF for dynamic scenes.
Pay special attention to the item Watermark — it is better to turn it off, if you do not want to show all the photos of the logo Xiaomi.
2. Lighting: how to make a photo bright without flash
A flash on your smartphone is your biggest enemy, and it creates hard shadows, red eyes, and kills natural colors, and instead, learn how to work with light that is available.
- ☀️ Natural light: The best time to shoot is the golden hour (first hour after sunrise or before sunset.
- 💡 Artificial light: Use lamps with a color temperature of 4000–5500K (Avoid yellow light of incandescent lamps.
- 🔦 Screenlighting: In the dark, you can light an object with another phone's white screen (set brightness to maximum).
- 🌑 Night shooting: Turn on Night mode (moon in the camera menu) and keep your phone as still as possible for 2-5 seconds.
If you still have to shoot against the sun, use manual exposure settings: tap the darkest part of the frame and hold your finger until the AE/AF Lock lock appears.
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To avoid glare on the windows (like when you're shooting windows), put a piece of polarizing film from old sunglasses on the lens. PL-filter!
3. Composition: rules that will turn your photos into masterpieces
A good composition can save even a technically imperfect shot, and here are 5 techniques that professional photographers use:
- Rule of thirds: Place the main object at the intersection of grid lines (includes in camera settings). For example, the person's eyes should be on the upper horizontal line.
- Lead lines: Use roads, fences, shadows, anything that leads you to the object. On Xiaomi, this works particularly well in Wide-angle mode.
- Frame: Shoot through arches, windows or tree branches – this adds depth to the frame.
- Negative space: Leave an empty space around the object (especially for portraits).
- Odd number: Three apples on the table look more harmonious than two or four.
For portraits on Xiaomi, use Portrait Mode (a person's silhouette on the menu), but turn off the bokeh effect in the settings - artificial blurring often looks unnatural.
How do you capture reflections in puddles?
4. Xiaomi Shooting Modes: Which to Use and Which to Ignore
Modern Xiaomi offers dozens of camera modes, but most of them are marketing chips.
| Regime. | When to use | When to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Photo (Auto) | 90% of shooting in good lighting | In the dark (better to use the night) |
| Portrait | For shooting people with blurred backgrounds | In poor lighting (the pictures are very noisy) |
| Night. | Shooting at dusk or in weak artificial light | Daytime (overlights the frame) or for moving objects |
| Professional | For full control of ISO, shutter speed, white balance | If you don’t know about manual settings |
| Document | To scan text or shoot pages of books | For everything else (heavyly distorts colors) |
The Beauty, Panorama and Waterfall modes are easily ignored, either spoiling the naturalness or producing predictable results, but Movement (on some models) is useful for shooting athletes or animals: it takes a series of shots and automatically selects the sharpest one.
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Professional mode on Xiaomi allows you to shoot in RAW — It's the only way to get the most detail for further processing: RAW-files take 20-30 MB each!
5 Post-processing: how to improve the photo directly on the phone
Even the perfect shot can be made better with editing. The Xiaomi Gallery has a built-in editor, but for serious processing, you better use Snapseed or Lightroom Mobile.
- Pruning and alignment: Fix the horizon (the Perspective tool in Snapseed) and trim the extra elements.
- Exposure correction: Raise the shadows by +20-30 to show details in dark areas. Reduce the lights by -10-20 if the sky is overlit.
- Color correction: Increase saturation by +10-15, but no more, otherwise the colors will become unnatural. For portraits, add warm tones (Temperature +500-1000).
- Sharpness and noise: Apply Sharpness only to fine details (hair, fabric texture). Use AI money in Snapseed to reduce noise.
For portraits in Lightroom, try Portra 400, which gives your skin a natural shade, and if you want to remove the background, use the Background Eraser app (free for Android).
Remove garbage in the background|Line up the horizon|Raise the shadows|Reduce the lights|Add a little sharpness.|Keep it as high as possible-->
6 Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Even experienced photographers sometimes make mistakes when shooting on a smartphone. TOP-5 The mistakes that ruin your photos:
- 👎 Dirty lens: Wipe your camera lenses with a microfiber before shooting. Fingerprints and dust blur your shots.
- 📱 Trembling hands: When shooting with exposure longer 1/30With the phone resting on a hard surface or use a tripod.
- 🔍 Digital zoom: Any zoom more 2x Xiaomi (except for flagships with periscope) is a software zoom that kills details.
- 🎭 Excessive processing: Filters like Clarendon or Gingham are outdated, use them with moderation (no more than 50% intensity).
- 📤 Compression when sending: When sending a photo to messengers, choose Send as a file to avoid loss of quality.
Another common mistake is shooting in JPEG instead of HEIF or RAW. JPEG compresses the image, losing parts that cannot be restored during processing. If your Xiaomi model supports HEIF (for example, Xiaomi 13 Pro), be sure to include this format in the settings.
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To check how much the messenger spoils your photos, do a test: send the same picture to Telegram (with compression and without) and compare the detail.
7. Secret chips for advanced users
If you have already mastered the basic settings, it is time to move on to professional life hacks that photographers use:
- 📱 GCam for Xiaomi: Install a modified version of Google Camera (see Telegram feeds like this) @GCamMods). It gives you a more natural processing. HDR and better detail in dark areas.
- 🔧 Manual control: In Professional mode, exhibit ISO higher 800 (Otherwise, there will be noise and the shutter speed is no longer. 1/15tripodless.
- 🎥 Video for photo: Take short videos in 4K 60fps, and then highlight the best frame as a photo (the Xiaomi gallery has the function to Remove the frame).
- 🔄 Bracketting: Do it in Professional mode 3–5 Photos with different exposures (from -1.0 before +1.0), And then combine them into HDR lightroom.
Use an old webcam lens to shoot macros: attach it to the main camera of Xiaomi with tape (lens to lens). This will increase to 10x without loss of quality. Just remember to wipe both lenses before shooting!