For those of you who want to take your Android smartphone’s camera to its limits, did you know you can do long exposure photography with Android and ND filters?

Phones like LG V10 or LG G4 come with long exposure mode out of the box, which works quite well in near dark or complete darkness. Now, if you wanted to do long exposure photography in sunlight during the day or even on cloudy days, it becomes nearly impossible to do long exposures longer than 1 second.

To do that, you can get an ND filter, which pretty much blocks out much of the light. Through trial and error, I have found that the current ND filters made for smartphones are nearly useless, mostly due to the fact that the variable ND filter it comes with does not block out enough light. To get around this, I was able to find darker ND filters to get the result I needed. It seems that in general smartphone cameras need ND filters with at least ND1000 (10-stops). To simplify the process, you will want to grab ND filter made for smartphones with 37mm lens mount, 37mm to 52mm adapter, and 52mm ND filters. (This is because ND filters for 37mm are not as widely available, also prices are much cheaper for 52mm ND filters, just fractions of 37mm.)

Don’t forget, you will need a smartphone mount and you MUST USE A TRIPOD!!!

List of what you need to do long exposure photography during daylight: (You don’t need ND filters for night.)

– Universal ND Filter for Smartphone with 37mm mount – Link