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After years of using the same camera sensor, the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro finally have updated hardware to back up Google’s machine learning photo magic. But Google being Google, the phones still pack some fun new software tricks. Action Pan and Long Exposure each mimic a tricky camera technique that’s otherwise out of reach for most casual photographers with just a couple taps — but they’re not entirely without nuance. Here’s how to use them.
These new photo modes can be accessed by popping open the Pixel 6 or 6 Pro’s camera app and selecting Motion from the bottom strip (it’s to the left of Portrait).
Action Pan
Action Pan tries to lock focus on a moving subject and, using that object’s motion, simulate the blur you’d get if you were to track it as it moves through its environment. With most cameras, it’s a difficult look to pull off, but here, it’s all of a couple taps.
To make it happen, all you have to do is select Motion in the camera app, then take a photo of a moving object with Action Pan selected on the toggle above the shutter button. That’s it — you’ve just taken an Action Pan shot.
It’s not foolproof, though. It works well on cars on city streets, for example, but it had trouble cutting my dog out from the background in this shot.
And here, with two dogs in the frame, moving in different directions, it tried to blur around both — and didn’t do a very good job. (Hard to blame it, though.)
For the best results, you should try to use Action Pan on a single subject, and ideally one that doesn’t blend into its background (read: not a speckled brown dog running past underbrush).
Long Exposure
Long Exposure is sort of the opposite of Action Pan. In this mode, your Pixel will make objects that were moving blurry while everything else in the frame stays sharp. The name comes from how you’d accomplish effect this with a traditional camera: the camera’s sensor needs to be exposed to light for a relatively long time — capturing a long exposure.
Getting to this mode is the same as with Action Pan: open the camera and tap Motion. From there, flick the toggle over to Long Exposure.
These shots come out best when you’re standing still, taking a picture that contains both moving and still subjects. Google’s examples include waterfalls and ferris wheels, but anything moving in the frame will come out blurry. This shot of a river was taken in Long Exposure mode.
But when I say anything, I do mean anything: blur is applied to everything that was in motion when you took the shot, including people. The blurry figures in the photo below are people who were milling around when I took the picture.
These shots take longer to capture — about as long as a Night Sight picture takes in low light. You’ll want to stand as still as you can, ideally steadying your phone against a stationary object if one’s handy (a bench, a tree, whatever). That’s a little more involved than getting an Action Pan pic, but considering results like these require a tripod and potentially an attachable lens filter to capture on a dedicated camera, it’s still way easier on a Pixel than it’d otherwise be.
Like it does with portrait mode photos, your phone will also save plain versions of any pictures you take in either of these modes, so even if you whiff it on the execution, you might still have a usable shot. To see the version without the Motion effect applied, find the pic in Google Photos (it’ll have a little Motion icon in the corner in your gallery view), expand it, and tap the second thumbnail at the bottom of the screen.
These modes are one small part of what makes us love Google’s new phones. Curious how they perform outside these specifc uses? Be sure to check out our full reviews of both the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro.
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