Samsung Bad Weather Photography: Rain, Snow and Fog

Although wet, grey days can be difficult to work with on a Galaxy phone (water can wreak havoc with touchscreens and cold weather isn’t kind to batteries), soft, diffused light and uncomplicated backgrounds can make for some great shots.

Here’s what we recommend changing before you get out there, and in the sections that follow we’ll explain our reasoning and offer some pointers on keeping your Galaxy phone working in these conditions.

Settings for rain, snow and fog

Note that the exposure column means something different in Pro mode: according to Samsung’s Pro mode explanation, you can’t set ISO to Auto when using a manual shutter speed, and exposure value is determined by your ISO and shutter settings. So for the Pro entries, you choose the ISO and shutter speed, and evaluate exposure based on the preview. Our Pro mode guide takes a quick tour through the controls.

Making rain show up in a photo

Raindrops can be photographed either as dots or as streaks depending on the shutter speed used. Rain is best photographed with a dark background. Otherwise it just merges with a grey sky. Position yourself so that there is a dark doorway or wall behind the rain and a bright shop window or streetlight shining through it.

Try 1/250s to 1/500s for dots and 1/30s to 1/60s for streaks. The shutter speed guide offers the full range of shutter speeds, which are used to freeze or blur the action of moving subjects.

• With puddles, keep the camera as low as possible and use the touchscreen to focus on the reflection. Try to shoot between raindrops for the flattest possible surface. See the water reflections guide for a full treatment of that shot.
• Raindrops on the window can make an interesting foreground element. Focus on the raindrops themselves for pin-sharp water droplets or focus on the background for blurred raindrops.
• Neon lights after dark can be great in Night mode (as long as you don’t mind holding your camera still while it shoots), or Pro mode at ISO 800 and 1/60s can work well if there are people walking by.

Snow and the grey snow problem

Nikon’s guide to shooting in winter explains that your camera’s meter is fooled by snow because it’s trying to average the whole picture out to mid-grey, which is why if you shoot with suggested exposure settings, your snow will probably look blue-grey rather than white. It recommends deliberately over-exposing to get that bright, sunny look. In practice, tap the snowy bit of the screen to meter off it, then use the brightness slider to increase exposure by 0.7 to 1.0 until it looks right (i.e. white but not over-exposed so you can still see texture).

If you’re shooting in shade and want it to look like white snow (rather than cold, blue snow), white balance on Auto is likely to give you a bluish cast, so set manually to about 5500K or even a touch more. Of course, if you like the idea of cold, blue snow, leave it on Auto!

For falling snow, you need a fast shutter speed and ideally some trees or a building in the background, preferably in shade. Close to the camera you can get lovely bokeh circles of white, which can act as a frame if you plan ahead!

Fog and mist

According to the Met Office, stratus is the name of the lowest type of cloud, sometimes touching the ground as fog or mist. Fog or mist can make for easy pictures as detail disappears into the murk. Look for a contrasting subject in the foreground, and a lamp post or tree can work well.

Layers of fog or mist can also make a picture in their own right. Try edging away from the scene and shooting with a longer lens (the telephoto on your phone, if it has one) to compress the layers and make them fill the frame.

When shooting fog or mist you’ll probably need to increase your exposure a little (+0.3 or so) as otherwise you can end up with rather flat grey pictures. Don’t be tempted to overdo the Dehaze tool in post-processing, or you’ll remove the very feature you were trying to emphasise!

Storms and lightning

No place outside is safe during thunderstorms, according to the US National Weather Service. If you can hear thunder, the service says, lightning is likely close enough to strike you. Avoid venturing outdoors during a thunderstorm and shoot from indoors or from a car instead. Wait until it’s passed to venture out on to that hilltop. The cloud photography guide also documents some of the dramatic skies both leading up to and following the storm.

Keeping the phone working in wet and cold weather

Galaxy S phones have had an IP68 certification in recent years, meaning they can theoretically be in still fresh water up to 1.5 metres deep for up to 30 minutes at a time (according to Samsung’s Galaxy S26 user guide), so rain shouldn’t hurt your phone.

Other Samsung phones aren’t as water resistant, though, as Samsung’s Galaxy A56, for example, is IP67-certified, the Galaxy A17 is IP54 (splash-proof), and the Galaxy Z Flip and Fold are IP48-certified, according to GSMArena.

1. 1

   Use a button as the shutter

   Navigate to Camera settings > Shooting methods and enable Press Volume buttons to take pictures. Note: According to Samsung's user guide, the touchscreen may not function properly when submerged, and contact with wet fingers can have the same effect.

2. 2

   Wipe the lens before every burst

   A single drop will cloud the same area on every picture you take, so keep a microfibre cloth in an inside pocket to keep it dry and clean.

3. 3

   Don't charge it wet

   Wait about 1 to 2 hours for the port to dry off (water generally evaporates within this timeframe according to Samsung’s UK support page), then try again. Don’t plug in the phone to charge before it’s fully dry, Samsung warns. You can also use wireless charging while you wait if your phone supports it.

4. 4

   Keep it warm in the cold

   Keep the phone in an inside pocket between taking pictures, as Samsung cites an operating temperature range of 0 to 35 °C (don’t leave your phone in sub-zero temperatures!).

5. 5

   Let it warm up slowly indoors

   According to Samsung’s recommendations, abrupt changes in temperature may fog up your camera and you should allow the camera to dry naturally at room temperature before resuming photography.

What goes wrong in bad weather

Editing grey-day photos

Flat light provides plenty of opportunity to experiment during post-processing, but it’s important not to undermine the mood of the scene. Try adding contrast, then saturation (avoid overdoing it so as not to compromise colour fidelity) using the in-built editing tools in Samsung’s Gallery app (tap the pencil icon to get started). Alternatively, download the free editing app Snapseed to tweak the mid-tones more precisely using Curves.

Rain and fog shots can be converted to striking images in black and white. Snapseed also comes with a Black & White tool which can come in handy. The black-and-white guide gives a good explanation of when you should leave photos in colour.