How useful is a dual LED flash in a smartphone camera?

Smartphones with dual LED flash cameras have been circulating the mobile market for quite some time, but how good they are for taking pictures? Let’s find out.

dual led flash camera

How much difference does dual LED flash make?

These days, there are many factors affecting the decision to buy smartphones. One of them is the availability of a high quality camera. There are many basic technical requirements to determine a good mobile camera. However, it is undeniable that a good camera needs to be able to take photos in dimly lit environments. Dual LED flash is precisely one of the recent technology to tackle the low-light problem.

Dual LED flash cameras are cameras that use two sources of light (LEDs) to illuminate objects that we are taking photos of.  These sources of light are usually of different color. Theoretically, an object illumination will rapidly decrease as the distance to that given object increases. The dual LED flash can produce light twice as great as a single LED flash. This allows dual flash camera to take well-lit photos of objects that are 1.4 times further away than when taken with a single flash camera.

dual led flash color temperature

Furthermore, dual flashes solves one problem big problem with unnaturally looking images. Those images may be the result of color temperature difference between the flash and the environment. For example, for a sunset scenery (1850°K, as in color temperature diagram above), a standard LED flash (5500°K) will give the nearest object a slightly blue hue on a photo, while everything else will have an orange glow. Two LEDs with different color temperatures can alter the flash color temperature to match the environment and give more natural-looking photos.

The solution to unnatural 2-toned images!

Currently, there are many phones in the mobile market that use this concept. For instance, dual flash comes under the name of ‘True Tone flash’ in Apple phones and under the name of ‘Colour Correlated Temperature flash’ in Motorola phones. Dual LED flash is a must in a smartphone if you want to take better photos in low light environments!