Google Photos tests shared camera for group events upgrade

You know the post-party ritual. Everyone shot forty photos; nobody has the same ones, and the group chat becomes a slow-motion file transfer. Google Photos Group Camera, found in the app's 7.97 build, is designed to kill that ritual.

You pick a date, invite your friends and family, and Google opens a shared camera for the event. The default window is eight hours. You can set your own start and end times instead, and the schedule follows your time zone.

Invitees get a notification when the camera goes live. From there, they shoot photos and video into a single album. You reach it from the camera shortcut on the Google Photos home screen, or through the + button.

The dedicated camera looks a lot like the Pixel camera. It includes a switch for front and back shots, photos and videos, and also an options section. 

In addition, after shooting, there is a screen with a request to click on the Add button. There is a checkbox allowing you not to perform this procedure if you shoot lots of pictures at once.

There are several options to set default settings for flash usage, picture aspect ratio, video frame rate, picture quality and stabilisation. Audio recording can be set as the default as well. 

Concurrency of camera work is included, but not available while using HDR. The presented screenshots are far from perfect, of course.

Google has let people add to shared albums since 2015. The catch has always been timing. Contributions arrive afterwards, if they arrive at all.

The album owner can edit the schedule or switch the camera off. You can even convert an existing album, so you won't need to start from scratch. Participants also get a notification to jump in, and Google appears to be working on a lock screen shortcut.