From Apple’s iPhone to high-end Android phones from manufacturers like Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, every flagship phone has a camera with a night mode now.
The key to taking great pictures in the dark is to capture as much light as possible with the camera sensor. That’s more easily said than done with small smartphone sensors versus a DSLR. There are three key parts of all camera systems that help with this light capture: the quality and size of the lens opening (aperture), the size of the sensor and its pixels, and, of course, exposure time. Phone manufacturers have a few tricks up their sleeves for each of these factors.
Larger sensors
With more light entering the camera, the best way to capture this light is with a bigger sensor. A bucket analogy is usually invoked at this point, and it’s a pretty decent way to think about collecting light. The bigger the bucket, the more light collected in a smaller time frame and thus better low-light pictures. In other words, you can get away with a shorter exposure and lower ISO, resulting in less blurry and grainy pictures even in dim light.
Every year, smartphones comes with improved cameras. Apple also improved the low-light camera on its iPhone 12 series. The press shots included several of dimly lit areas in the middle of the night. Using computational photography techniques, the company has also expanded the night mode feature to work on all cameras on its devices. This includes the ultra-wide and telephoto lenses.
Depending on the device, Night Mode is either an automatic mode triggered by the sensor detecting low light or a mode that you have to select in the Camera app. Either way, taking a photo in night mode, at first, seems quite similar to taking a regular photo. The first difference you might notice is that it takes noticeably longer to capture a night mode image. That long capture speed is crucial to taking night mode photos.
Night Mode uses a variation of the HDR technique. It captures different images of the same subject at varying exposure levels by taking them at different shutter speed lengths. Afterward, the image processing software aligns and combines these photos to expand the night mode photo’s dynamic range.
This process allows the photo highlights to become visible while still maintaining the darkness of the shadows. This process will reveal details in the environment that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to see in a standard photograph.
Best night mode phones in 2021:
The Galaxy S21 Ultra, iPhone 12 Pro Max , and Google Pixel 5 can all take incredible images thanks to their powerful camera setups and stellar software integration. The Chinese smartphones like Xiaomi, Huawei are not bad either. They also made very good phones with excellent cameras. The example is Xiaomi Mi 11 Pro and Huawei P50 Pro.
