How to take good photos in low light with your smartphone

Smart­phone cam­eras have a seri­ous draw­back — a very small sen­sor. A small sen­sor picks up less light. There­fore, in low light, pho­tos are blur­ry and noisy. But here are some tips that will allow you to take accept­able pic­tures on your smart­phone even in the dark.

Why low lighting is a problem

First, let’s take a clos­er look at why tak­ing good pho­tos in the dark is so dif­fi­cult. As already men­tioned, size is to blame. The light-sen­si­tive area in most sen­sors inte­grat­ed into smart­phones has an area of ​​approx­i­mate­ly 15 — 30 mm². By com­par­i­son, a full-frame SLR cam­era has an area of ​​about 860 mm². This is 30 — 60 times more. There­fore, only with good light­ing can the small sen­sor of a smart­phone cam­era get enough light to cre­ate a clear and high-qual­i­ty pic­ture.

Approx­i­mate­ly this is the ratio of the dimen­sions of the matri­ces of a smart­phone and a SLR cam­era. The blue rec­tan­gle is a 35mm SLR sen­sor. Red — smart­phone matrix.

Useless Night Modes

Prob­a­bly every mod­ern smart­phone with a cam­era has a “night mode” option. Alas, all these modes have very lit­tle effect on the final result. At the moment, there is only one smart­phone whose night mode real­ly pulls out the light­ing in the pho­to. We are talk­ing about the Google Pix­el 3. Its Night Sight mode, using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, sim­ply “paints” the col­ors on a dark pho­to.

Android­Pit experts com­pared the Mate 9’s HDR+ night mode to the Pix­el 3’s Night Sight mode. Here’s what the results look like.

Above — a pic­ture in nor­mal night mode, below — in Night Sight mode.

The dif­fer­ence is huge, but let’s not for­get that the Pix­el 3 is still a unique excep­tion to the gen­er­al rule. And there­fore, if you are not a hap­py own­er of this nov­el­ty, you should not rely on “night modes” at all.

Sensitivity control

You are prob­a­bly famil­iar with the term “ISO”, which refers to the light sen­si­tiv­i­ty of a pho­to­graph­ic film or dig­i­tal cam­era matrix. The high­er the sen­si­tiv­i­ty set­ting, the clear­er and brighter the pic­tures will be.

But how to con­trol the sen­si­tiv­i­ty on a smart­phone? As a rule, native appli­ca­tions do not have a man­u­al mode. To get into the cam­era set­tings, you’ll have to install a more pro­fes­sion­al app. Luck­i­ly, there are tons of options on Google Play, both paid and free.

It is also impor­tant to note that increased sen­si­tiv­i­ty is not in vain. If the matrix is ​​set to too high sen­si­tiv­i­ty, it starts to “mis­take”. This is man­i­fest­ed in the appear­ance of inter­fer­ence in the pic­ture — noise, mul­ti-col­ored “snow”. As a rule, slight noise begins to appear already at a sen­si­tiv­i­ty above ISO 400.

More light

In order not to raise the sen­si­tiv­i­ty too high, you can try to high­light the sub­ject. Every smart­phone with a cam­era has a flash. But this is not the best option. Because the flash is in close prox­im­i­ty to the cam­era, it eras­es all shad­ows. Because of this, the sub­ject appears flat, and the pho­to itself becomes like a col­lage.

If there is even the slight­est pos­si­bil­i­ty of not using the smart­phone’s flash, it should not be used. Instead, you should try to find anoth­er light source. If you’re tak­ing a self­ie or por­trait out­doors, take a few steps away from a street­light or a bright sign. The main thing is to make sure that the light source is not direct­ly above the sub­jec­t’s head. In this case, long ugly shad­ows will remain on the face.

long exposure

But what if there is no addi­tion­al light source? In this case, you will have to increase the shut­ter speed. Shut­ter speed is the time dur­ing which the smart­phone sen­sor “looks” at the sub­ject. The longer the shut­ter speed, the more light the sen­sor will receive. Thus, a slow shut­ter speed ful­ly com­pen­sates for the low sen­si­tiv­i­ty and low light.

But there is also a “BUT” here. Every­thing that moves in the frame dur­ing the shoot­ing will be smeared. A por­trait or a self-por­trait can­not be tak­en accu­rate­ly due to small fluc­tu­a­tions of the body. But sta­t­ic night land­scapes shot with a long expo­sure look great.

Here, for exam­ple, is a pho­to tak­en with a 65-sec­ond expo­sure on the cam­era of the already men­tioned Mate 9. The bright stripes on the road are the lights of pass­ing cars. The yel­low swirl at the lantern is swirls of illu­mi­nat­ed snow.

As with ISO, stock smart­phone apps don’t let the user con­trol the shut­ter speed, so you may need an app with man­u­al mode.

Remem­ber, shut­ter speeds over 1/10th of a sec­ond require the smart­phone to be com­plete­ly still. Even a frame with a shut­ter speed of half a sec­ond can­not be removed from the hands. Here you will need acces­sories. If you often shoot at night, get a portable tri­pod.

Remem­ber, even a smart­phone with the weak­est cam­era can take decent pic­tures if you set the right set­tings for this or pro­vide the right con­di­tions.