You can take awesome pictures with your phone at night. Here’s how.
While phone cameras used to be essentially useless if you weren’t in bright midday sun, today’s top camera phones can take truly superb photos even after dark. Top flagships devices like the iPhone 15 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra have night modes that allow them to take bright, sharp images even in the middle of the night. Even more affordable phones like the Pixel 8 are equipped with astonishingly capable night-time photography skills.
This kind of night photography used to require a DSLR on a tripod to take long exposures over the course of several seconds. But today’s phones are able to take excellent-looking images at night without needing any extra equipment at all. And that’s great, as it means you don’t need to carry a heavy camera and tripod into town every time you want to get a good-looking shot after sundown.
Samsung’s recent Galaxy S range flagship phones have had amazing night mode cameras.
But getting an image you like enough to print and put on your wall isn’t just a case of waiting for darkness and whipping out your phone. You’ll still need to put in some work to take shots that you’ll want to look back on in years to come.
Here are my top tips on how to get great images at night on your phone.
If your phone has a night mode, it’s important to make sure it’s actually activated before you start shooting. On phones like the iPhone 15 series — or other recent iPhones — night mode will automatically kick in when the phone detects that you’re in a low-light situation. On some Android phones you may find a specific shooting mode — called simply Night on the Galaxy S23 range or Night Sight on the Pixel 8 — that you’ll need to use to capture the best low-light images.
Different phones may have different options or naming conventions so if you’re unsure how to use yours — or if your phone even has one — then a quick Google search of the model and «night mode» should answer your questions. Night modes have increasingly become a must-have feature on camera phones, so odds are if you’ve bought a new phone in the past couple of years then it’ll have some kind of night mode built in.
This nighttime photo has been made all the more vibrant and dazzling by these incredible Christmas lights festooning the columns.
