How to Use Night Mode When Taking Portrait Shots on iPhone

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Took some Night Mode photos last night. The bright light in the sky is the moon and it was dark outside. The light casting shadows in the picture is from 2 street lamps about a 1/4 mile away. The camera works great and that was only my 3rd photo...I am impressed. How dark was it outside by the car? If you dropped a coin on the ground you would not be able to find it!


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Location please.

 

[MrCrowbar]

Also, would you believe that the telephoto lens, whilst it does get closer to a distant object, the wide lens on the 12, with digital zoom is just as effective (at least on all the night shots I took).

Well, the wide angle lens has a wider aperture so it lets way more light in. I think I saw somewhere that on night mode portraits, you can cover the telephoto lens and it doesn't know the difference, meaning it's actually using the wide angle lens and just crops in.

I tried the 12 and 12 pro side by side in the store, took pics of the employees with 2x zoom and agree with your opinion: the dedicated telephoto lens on the 12 pro doesn't really deliver better pictures than the wide angle on the 12 with digital zoom. It might in bright lighting, but in the (reasonably bright) Apple Store, zooming in all the way on the pictures had the same amount of detail on both phones.

I would assume the telephoto lens offers better quality when it's bright and it doesn't have to de-noise as much. Possibly on video too with different OIS. You do get twice the zoom and 60 fps HDR video on the pro though.

If the 12 mini uses the same camera module as the 12, it will be killer IMO.

 

[MrCrowbar]

But does video even use the telephoto lens?

Try recording a 2x zoom video and then cover the telephoto lens.

In an ideal world, it would gather data from all 3 sensors and combine them on the fly, i.e. overlaying the telephoto image with the cropped wide and ultra-wide to get more light in and less noise. So you want to try covering the lenses abruptly and in different lighting conditions to check whether that's the case.

 

[Manzanito]

Why do Apple's photos always have a subject that borderlines between a man and woman? Apple's always doing themselves a disservice when it comes to marketing. Why not pick a subject that looks like the majority of iPhone buyers.

So that you feel insulted. Apparently, it worked!

 

[The Banker]

With ‌iPhone 12‌, however, Apple has extended ‌Night Mode‌ functionality to all the lenses, and if you have an iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max, you can take advantage of the LiDAR Scanner's advanced photography smarts to unlock Night Mode Portraits, too.

At my 12 Pro, night mode does not seem to work on the tele lens. I think they said during the online event that deep fusion came to all lensens, but I think night mode is limited to the wide, ultra wide and front cameras. Don’t really understand why this is though as they indeed advertised night mode portraits..

 

[Denzo]

Funny thing is I actually went to the Zoo today with my kid who loves lions. Guess which one phone I took? The pro. So did some long distance video and they do look incredible. The 60fps 4K looks great on our TV! So I’m leaning to the pro now also.

 

[Denzo]

Try recording a 2x zoom video and then cover the telephoto lens.

In an ideal world, it would gather data from all 3 sensors and combine them on the fly, i.e. overlaying the telephoto image with the cropped wide and ultra-wide to get more light in and less noise. So you want to try covering the lenses abruptly and in different lighting conditions to check whether that's the case.

Just tried it. It does nothing to the picture covering the telephoto lens on 2x zoom. You’ll only see my finger cover the wide lens. The whole time I’m moving my finger on and off - no difference.

Update: so inside where it was bright, that’s when the telephoto lens is being used. But for low light it’s definitely the wide/normal camera.

 

[synergize]

Location please.

Boise, Idaho