Smartphone manufacturers have made photography so easy - particularly Apple (hiding their best features). Third-party camera replacement apps extend their capability even further! For now, let's get the most out of your standard in-built camera.

Our objective is to capture the subject within a sufficiently lit and detailed scene, without the grainy artefacts or blurry movement. These night photography tips will get you started:

1. Stabilise your iPhone or Android smartphone on a tripod or resting against a steady object
2. If practical reposition the subject to a location, offering improved lighting
3. Where practical, avoid capturing movement in a low light setting
4. Tap the screen to focus – your camera may struggle in low light, due to lack of contrast in the scene in low light
5. Avoid the 2X on the 7 Plus / 8 Plus models - no image stabilisation on the second lens. The X and beyond include stabilisation on both lenses
6. At times it is best to avoid swiping up or across on the screen to increase brightness. This can introduce more grain and can make bright spots irrecoverable in editing
7. Take the photo without touching the screen – earphones, timer or Bluetooth remote
8. Turn off HDR on earlier model mobile phones (iPhone 7 or Samsung S7 or earlier). The later models have a faster processor to avoid motion blur between each blended capture
9. Turn off Live Photos. This feature is amazing, however, in low light, this shooting mode sets the shutter speed at a slow video frame rate.

When attempting to take full advantage of the iPhone and Android smartphone camera capabilities and push beyond their limits – we need to get a little technical and make use of third-party applications.

Once we learn how a camera works, we can then start to understand the advancements and limitations of your smartphone camera taking low light photos.

Let's start with an explanation of how all cameras record a photo:
1. Light waves reflect off the subject and enter the camera lens into the camera
2. Aperture (lens physical opening) determines the amount of light that reaches the camera sensor. Too much light and the image is too bright – not enough and the image is too dark. This is referred to as over and under-exposed
3. Shutter determines how long the sensor is exposed to the light – too long and the image will become too bright, too quick and.... you guessed it, too dark.
4. The camera sensor then converts the light waves into digital information
5. The camera uses this information to produce, and in most cases enhance the image through software

Using a manual camera replacement app can quite often yield the same result as your standard iPhone and Android camera in low light! This is because each manual setting has a maximum and once you hit the highest ISO or the slowest shutter speed – there is no turbo button to increase the settings. The below apps, however, provide some extra features, introducing us to 'computational photography'.

ProCam is one of the camera replacement apps that provide the most manual control and computational photography techniques available in an iOS app. The iPad Pro standard camera can capture images at the maximum shutter value of 1/17 and a high ISO of 2000. The Night Mode in ProCam 5, allows you to choose a slower shutter of 1/8, 1/4 or 1 second depending on the iPhone/iPad model. If you are using a tripod – there is a better option in the app called Slow Shutter.

Tap on Slow Shutter to reveal capture options: Low Light, Light Trail and Motion Blur. This feature automatically captures a series of images (similar to Live Photos) and blends them together. Depending on the capture option selected, the algorithm will produce a different result. Each option will capture images at a minimum ISO resulting in less noise and blend the images together, further reducing more noise!

This app has a Low Light mode and fantastic in-app purchase available that is worth the cost of less than a cup of coffee named Low Light +. Once you select the camera mode, tap the hamburger icon to enter Settings. In Low Light mode, there are more options available than Low Light + including shutter speed and ISO control and priority modes.

Now, the best tip - Another in-app purchase in Pro Camera is HDR (High Dynamic Range). When you tap on the settings icon, tap through the presets to Low Light HDR. This app captures a series of images based on the principles of HDR – it captures an image to capture all the details in the brightest part of the scene, another for the darkest part of the scene and at least one more in-between referred to as the mid tones. If the scene is quite dark, a tripod icon will appear warning you that one is required.

My preference for night photography using an Android smartphone is to simply use the default camera. I have struggled to find an Android app that does an amazing job of computational photography to capture an improved image.

However, the app interestingly named - A Better Camera by Almalence is one of the best options. It has a night mode that changes the purpose of the automatic camera and allows you to make some night photography specific changes.

Apart from the normal ISO and shutter control, you can enter the shooting mode settings to make more low light, night photography specific changes. As mentioned, the camera can struggle to auto focus. You can set it to fixed hyperfocal, meaning it will focus on distant objects only and will not constantly attempt to re-focus. You can also select the level of noise reduction, de-ghosting and whether to keep the colours saturated.

Hopefully, that article was not a TLDR (Too Long Didn't Read). If you skipped through to this part – here is the summary: