Night Mode is a setting on your mobile you may not have used. Most people use it obviously at night but I have found using it at dawn or daybreak can give images with some real depth and vibrancy-some even look like paintings.
Dawn in downtown Auckland.
In Night Mode your camera takes several images over a period of a few seconds(depending on how much light is hitting the sensor)and combines them to form one shot.If you have tried to use it at night you will probably get blurred images as the secret is to have your mobile steady for those few seconds so action shots of people and movement are out unless you want blurring and motion. On my phone it gives you a countdown on screen to let you know how long it needs to create the shot from the multiple images.
So how do you keep your phone steady? You can practise holding your breath and keeping your hand steady-which I do when there is nothing to rest your phone on. This can be hit and miss and you often get blurring-but for me that blurring sometimes adds to the final image-as in the shot above. I like the painting like final result. You also get better at this technique over time.
For really crisp images you need a mini tripod or something solid to put your phone on. The image above is clean and I used a railing to steady the phone. It was foggy and the atmosphere and the lamplight were beautifully caught in Night Mode.
This hand held shot has some blurring but I wanted to capture the moonlight and the deep blue of the dawn sky over these giant silos.
This shot is one of my favourites.The extra light source of the bright lights above the restaurant and the rising sun meant only a second or two was needed by the camera to get multiple images, so the seagulls came out relatively sharp. The technique of using light sources in the scene you want to capture to lessen the time needed for the camera to collect the multiple images for the composite final image is one of the key things to master in hand held Night Mode.
Another crisp shot -even though this was hand held the extra light from the lamppost meant only a second or two was needed by the phone camera sensors to take the multiple images for the final shot.I love shooting these kinds of dawn scenes as the roads are empty and the lamppost lights give great effect as well as shortening the time needed to compose the image .Almost like a movie set.
Dawn has passed but the Night Mode still brings out extra vibrancy.Downtown Auckland.
Storm clouds and clouds generally gather extra intensity in Night Mode.So does the depth of colour of the sky.
In this shot I waited for the person with the dog and the car to convey a sense of movement in their blurring. The pastel coloured lights in the shopfronts really leap out.
An image at a busy night market. I knew there would be blurring but I also had the very bright lights of the stall to shorten the time the camera needed to capture the multiple images. With people in Night Mode using just hand held there will always be blurring but I think this adds to the effect of activity in this scene.
Well thanks for reading this- I hope this sheds some light on how and where to use Night Mode on your phone. I will put up some more Night Mode images in a later post if this one gets some interest.
All photos taken on a Huawei P30 Pro.