Why do my phone photos look grainy and smeared at night?

A phone sensor is tiny, so in low light it collects very little actual signal. Night mode compensates by combining several frames, which works beautifully for a static scene and badly for anything that moves.

Step by step

1. Understand what night mode is doing.It takes a burst of exposures over one to several seconds and aligns and merges them. More frames means less noise — but only if everything holds still throughout.
2. Brace the phone.Against a wall, a railing, a table, or held with both hands and elbows tucked in. Any support at all dramatically improves the merge, because the frames align better.
3. Hold still until the countdown finishes.People lower the phone the instant they hear a sound. The capture is not complete until the timer ends, and moving early is the main cause of smeared night photos.
4. Accept that moving subjects will smear.A person who moves during a three-second capture becomes a ghost. For people at night, tap to reduce the exposure time or ask them to stay still.
5. Clean the lens.A greasy phone lens has almost no effect in daylight and produces large hazy flares around every light source at night. Wipe it before blaming the phone.
6. Tap on the subject to set the exposure.The phone otherwise averages the whole scene, which in a dark street means exposing for the streetlight and leaving your subject black.
7. Slide the exposure down for street scenes.Night modes often over-brighten, producing a picture that looks like dusk and loses the atmosphere. Reducing exposure slightly usually looks better and is less noisy.
8. Avoid digital zoom.Zooming in low light crops into an already noisy image. Walk closer, or crop afterwards where you can at least choose how much.
9. Turn the flash off.A phone flash lights the first metre harshly and nothing beyond it. Ambient light with night mode is almost always better.
10. Add real light where you can.Move the subject nearer a shop window, a streetlight or a doorway. One step towards a light source beats every setting on the phone.
11. Use a small tripod for static scenes.A phone on any kind of support, with the timer, produces night images far beyond what handheld can manage.

Tips

• Hold still until the timer finishes. This is the single biggest cause of smeared night photos.
• Clean the lens. Grease is invisible by day and produces huge flares at night.
• Tap to expose on the subject, not the brightest thing in the frame.

Common mistakes

• Moving the phone as soon as the shutter sounds — Night mode captures for several seconds after the press. Lowering the phone early means the last frames are motion-blurred and the merged result is smeared.
• Using digital zoom in the dark — It crops into a small, noisy image and then upscales it, which multiplies the noise and the smearing from the processing rather than adding detail.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask