As life’s best moments aren’t always perfectly lit, Google has developed Night Sight, a new feature for the Pixel camera that helps you capture vibrant and detailed low-light photos without a flash or tripod. According to Google, Night Sight will be coming to the front and rear cameras on all three generations of Pixel phones over the next few days.
We all know that the key ingredient for a photo is light. But when it’s dark, cameras compensate by spending more time capturing light and increasing their sensitivity to light, often adding unwanted motion blur and noise to your photo.
Here is how Night Sight works.
Before you press the shutter button, Night Sight measures your natural hand shake, as well as how much motion is in the scene. If Pixel is stable and the scene is still, Night Sight will spend more time capturing light to minimise noise; if Pixel is moving or there’s significant scene motion, Night Sight will use shorter exposures, capturing less light to minimise motion blur.
If your subject moves during the capture, Night Sight can adapt to prevent a modest amount of motion from ruining the shot. Instead of capturing one bright and blurry photo, Night Sight captures an equal amount of light over a burst of many photos that are dark but sharp. By merging this burst, Night Sight prevents motion blur and brightens the photo, giving you a bright and sharp photo.
Night Sight adapts to the environment and uses machine learning to balance the colour of your photo so that objects show their natural colour at night.
How and when to use Night Sight
If you’re taking a photo in low light, Pixel will suggest using Night Sight. You can enter Night Sight by tapping this suggestion or manually navigating to the mode. After you tap the shutter button, try to hold still until Night Sight finishes capturing the photo.
